8 Essential Skills You Need to Become a Digital Nomad

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:    00:00:22    Hi everyone. Kristin from Traveling with Kristin here. And welcome to another episode of Badass Digital Nomads. And today I have a short but action packed solo cast for you on the eight essential skills that everyone needs to become a digital nomad. And today's topic was inspired by somebody in my Facebook group aptly called Badass Digital Nomads. His name is Brandon Bufe, I think, or Boof, BofI. I'm not exactly sure. But he posted some questions in the group that I honestly had to sit and think for a minute before I answered. And then I decided I'm gonna make this into a podcast. So what he asked was, what are the personal and professional types of knowledge or skill sets that wanna be digital nomads should learn and practice now before going abroad so that they can have the most efficient, exciting, and profitable experiences as digital nomads?  

Kristin:    00:01:35    And then he also asked what I wish I had learned, or what type of knowledge I wish I acquired before I became a digital nomad that I would tell myself, you know, having this hindsight. And so he was asking, what do I wish I knew that I could share with newbie digital nomads so that they can practice and get proficient ahead of time, especially while they might have some extra time during the coronavirus times of lockdowns and quarantines and restrictions. So I'm gonna answer those two questions for you all, but first I just wanted to give a shout out to my newest Patreon patrons, Craig Smith and RZ. Thank you guys so much and if you would like to support the podcast and my YouTube channel, you can become one of my VIP patrons for only $5 per month at patreon.com/TravelingwithKristin. And I do monthly live streams in there, updates exclusive content and share videos that I have not published publicly.  

Kristin:    00:02:47    And you can also see behind the scenes of some of the Zoom interviews that I do for the podcast. So if you wanna watch the video version instead of the audio and get the raw version with no edits, then you can check that out over at patreon.com/TravelingwithKristin. And also a big hug and shout out to everyone out there who is recommending this podcast to their friends and family, that is the way that it grows the most. And I am constantly surprised and humbled by how people find the podcast. And like it brings me to tears to get like messages from people saying such nice things and how they found the podcast. And it's usually through somebody that they knew. And, um, wow. I mean, I just really can't put into words how like honored and humbled I am from that and just in awe in general of the world that we live in right now and the ability to connect with people all over the world.  

Kristin:    00:03:57    I just feel like strangers are friends you haven't met yet. So much love to all of you guys. And thank you this week to KarrieClarke from Australia who left a review on Apple Podcasts. She says everything you want to know. Kristin is an amazing host. She has extensive experience as a veteran digital nomad, and her episodes really hone in on what aspiring digital nomads want to know, and especially things you don't know you need to know, and topics and challenges that are more relevant to veteran nomads. I get so excited when another episode comes out. Definitely check it out. Thanks Karrie, and big hug to you over in Aus. Love that country. Also, side note, I just re-listened to my podcast from last week with Steve Rout, which was a little bit long. So I hope you guys like the, uh, some of the long episodes that we sprinkle in here, but I really got a lot of value out of that conversation.  

Kristin:    00:04:59    So if you haven't checked out that episode yet with Steve Rout about reinventing yourself at any age and living your best life, then definitely check that out and watch it maybe on 1.5 speed <laugh> if you're on a time crunch. Okay, so let's get into it. What are the digital nomad skills that you need? And what is the number one skill that I wish I had before I became a digital nomad? What do I wish that I knew that I didn't know <laugh>? So I'll go through each one of these eight skills and just explain a little bit why I chose it. And then a practical tip on how you can cultivate that skill, because it's not just enough to know what you need to do, it's like how do you do it and what action can you take? And that's what we're all about over here.  

Kristin:    00:05:50    So they're in no particular order, although the first one is really important. And the first skill that you need to be a successful digital nomad is communication. And also these skills work, whether or not you're digital nomads, these are just good life skills in general. So even if you're not a digital nomad yet, whether you work from home, work remotely, work in an office, whatever, these are good skills to improve upon. So communication super important, especially in this digital age where everybody is communicating through technology, basically, you know, we've lost that face-to-face communication, or at least it's on hold for a little while. And this seems really obvious, you know, you have to communicate well, but it, this is a skill that's important, whether it's in your personal life or your professional life, or especially if you're traveling through a different country. So if you don't know the language, you know, you still need to be able to communicate with people who are around you.  

