How To Overcome Loneliness While Traveling

Sneak Peek:

Kristin:    00:00:00    The truth is we come into this world alone and we leave alone. But that's not why we're here. You know, we're all connected. We're here to help each other. We're here to relate to each other and interact with each other, and we're here to love each other. 

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:    00:00:41    You know, people always ask me how to deal with loneliness while traveling, especially solo travel, or especially as a digital nomad, potentially, where you might not know how long you're traveling for, you might not have a return date to your home, and this feeling can be quite intimidating. You know, the thought of going out into the world, especially since most people become digital nomads by themselves. So the thought of traveling to foreign countries is naturally a daunting one. But as we approach an entire year of a life of relative solitude living under pandemic conditions, I thought it was a good time to address this topic. You know, one of the things I've realized this year is how much I think travel has prepared me for this time. You know, I felt the same fear and anxiety and emotional roller coaster that everyone else has felt this year, but every time I start to panic, or every time I get scared or unsure about the future or the present, I come back to this kind of underlying steadfastness and sense of self that I think I have uncovered through travel.  

Kristin:    00:02:17    But I think that everyone has. It's funny because in one sense I started traveling to find myself, but in the end I realized that travel helped me understand that you can't escape yourself <laugh>, nor should you want to, because the desire to travel, the desire to connect with others, the desire for happiness and peace of mind and contentment are all connected, and they're all human desires. And in experiencing them, you can help develop like a tool set to cope with loneliness when you're not feeling those things or when you're feeling the absence of those things, because you can just relax back into just being with yourself throughout life. Whether you're living in your hometown or you've been solo traveling the world, or you've been meditating in the mountains like a monk, at some point you end up with some time or the space or the context or the environment to really get to know yourself and to be with yourself.  

Kristin:    00:03:38    And we can either resist it or embrace it. But for me, solo traveling has helped me become comfortable in my own company. And so this is a lesson that I can share with you that if you can find comfort and serenity and knowing that the times that you are alone don't have to be times that you feel lonely. That's the first part. And then the second part is that just recognizing that you need some alone time in between social activity and stimulation just to decompress and reflect and just have kind of like a break. You know, it's just like the times that you are single is this respite in between different partners or different relationships. It's like this balance that we always have in life. You know, unless you marry your high school sweetheart and you're never apart <laugh>, there's exceptions to every rule. But I think to really approach this topic of loneliness, we have to look at what is the difference between loneliness and being alone.  

Kristin:    00:04:58    You can also say, what's the difference between solitude and solitary confinement? And the answer is, it's all in your mind. You can be free. You can live a life of freedom as a digital nomad or as someone who's financially independent or as someone who has everything you could ever want in the world, and you can still feel trapped. You know, we see this with people who seem to have it all and then they commit suicide out of nowhere. It's all in our minds. You can be locked up for years in jail or in in prison, in, in a prison camp, but you can remain free in your mind and in your heart and in your soul. And so this is all connected because it all relates with the concept of loneliness. Because loneliness is fluid and it's situational and it's subjective. Each person has a different relationship with loneliness.  

Kristin:    00:06:00    So let's just look at the definition. The generic definition of loneliness is sadness because one has no friends or company. It's also defined as the fact of being without companions, solitariness the loneliness of a sailor's life. But yet we know that there are people who yearn for this solitude, who go out and live in, you know, in the woods, in the wilderness, to find the peace that comes from solitude, the loneliness of a sailor's life. We just had Nick and Terysa from sailing Ruby Rose on the podcast to talk about the solitude, yes, of sailing, but also the deep connection and the deep bonds that they have forged with the other people that they've met along the way, even if they only met those people for one or two days at a time or even one meal and never saw them again. And then the second definition of loneliness is the quality of being un frequented and remote or isolation <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:07:07    And they give the example of the loneliness of the farm. And this again, is subjective because what are we all here to do to be remote, to go remote? It's not so that we can be alone all the time, but it's so that we have control over more of our lives. But even when we have that control, we will find ourselves being alone sometimes, and we will find ourselves being lonely sometimes, but it's nothing that we have to try to avoid or fear. And if we do try to prevent ourselves from ever feeling that loneliness, then it's going to hit harder when you do feel it. I also found a pretty interesting definition on Wikipedia that says loneliness is an unpleasant emotional response to perceived isolation. It's also described as social pain. A psychological mechanism which motivates individuals to seek social connections, loneliness, overlaps and yet is distinct from solitude.  

