8 Tips - This is how I find stability when traveling full-time

I basically just vary these three, and just change them up if I feel like I want to try something new.

You can also just find a routine that works for you, by learning different morning routines in a week with this free 7 mornings of clarity challenge.

To someone, my way of grounding myself and stay sane during travelling for longer periods of time, may be even too much routinized.

However, for me it adds feeling of security and safety and adds something constant in life.

(I could go deeper where this comes from to me, like from chronic migraines and a tendency to migraines in general ,which forces me to live quite regularly, but also never having so much stability in life, as all my life I’ve lived max. 3 years in one place.)

Anyway, let’s get to the benefits and practicalities.

I know, sleeping and eating may not be possible to do always regularly when traveling, yet that’s what I aim for.

Personally I eat every 3-4hours – and if you simply carry always some snack with you, it’s always possible.

You can’t always control what you eat (or at all, especially if you go to exotic, rural places) but most of the times you can control the eating rhythm.

Physiologically your body also is in more restful state, when it knows when it’s getting the next meal.

Sleeping is also something I like to maintain pretty much the same 7-8 hours per night, going to sleep +-1 hour the same time.

And by this I mean according to the clock of the destination, even though jet lag can make it tricky at first

(for me reading in bed, melatonin and 15-min sleep meditation works well).

I know this is very controversial to the previous point, but hear me out.

The regularity and routines are all about wanting to gain control of your life and what happens.

If that’s all that you want, you are probably more of a stay at home village and settle for good kind of person, and not a digital nomad reading these tips.

So, learning to let go and trust, is hard but awesome skill.

If you’re well-traveled, you have probably already concluded that things just most often don’t go as planned, as there are so many external factors (like different cultures, India’s way of doing things, delayed flights, or lost luggage -you name it).

So the sooner you learn to throw it “up to the universe’s arse”, realizing you’re just an ant in space and can’t control many things and you can just float and go with the flow, the easier.

I’m definitely not a master of this, but it’s really worth challenging the worrying and optimizing Western mindset of wanting to have things constantly under control. As they are not.

Video recommendation:

This one is more for us introverts out there, who tend to turn more inwards when there are already lots of external changes in life.

Traveling long-term can feel lonely and isolating.

However, it will become more and more lonely, if you don’t pay attention to this.

You can have regular calls with family or friends (like calling every Sunday with mom).

And you can use apps like Meetup and whatsapp groups to meet people at any destination.

Personally I aim for at least one social event a week.

Some weeks it may be much more, or like I’m in social living situation already, but this is mostly for the times I’m in random Airbnb in a new country and place for a month, deeply focused working on my own stuff online.

So it’s just crucial to find a way to talk to people in real-life as well.

Our life consists of many parts, like work, social life and traveling.

Or often seen as 8-part wheel of life:

Personal Growth

Career

Academics/College Life

Fun and Recreation

Relationships

Physical Environment

Health

Money

If you already know you are changing your job and your relationship is not in the best state, it’s not he time to change a country, or change accommodation after every few nights.

Try to find some stability to your life by stabilizing the areas of life that you can.

I recommend doing this free wheel of life exercise to visualize easily the different parts of life, and see which ones are requiring more attention.

Wheel of life free test: https://wheeloflife.noomii.com/

This is a thing that was a game-changer for me. Even though I still want to travel the world, it is so different thing to travel, adventure and explore, when you have somewhere to return to.

Personally I bought an apartment with my boyfriend from Spain (the whole story of Moving to Alicante and buying a flat).

But I don’t mean you need to have the finances to invest for an own flat; simply have a destination you always can go back to, be it your parents place, same Airbnb or hostel.

Sometimes even returning to the same country multiple times can feed the stability and security and give the illusion that us nomads also have some routines and stability in life, like all these people who stayed in home country and do the same old commute to work every day.

For some reason, for me the country and place I always love returning is Morocco, or more specifically the western coastline, like Essaouira and Agadir.

(Listed here my favorite riads in Essaouira.)

Stability doesn’t have to mean a fixed address. It's about internal anchors.

Personally I have a breathing practice I always go back to, when I need to feel safer, less anxious and at home in my body, wherever I am (yes, I’ve done this at airports, people probably wondering wtf am I doing, but if it looks stupid but works, it ain’t stupid).

The breathing technique I do is a combination of 3 breathing techniques; deep belly breths, box breathing and bumble bees.

Here it is as a video routine:

15-min grounding breathwork for anxiety | Find stability with 3 techniques

Find it from Free Challenge: 7 mornings of Clarity

And there’s no shame admitting, even if it’s McDonald’s.

It’s not a coincidence how nomads tend to find themselves occasionally in McDonald’s, even if it’s not what you want to support or even eat.

Yet you know exactly what it is (and that it has free wifi) wherever you are in the world.

So it’s okay to occasionally do something simply for the familiarity.

You may not feel safe or stable now, in the new country, new surrounding, new people and new cultural customs.

Sometimes it just helps to look back how many situations you’ve dealt with in the past and somehow can now just laugh at those.

(Strongly recommend reading this Moving abroad – personal experiences article of mine, where I’m telling the quite embarrassing and uncomfortable new beginnings in new countries, that now, just make a funny story.)

When you acknowledge all the similar situations from the past you eventually dealt with, and are here today to tell the story, it gives you hope that you’ll manage this time as well.

You may feel lonely, anxious or lost right now, but it does not mean it will remain like that forever.