Review: Travel That Can Change Your Life

A review of Jeffrey Kottler’s book on transformational travel

Aug 26, 2024

The first time I think I ever came across the notion of transformational travel was in discovering Jeffrey Kottler, Ph.D’s book Travel That Can Change Your Life: How to Create a Transformative Experience.

Dr. Kottler – a psychologist, professor, and author of over 120 books in fields such as psychology, personal development, and personal meaning-making – has a simple but very insightful and profound premise: we are most open to change when we travel. He writes on page 6 of his book that travel is “by its very nature a transformative experience” and in his Preface encourages us to look deep at why people travel and

what you will find is that underlying most people’s stated reason for the trip is another, often unconscious, desire to change something about themselves and their lives. On some level, each of us uses travel to promote personal transformation. This is true whether you are after a major shift in lifestyle or a minor adjustment in the ways you do business. Regardless of your stated agenda, change of some sort will often result. The only question is whether this change will be intentional, deliberate, and constructive – or accidental, random, perhaps even dangerous.

As I write and talk more and more about transformations and the emerging Transformation Economy, I’ve also been citing Dr. Kottler more and more. (I’ll be sure there’s a citation in the book!) This is particularly true as I advise the Transformational Travel Council and help lead the Experience Strategy Collaborative with Dave Norton and our colleagues at Stone Mantel, with one of its focus areas the past few years on transformations.

I’ve been citing Travel That Can Change Your Life more and more

Travel That Can Change Your Life is filled with great advice on how people should approach transformational travel, how to ensure they get the most out of it, how best to ensure changes stick when back at home, and so forth, with scores of golden nuggets throughout. These include:

“There are two main reasons why people make changes in their lives – because they need to, and because they want to.” (p. 14) See my post Transformations Catalysts.
“[T]ravel experiences can provide the ideal structure for personal changes – if you know where you’re going and how to get there.” (p. 16) This is right before Kottler discusses “Who Do You Want To Be?”.
“[T]aking a trip is a physical act of movement and relocation – not only from place to place but from one state of mind to another.” (p. 29)
Chapter 4, “Planning Your Trip”, offers a great set of questions on “constructing a flexible plan, one that give you a rough guide for how you might meet your personal objectives.” (p. 43).
On pp. 73-4 Kottler has a sub-section on “Reflective Contemplation”, something I have learned is integral to incorporating change into one’s life.
I love this perspective on the efficacy of travel for explanation: “When you’re traveling nobody really knows the way you are supposed to be. You can experiment with new roles and alternative personas. You can quite literally become a different person from the one who left home.” (p. 77)
In one section (pp. 94-100) he recommends “traveling like an anthropologist”. I would extend that: live like an anthropologist! At least, that’s why I try to do, always observing and analyzing what I see people do, especially in experiences.

Perhaps the most potentially impactful chapter is the last one, “Creating Meaning in Your Travel” (pp. 148-166), such an important thing to understand and to effect in any transformation. As Kottler concludes this chapter, and the book, discussing how journeys transform us:

Most impactful: “Creating Meaning in Your Travel”

While it is often easier to do this on a trip, away from usual influences and restrictions, these changes can take place anywhere you choose to make them happen. In fact, if travel teaches you one important lesson it is that life is too sweet and short to limit your freedom to mere vacations. Travel is not really an escape from normal life, nor is it an insulated reality; rather, it acts as a reminder of what is possible for you to experience every waking moment of your life. Only then can travel change your life.

Travel That Can Change Your Life is at its core a self-help book. Kottler’s focus is on how people can self-transform when traveling. But as I’ve said many a time, change is incredibly hard to accomplish on our own. People desire guidance and often need it. You can use the same nuggets and questions in this book aimed at individuals to help you be the guide people so often seek in transforming – not just in travel, but across many transformation offerings.

Joe Pine