Kristin:    00:06:54    And I would say in the context of being a digital nomad, because working remotely or being nomadic, a lot of introverted people are attracted to that concept and that lifestyle. So it doesn't necessarily mean that all of a sudden you have to become some extroverted person, but what you should do is figure out what form of communication is the most important for you in your work, in your role, in your job. And then focus on that one. Because we don't have a lack of communication options, we have too many. And so I think one of the biggest problems right now in society is having just too many forms of communication. Whether you're in slack groups all day or messenger or on, you know, text messages on your phone or voice memos or zoom meetings or whatever, it's overwhelm right now on the communication. But more doesn't necessarily mean better.  

Kristin:    00:08:03    You know, it's quality over quantity. So you wanna figure out what is the most important communication channel for you to do your job the best, whether you are a programmer or in tech support, or whether you're in sales or whatever facet of the company that you're working in, or if you're a freelancer working for yourself. And then become an expert at that form of communication. So for some of you, you need to be in a lot of zoom meetings. For some of you, you need to be available certain hours of the day on Slack. Um, for some of you, your main form of communication might be phone calls or you might be a content creator who's writing a lot, but you wanna just pick one thing and improve at it. And skills that will help everybody in the remote context are definitely writing. That's a huge one because whether you're sending a text message or you're responding in a Slack channel or you're writing a memo or a report, like writing is just so important.  

Kristin:    00:09:11    And above and beyond just using spell check and things like that on your emails or on Microsoft Word, you can use apps like Grammarly, G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L y.com, and also Hemingway App.com, which makes your writing a lot clearer if you just run your reports or blog posts or whatever through one of those apps, it's going to highlight a lot of mistakes and readability issues that you might not otherwise see, especially if you don't have a printer and you're not printing out what you're sending before you send it out. So part of it is choosing a form of communication that you're gonna use. The most part of it is getting better at that form of communication. And then part of it is setting expectations with the people that you're communicating with, because chances are it's going to be people in different time zones, in different departments, in different cities, in different countries.  

Kristin:    00:10:18    And you know, you, you wanna be prompt with communication, but you also don't want to be compromising the work that you do because you are online all the time and you're constantly accessible and you're constantly available. So a good book recommendation for this is Deep Work because it gives a lot of tips on how you can communicate while being productive in the workplace. So Deep Work by Cal Newport and for sure communication, one of the most important skills you need as a digital nomad, uh, whether you're traveling or not. The second skill is organization. And this is a big one because spans every aspect of your life, your finances, time management in general at work, and also your awareness of just basically how you're living your life. Because how you live your life or how you spend your day is how you live your life.  

Kristin:    00:11:27    You know, your life is made up of tiny habits and the small things that you do each day. And so to get better organized, which is going to positively impact every aspect of your life, whether you're trying to save money, whether you're trying to grow a business while you're trying to climb a corporate ladder, or even if you're just trying to plan a trip somewhere, it's basically a form of adulting, <laugh>, I would say. And the best way to get organized. You know, you don't have to go and buy all of Marie Kondo's books and do some kind of feng shui life cleaning, although that's an option. But if there's one tip that I have for getting more organized, it's just to decide what's most important to you and then make tiny changes around that one thing. So you could look at this in your work context and also in your personal life context, but picking one thing like an anchor habit and then organizing around that can simplify the process of getting organized rather than overwhelm you and help you stick with small changes that are gonna have a big impact.  