Kristin:    00:08:13    Solitude is simply the state of being apart from others. Not everyone who experiences solitude feels lonely and as a subjective emotion, loneliness can be felt even when surrounded by other people. And I can definitely relate to this because I, I wrote a few years ago a blog on medium about the paradox of loneliness and the digital nomad lifestyle. And I'll link to that in the show notes. But in that article, I talked about my own experience with the weirdness of loneliness. How sometimes when you are, you know, lying next to your partner in bed or surrounded like by people, you can feel lonely. And yet other times when you're in a state of solitude, you can feel a deep, deep connection and bond with nature and the world around you and strangers around you, or people around the world that you're not physically present with, maybe people who have passed away.  

Kristin:    00:09:14    And so I like to look at this as just one more characteristic and texture in the life of a human being. You know, there's so many times I felt lonely. I, this podcast could never be long enough to talk about all of them, but when I reflect on the times that I felt lonely, they were usually brief moments. And the positive memories of travel always outweigh those lonely moments. So I can remember one time sitting on the chain bridge in Budapest, or it was right next to the chain bridge and just looking at the view over the Danube River and seeing for some reason so many couples around me. And at the time I was in, no, I wasn't in a relationship at that time, I was single. And that must've been why I saw so many couples <laugh>. And I just remember feeling quite lonely, just seeing, uh, you know, newlyweds and you know, when couples like dress the same and look the same.  

Kristin:    00:10:24    It was like all of these perfect couples, probably on their honeymoons in Budapest and having the time of their lives. And I was just there by myself and you know, feeling really lonely, but also feeling happy for them. And then also remembering that I was in Budapest and I had a glass of wine and I was watching the sunset and life was good. And you know, my friends were back at the hostel. But then there was another time that I wrote about on Medium where I had just come off of weeks traveling with digital nomads from the Nomad Cruise. So I was surrounded by hundreds of people and I was on the ferry back from Santorini to Athens, and it was like all of the energy and excitement and the buzz of those past few weeks just kind of dropped away into the, into the Mediterranean Sea.  

Kristin:    00:11:18    And there was this void of utter aloneness and just silence. I remember just standing on the deck of the ferry and watching Santorini fade away into the horizon, and all of my friends that were back there, and I was just off on my own to my next destination by choice and feeling so grateful for that time that I had spent from them, but also feeling this sadness and separation from them. But then knowing that I had formed these lifelong friendships and relationships, and I would see those people again, or I wouldn't, but we would always remain connected or we would always have those memories that we shared. So loneliness can kind of sneak up on you sometimes or more like pop into your consciousness out of nowhere, you're having a good day. And all of a sudden, boom, loneliness. There was this one time that I had like a summer fling with someone who I met while traveling through Eastern Europe, and we traveled together for a while and it was like we had known each other for years.  

Kristin:    00:12:30    You know, the time you spend traveling with people is like condensing a lot of experiences into a short amount of time. But when he left and he had to go back to his home country and go back to work and go back to real life, I remember just sitting the next night on the steps of my Airbnb, like midnight and just looking up at the moon and just feeling quite lonely in the world. But then I remembered that all of these experiences could happen anywhere. You could feel lonely walking over the bridge in your hometown or taking the ferry on your commute to work or sitting on the steps in front of a brownstone in Brooklyn, and you know, not an Airbnb in Europe. So what's the solution you might be thinking, how do I cope with this? And how can you cope with this when you face it, whether or not you're traveling, you know, no matter where you are.  

