Encourage Your Brain: What Does International Travel Do for the Brain?

I am preparing for quite a bit of international travel in the next 18 months. I'll be going to Paris for 8 or 9 trips every other month as part of my Executive Master in Change program through INSEAD. And I was curious, what does international travel do for the brain? And so I looked up a number of studies and found that there's studies that show that your cognitive flexibility increases dramatically when you have international experiences. People who live internationally or have had those experiences have much more creativity. And then another interesting piece was that cognitive function improves after you've had international travel as well. So I thought, well, those are good things that I can be looking forward to as a result of that. And then I wondered about the people that either don't want to do international travel or cannot do international travel for whatever reason there might be. And so it— the thought came to me that if you are in that category, to be thinking about how you can sort of manufacture your own international experiences. One of the fastest ways to do that is to think about friends or colleagues who have international backgrounds and to set up some time to either sit down with them face-to-face or hop onto a Zoom call with them and ask them some questions. So if you're an American, you might say, what do you notice the biggest changes or differences rather between how Americans think and how people from your home country think? And how have you navigated those differences? And what do you wish people knew about your home country? So just really having a curious conversation about that. That in and of itself could help with that sort of cognitive flexibility, that cognitive functioning, and the creativity that comes from having international experiences. So have fun encouraging your brain thinking internationally this very day.