Kristin:    00:12:55    So let's say you wanna organize your finances, you could put a system into place that's going to keep it organized for you, even if you're not spending all of your time on that. So maybe you automate your savings, automate your investments, automate your bill pay, um, things that can delegate that to technology to take it off of your plate that's going to organize you, but then you don't have to reorganize later. It's like a system that you set in place that can keep you organized for years to come. And then you could also look at what is a habit around financial organization that I can implement? Okay, maybe I choose one app to keep track of my finances, or maybe I make a budget and I set a rule that I'm going to review my budget on the same day every month. That's gonna keep you organized financially for a long time if you stick with that one habit.  

Kristin:    00:13:59    But then it also has to do with your job. You know, like which hours are you going to work per day? So if you're a digital nomad or if you're working from home and you don't have a set schedule, then being organized is going to help you a lot because whether you're in your home country or you're in a foreign country, you need to choose which hours are you going to be working per day, like which time zone are you going to be working in? And then stick with that. And it doesn't mean that you're not human and you're not gonna mess up sometimes or you're always gonna feel like working or you're always gonna feel super organized. But if you have an organization orientation to your life, it is going to make the digital nomad lifestyle much easier. The third skill I have written down is self autonomy.  

Kristin:    00:14:55    And this one's also very important. They're all equally important, but self autonomy just basically means that you are self-sufficient. And The Daily Stoic actually says that self-sufficiency was the stoics highest virtue. But how do you just become more autonomous? Like how do you become more self-sufficient? That's a really vague skill to, to hone, right? Well, I look at it more as self-trust more than like self autonomy and self-reliance. It's just basically taking personal responsibility. It's recognizing that you are in charge of your life <laugh> and what happens, but it's also recognizing that you're not in control of everything. The stoics made a really big distinction between things that you can control and things that you can't control. And having self autonomy, personal responsibility, self-reliance. It's saying, you know what with a, the buck stops with me on a lot of things, but then there's also this other X percent of life that I can't control.  

Kristin:    00:16:14    So let me just focus on the things that I can control and not worry about the rest of it. You know, be an informed citizen, but let's not spin our wheels worrying about things that we can't control. And a really easy way to enhance your sense of autonomy and self-reliance in the world is to just, whenever you catch yourself thinking about something or worrying about something, just ask yourself one simple question, can I control this? Yes or no? It sounds deceptively easy, but it's going to help your brain kind of come around and be like, oh yeah, can I control this? No. Okay, stop worrying about it. So if you find yourself, um, at the airport and your flight is delayed, can I control this? No. What am I gonna do about it? Okay, maybe I'm in the mood to go get a beer. Maybe I need to go sit down and answer email for an hour.  

Kristin:    00:17:17    It's like, what can you control in a situation that's uncontrollable <laugh>? Does that make sense? I hope so, because as a digital nomad or as an aspiring digital nomad, especially until today, now that it's becoming more mainstream and more accepted, uh, it's always been an unconventional path. And living in foreign countries as an expat has always been an unconventional path. Working for yourself has always been an unconventional path. And so having self-confidence and the ability to depend on yourself in the world is just very helpful when it seems like there's no one else who understands what you're going through, or that there's no one else on your team. So the other thing that I like to think about is that we're all little self-autonomous islands, human beings, right? Billions of us on the planet, but yet we're all connected. So it's like having this sense of autonomy, but also support and a network of other human beings who all relate to that same struggle and that same challenge and that same feeling.  

Kristin:    00:18:32    So again, really easy tip. Can I control this? Yes or no? If you can control it, try to make a positive action or decision towards that thing. If you can't control it, acknowledge that and then move on. The fourth skill that comes in really handy is, I guess not really a skill, but a mindset curiosity and the desire to learn. Because when you think that you know everything, whether it's in your job or in your hometown or whatever it is, you're done for <laugh>. I mean, nobody knows everything about anything. Even if you are the top 0.001% expert in your field, you don't know everything. We can never know if everything is infinitely big and infinitely small. You know, scientists are out looking for the smallest, next smallest particle that they can find <laugh>. And then we have people on the other end looking for the, you know, the biggest everything, the most money, the biggest audience, the most power, like there's never any end on either side.  