Kristin:    00:13:35    And like many things in life, the antidote to loneliness is to face it head on with intentional solitude. You need to prove to yourself that you can survive this feeling of loneliness and that you can actually use it for the better. For example, you can go travel by yourself for a while, you know, go for a road trip, go for a hike in nature alone. You don't have to leave the country. Um, you can take yourself out to eat, or if it's open <laugh>, you know, go to a museum or an art gallery or on an excursion or something. Just get acquainted with yourself and know that nothing bad happens when you spend time alone. It's just this brief interim before the next human connection. And likewise, some of my best times in life and in travel have come in moments of solitude. Whether I was sitting on a surfboard at sunrise in Costa Rica, watching Toucans fly around and seeing the sun come up over the mountains or going on a solo road trip across the country, you know, singing at the top of my lungs in the car, or just reading a book on a train zipping through the countryside, whether it was through Europe or Japan, and just watching the world fly by or on an airplane by myself, or even just walking or riding my bike around a new city.  

Kristin:    00:15:14    It's just remembering that loneliness is just fleeting, it's passing, it's temporary, it's impermanent, and it can't be completely avoided. So loneliness is just part of the human experience. It's going to happen whether you're traveling or not. It might ironically happen less <laugh> when you're traveling or less when you're solo traveling because your senses are so heightened by the experience. But either way, having that balance and that perspective of loneliness, I think makes connecting with other people that much more rewarding because the truth is we come into this world alone and we leave alone. But that's not why we're here. You know, we're all connected. We're here to help each other, we're here to relate to each other and interact with each other, and we're here to love each other. And that's why it hurts so much to lose someone you love. And it hurts to see other people suffer, whether it's in a movie or a story or in real life.  

Kristin:    00:16:29    You know, we feel things ourselves, we feel loneliness, but we perceive it in others, and we want to help other people that are feeling things that they are struggling to cope with. There was this other time when I was thinking about doing this podcast and talking about loneliness and thinking about what were the times that I felt alone and what were the times that I felt alive and connected? And one of the moments that popped into my head was this time that I was living alone in Berlin, it was after a breakup. And I think I came from Canada maybe to Berlin. Anyway, I went one day to the Holocaust memorial by myself, and there were these letters from people who were separated from their family members and their loved ones. And they, in desperation wrote these letters hoping that they would arrive to those family members.  

Kristin:    00:17:31    And you know, I don't know the story of what happened to each of those people, but I just had to leave the museum like I just broke down crying. And I remember walking through these towering gray marble or granite statues. It's like this big maze of granite outside. And I was just walking through the garden by myself. It was sunset and just a very ominous time, and this maze of gray stones and just feeling so sad, but also feeling so deeply connected to these people who I had never met, and the pain that these Holocaust victims felt. And really thinking about that on the way back to my Airbnb. And then ironically, it was like as if life was playing this trick on me or trying to teach me something. Later that night, I ended up at a nightclub in Berlin with these people who I met at a dinner party, and it was like full party mode, like bottle service and DJs and lights and music and you know, Berlin Club scene.  

Kristin:    00:18:52    So despite being surrounded by all of these people and all this energy and all of these new friends, I felt rather alone and kind of lonely. And I don't know if my experience earlier in the day had something to do with that, but it's just, you know, you can be alone and not feel lonely, or you can be with people and feel lonely. And at the, at the end of the day, it all comes back to your mindset and like how in tune you are with these feelings that are passing through your consciousness and not fully identifying with them. You know, just recognizing them and being like curious. Like I remember thinking like, huh, that's weird that I feel this way, surrounded by all these people. And then thinking about what had happened just a few hours earlier. And so when you begin to have all of these different experiences that are outside of the daily routine and the nine to five grind and the rat race and kind of like the busyness and the noise and the hustle and bustle of daily life, when you get out of your hometown or your home country and you're exposed to like more sensory experiences and like more stimulation from the world around you, you obviously get excited.  

Kristin:    00:20:14    But then the more that the years go by, the more comfortable you are with the dips in between those peaks of energy. And so when you begin to feel more comfortable being alone and more confident being alone and more calm, being alone, you'll still feel lonely sometimes. But that fear of loneliness will kind of lose its power. It'll lose its charge. And so think of it this way, if you were never lonely, how would you know the beauty of deep connection with someone? You know, the more comfortable you are with being alone, perhaps the better you can show up for a friend in need food for thought. But out of all of the many thousands of people that I have met in my travels and also the 50, 60, 70 people that I've already interviewed for this podcast, none of the people I've met in my travels and none of the travelers have ever expressed to me that loneliness was a big enough issue to prevent them from traveling.  