Kristin:    00:19:39    But having a natural curiosity about what is happening in your life and what is happening in the world and always being open to learning and growth is very, very helpful when you're a digital nomad, because it's gonna help you grow your business. If you own an online business, it's going to help you produce more value in a company if you're working for a company remotely. And it's also going to result in more fun and adventure when it comes to your personal life and travel and meeting other people. If you just let yourself be surprised and always open to other new things that you can learn. So when you think you know everything, life gets really boring. <laugh> and the digital nomad lifestyle is the opposite of boring, right? It's too exciting sometimes that it can be borderline distracting. So when you don't know the answer to something, my tip for this, for increasing your curiosity and your propensity to learn is to just remember that when you don't know that's normal, but you can find the answer and seeking out the answer is what is going to bring that magic to your life. 

Kristin:    00:20:58    So I, the guest that I was talking about, Steve Rout, who was on last week's podcast, we met because both of us were curious about learning how to make travel videos. And so we started Googling how to do it, what equipment we needed, and we came across the same YouTuber who had created an online business teaching people how to make travel videos. And so two years later we end up meeting in this Travel Video Academy group, and then he's on the podcast. Turns out he was a journalist and he's never even been interviewed before. He's always been the one interviewing, and he shared all kinds of great stories and things on the podcast. And that was all because both of us followed our natural curiosity and desire to learn about something new. And you can also apply this when you're traveling, of course. I mean, whether it's, you know, at work trying to solve a problem, or you're traveling and you are looking at Google Maps, or you're looking at TripAdvisor reviews and you're trying to find that amazing attraction or that bucket list destination or that best restaurant or whatever.  

Kristin:    00:22:07    And then you stumble onto something new, you get a flat tire, you go, you know, in to ask for direction somewhere, you find out that there is this amazing restaurant with this local food, you know, at this place it's totally off the beaten path. I mean, having that, that natural go with the flow kind of curiosity is just really fun and it can result in some of your best travel experiences. And then when in the work context, because digital nomadism is all about, uh, you know, working as well as having this cool personal life, it's just knowing that whatever problem you're having by virtue of something being a problem, there is a solution and there is an answer. And you can just accept that adventure and go look for the answer, because there's never been a better time to figure out the answers to your problems because we have access to the entire history and knowledge and brain of the world at our fingertips.  

Kristin:    00:23:08    On that note, the fifth skill I wrote down is persistent. Because 99 times out of 100 when you need something or you need to figure something out or find the answer, you're probably not gonna get it on the first try. And so persistence as a digital nomad, just not giving up. And again, this is whether you travel or not, just when you come across a roadblock, whether it's a real roadblock on the road in Mexico somewhere, or it's a symbolic roadblock, you come across a problem in your work or something like that, just don't give up. You know, just try to figure out a way to go above it, below it, around it, and that will serve you very well. There have been numerous times that I was in a situation with traveling where it was Murphy's Law and everyone knows what it feels like to be in a Murphy's law situation.  

Kristin:    00:24:09    You don't have to go very far out of your house to know what that feels like. <laugh>, it can happen on the way to work. You know, you step in a puddle, you get pulled over, the train breaks down, like whatever, you know, someone spills coffee on you. Like so many things can go wrong every day, but when you just kind of embrace that reality and know that no matter what happens, you're gonna keep trying, you're not gonna give up. That persistence is just always gonna pay off, because the only way that you fail at something is when you give up. And sometimes there is a valid reasons to give up on whatever it is that you're doing. But, um, when you're working remotely and when you're traveling and when shit's hitting the fan and things are going wrong, um, you just have to push through it and find solutions and, and know that it's not always gonna be easy, but you're always gonna get there if you keep drawing.  

Kristin:    00:25:09    Number six is open-mindedness. This is a big one. This should probably be first, but the reason that I actually started helping people move to different countries back in 2011 is when I opened my relocation company was because I had lived abroad already for probably eight years of my life. And I knew that the first probably 72 hours, no, probably 24 to 48 hours that I ever lived abroad in a foreign country by myself, was life changing permanently. Like that was one of those butterfly effect moments where, you know, my plane was landing, I was terrified, I was in Costa Rica, I didn't speak the language, I was 20 years old. And I was like, what have I gotten myself into? I cried myself to sleep the first night, and then it was like the next day I woke up and it was game on. And the adventure of living in foreign countries and seeing what the world had to offer started, and it never ended.  

Kristin:    00:26:19    And so after working abroad and working in real estate and helping people retire to different countries, and then starting my relocation company, it was all because I wanted to help as many people as possible have that adventure, expose them to a different way of living no matter what length of time they lived in another country for, and no matter which country they went to, I knew if every human being on the planet had the opportunity to go live abroad for one month, let's say in any foreign country, that it would change everything that they thought they knew about life. Because you can read books, you can hear stories, you can learn through without doing it, but when you actually physically put yourself in another country, you just absorb things contextually that would be difficult to understand otherwise. And I think that this is a lot of the reason for so much of the division in the world, especially politically, ideologically, is because people haven't been exposed to enough different ways of living and thinking and being.  

Kristin:    00:27:35    And that's how the world was for a really long time because there wasn't the technology to travel and people didn't have enough money to travel. So only the, the wealthiest people on the planet had the luxury of traveling. But now it's accessible to millions and millions and millions of people. So if you do have the opportunity to go live in another country, I just recommend that you do it, and that will help you become more open-minded. But if you can't go anywhere right now, you can still be more open-minded by, you know, like, like Brandon was saying, what can you do now if you're not going anywhere? You can follow people that you don't agree with on social media. You can read books that you know you disagree with to just see the other point of view. You can read more history books, you can subscribe to YouTube channels of people who are focusing on one country.  

Kristin:    00:28:35    Like I was watching, I went on a binge of some girl's videos about Iceland the other day, <laugh>, and I've been to Iceland probably five times, but I learned so much from her video. So yeah, you know, go to a, a rally of the other politician, go to a protest of a side that you don't agree with, like, just try to expose yourself to as many differing perspectives as you can. Watch the other news station <laugh>. All of these things will help you cultivate a more open mind. And when it is time to travel again, you will just be in a more objective state of mind and more accepting. Okay, we have two more. The seventh thing I have is work ethic. And basically this is a skill of being proactive or having an action orientation. And this is kind of related to some of the other skills that we've talked about.  

Kristin:    00:29:33    But when you work for yourself or you work from home and you don't have anyone necessarily looking over your shoulder, or if you created your own job and you don't have a model to follow for even what you should be doing during the day, you have to have a good work ethic and you have to take action when you come across a stumbling block because there will be a lot of them. There might be one every day. And so if you have this attitude as a digital nomad, it makes your life a lot easier because you're kind of expecting to face challenges and hurdles, whether it's in your remote work life or whether it's in a foreign country or whether it's during your travels. And you can see things like, okay, this happened. So what am I gonna do about it? How am I going to react to it?  

Kristin:    00:30:28    And not in like just a reacting way as in like, like a knee jerk reaction, but like, here are, here's this objective situation that happened, so how am I going to resolve it? And if you've ever been on a group travel trip, for example, so maybe you went to a family reunion or you went on a road trip with friends or you went on a cruise, you know, and things happen or it's like, there's too many cooks in the kitchen. So you have like this group of people, but no one's making a decision. Someone has to step up into that leadership role. And being a digital nomad is taking that leadership role in your life. And so you, this goes back to self autonomy and reliance, right? You are the captain of your own ship, so no one's likely going to be following up with you and telling you what to do.  

Kristin:    00:31:22    You kind of have to tell yourself what to do. And when you don't know what to do, you have to take action to start exploring and researching and figuring out what your next step should be, A tip that you can use to cultivate a stronger action orientation and get yourself out of procrastination, which is such a annoying trait of the human being. Something that a hundred percent of people struggle with is something called the The 5 Second Rule. Um, I forget, Mel Robbins I think invented this, or she is credited with this rule, and I use it quite often actually. You basically just count down from 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go. And then when you get to go, you take action, you stand up from the couch, you turn off your phone, you go to your computer, you whatever the thing is that you need to do, you do it then.  

Kristin:    00:32:24    And so that's a really, really simple rule, but it works. Just try it, like try it today, like the first time that you feel like you wanna procrastinate, just five second rule. You can even do it in one second or two seconds or three seconds. But I find that five, <laugh> five is a good amount of time because your brain, it's kind of funny, your brain kind of resists it at first, but then across the duration of that five seconds, you like snap out of it. And then once you're in motion, you're in motion. And so it can be really easy in a corporate context to just shrink away into the back of the staff meeting and nobody knows you're there or you don't have to speak up or whatever, and you can just kind of get by. But when you are living a digital nomad lifestyle, you are just more in the limelight of your own life.  

Kristin:    00:33:17    And the, the decisions you make are very important. The actions you take or don't take have consequences. And so, um, yeah, whether you're working at home or whether you're out on the road and traveling, work ethic, action proactiveness, these are gonna make your life a lot easier. Another note on that is that the digital nomad lifestyle, the entrepreneurial lifestyle, these types of lifestyles can look glamorous from the outside. But it's good to remember that the day-to-day work, no matter what you're doing, is not necessarily sexy, but the the small tiny progress that you make every day and whatever your job is, is going to give you the outcome you want of having a location independent or financially free life. It's putting those little systems in place, you know, it's automating your savings if you wanna retire early or making a budget, if you wanna cut back on expenses that can lead you in three years to early retirement, or it's going from building a revenue stream of $1 per day to $10,000 per month, or everything starts with something very small.  

Kristin:    00:34:28    But then it's that persistent consistent action that brings you to the day where one day you look around and you're like, oh, I'm sitting in first class on this flight with passive income in my bank account, and I'm going to some really cool party <laugh> or event, or I'm going skiing in Japan right now in first class, or I am on my way to meet my friends for lunch in Paris. Or like, cool things happen because you did that work. So keep it up. And the last digital nomad skill that everyone needs is acceptance. So we talked about trying to take action towards things that you can change and letting go of things that you can't control. And as a nomad in the world, things are gonna go wrong. Murphy's law, it's gonna feel like it's always there. Sometimes you're gonna come across cultural differences, political differences, everything is gonna be different.  

Kristin:    00:35:30    The kind of peanut butter in the grocery store is gonna be different. But if you can just accept those differences, your life will be a lot easier. And one way that you can cultivate greater acceptance is with self-awareness, which we talked about a little bit earlier with self autonomy. But also one of my favorite tips is from Jocko Wilink who when something bad happens, his response is good no matter what it is. And that sounds harsh, and I think that's why Jocko has such a reputation, because it's like that tough love kind of attitude. But if your response to everything that happens that people wanna make into a big drama or something like that world is ending. If your response is good, and then you follow that up with what you're gonna do about it, this will make your life so much easier. So the flight's delayed, good, I get some extra time to work on my side hustle, or good, I needed a nap, <laugh>, um, the conference is canceled.  

Kristin:    00:36:44    Good, now I can look for a different opportunity. That client doesn't wanna work with you. Good. Now I have more time to focus on strategy or more attention to give to my other clients. Things that happen are not good or bad. We decide if we want them to be good or bad. Of course, if somebody gets sick, if somebody dies, this is, this is sad, this is tragic, but there's always something good that can come out of anything bad that happens. And what is good to one person can be bad to another and vice versa. So just accepting when things are going wrong, you know, just go with the flow. Think of how much could be different if when something bad happened to you, you said good and then took action from there. Going back to some of the other skills. So you might be surprised on this list if we just summarize them again, we had communication, organization, self autonomy, curiosity and learning, persistence, open-mindedness, work ethic or action orientation and acceptance.  

Kristin:    00:38:01    These are eight skills that are gonna, that you can cultivate from anywhere and that will help you in life whether or not you're a digital nomad, but certainly in a location, independent, international lifestyle. I noticed that I didn't say anything about being tech savvy, which you might be surprised about or being disciplined or motivated in general because if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably tech savvy enough to be a digital nomad. If you know how to use email and the internet and basic communication tools, you are tech savvy enough to work online, in my opinion. It's just a matter of finding the right job for you. So everyone has, not everyone, but most people have a basic level of tech skills that you need to work remotely. But discipline and motivation, motivation is a temporary state of being. It's not something that you can really improve <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:39:06    It's like you feel motivated, do you not feel motivated, but you can put into place organized systems or habits to coax you into a more disciplined lifestyle that's gonna result in the goals that you wanna achieve. So I don't really think that those are that important to cultivate specifically. You also don't need to change anything about who you are to become a digital nomad. You don't need to change your personality, you don't need to change you. Anyone can become a digital nomad, introverted, extroverted, tech savvy, not tech savvy. Whatever age you are, whatever job you have, whatever skillset you have, wherever you wanna go, wherever you wanna live, whatever your hobbies are, whatever your interests are, you can be a digital nomad. You don't need to change anything about you, which language you speak, what you look like, how old you are, nothing. So that's not relevant either.  

Kristin:    00:40:03    You guys are all good, beautiful, just the way you are, so don't worry about that. And that second question, what do I wish I would have learned or what do I wish I had more of when I started my digital nomad journey is I would say acceptance, which I actually said last. I think I would say acceptance and patience. I don't think I put patience as a skill, but I wish that I had more of that when I started. One of the biggest things I noticed when I started traveling was how close-minded I was and how ignorant I was. It was tough to deal with, it was shocking, it was embarrassing, it was uncomfortable. But I was so grateful to have the opportunity to live in another country that I just ran with it. So gratitude, whereas not a skill, is also a very good thing to cultivate that will help you with all of these other things and being more motivated and being more action oriented when you're reflecting on the things that are good about your life and the things that you're grateful for.  

Kristin:    00:41:20    But I definitely think that at the beginning of my digital nomad journey, or even as my, of my expat journey, I probably thought that I could control more than I actually could <laugh>. And I got a few rude awakenings when I realized that that was not true. And so that's why I'm such a big fan of stoicism now and I practice of focusing on things that I can't, that I can't change, and letting go of things that I can't change while still being aware of those things that are happening in the world. Um, yeah, because when you're an outsider in a different country, it's like you're kind of at the bottom of the, uh, hierarchy there. <laugh>, you know, your opinion's not that important, especially if you're not a local and you don't speak the language. So also during, you know, when things go wrong while traveling and you know, you find yourself seasick and hungover with food poisoning on a ferry that's broken down somewhere, and it's a hundred degrees outside, acceptance, <laugh>, you know, there's so many things that that can happen.  

Kristin:    00:42:31    Um, but the, the two biggest things that have helped me that I started during my travels were meditation and journaling. So I always traveled with a journal and I always wrote down my experiences and reflections ever since I was a teenager going on, or a pre-teen going on family trips and vacations with my parents. Um, and then more recently it's been meditation, which is something that I always knew I had to do. As soon as I figured out what meditation was, I always felt obligated to do it because I think it's something that is like a soul connection, that we need that peace. We need to be centered. We crave that. We crave being grounded. So it took me a few years, or like 10 years to actually get into the habit of meditation. But this combination of meditation and journaling has really helped with, uh, getting clarity, feeling grounded, um, increasing my sense of self-awareness and personal responsibility and all of these other skills that I talked about today. So again, those skills are communication, organization, self autonomy, curiosity and learning, persistence, open-mindedness, work ethic and acceptance. And so I hope that these skills help you along your digital nomad journey or in preparation for your journey, wherever life might lead you. Make sure to share this episode with someone you care about, someone you love, someone you think it would help, and see you next week.  

Kristin:    00:44:15    Thank you so much for listening. And remember to leave a review for the podcast wherever you listen and share this episode with someone you think it might help.  

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