Kristin:    00:21:24    Certainly all of us have experienced it, but we've also learned not to identify with that, just the same way that we don't identify with frustration over a delayed flight or missing the train or luggage being lost or anything going wrong. These are just things that happen in life. And then you, the next day, you start over and you start with a clean slate. So if you want to become a digital nomad someday, or if you want to be a long-term traveler, or live permanently as an expat in another country, or wherever you are on this spectrum of location independence, but you are worried about feeling lonely, then I have good news for you because you are not alone. It's not that other digital nomads are also afraid of being lonely, but it's more that the kinds of people who are attracted to this location independent lifestyle, or this freedom lifestyle, or however you wanna describe it, we all have a deep desire to connect with other people.  

Kristin:    00:22:40    We all want to challenge ourselves. We all want to improve ourselves. We all want to have new experiences in life. We want to live our lives to the fullest and live a purposeful life. And that includes what we do for work. And all of these things involve other people. The most common thing that I hear in my coaching sessions with clients who are transitioning from a traditional nine to five lifestyle to a job that they can do remotely or that they can do online, whether it's a remote job or an online business or something that they feel like is more aligned with them and their path in life and their personality, et cetera, no matter what it is, it always has to do with helping other people in some way or using their skills to help others. And that is so encouraging, <laugh>, because I think that is the, the nature of being a human is that, you know, we're here on the planet, we want to help other people.  

Kristin:    00:23:47    I think that people are quite selfless when it comes down to it. But again, the people that are attracted to this lifestyle, they might have the same desire to connect with people that everyone has. It's part of our human DNA, but this is a group of people who are acting on that desire, and that is the difference. And so that has resulted in travelers being more empathetic, more open-minded, more open to meeting other people, and more expecting of that, expecting to connect with people in a very profound way. And so when you become a digital nomad, two things will happen. First, you'll have more connections with people, and second, you'll have deeper connections. You're gonna meet someone one day, and the next thing you know, a couple hours later, you're riding on the back of a motorcycle through the farmland in the Netherlands and drinking beer in the middle of a field, <laugh>, that happened to me.  

Kristin:    00:24:56    And then, you know, maybe another day you're sitting at the base of a lighthouse on a cliff on a Greek island, just pondering the meaning of life with people that you met a few days ago that also happened. And so many other things. Like you'll just have these moments punctuating your experience of life. And a lot of the time it's gonna be with complete strangers, but you're going to feel more alive and more connected than ever. And then possibly with friends that you have known since childhood. You know, I'm still friends with my friends from like when I was a baby, but you know, you're gonna have all of these other experiences too, and you will definitely feel loneliness when you travel. Sometimes you will, or when you're living abroad or anytime. But it will be worth it, especially when you're traveling, because the good times and those magical moments of connection with people or with yourself or with nature or with the universe, or with people who have come before you for centuries and and thousands of years before, you're going to relate to them.  

Kristin:    00:26:13    And those moments are what really stand out and become the building blocks of your library of memories for life. And that's another reason why we all love this lifestyle and why people want to experience it. Because we know, and the science has proven this time and again, that experiences and connection with other people are more fulfilling than material things. So loneliness might be a price to pay for that reward, but it is well worth the price. So I could have come on this podcast to give you guys like a whole list of tips on how to meet people while traveling, but that is really not the solution. <laugh>, upon thinking about this topic, what I realized is that loneliness, coping with loneliness starts within yourself. And once you've come to terms with that, then you can really show up for others and show up more fearless in your life.  

Kristin:    00:27:37    So if you're not afraid of loneliness anymore, you won't be afraid of anything. So I hope today's podcast can help bring a new perspective to the concept of loneliness, and we can talk about the social aspects of travel another time. Just to recap, loneliness and being alone are not the same thing. And you can feel lonely at any time with or without people. You are not your feeling of loneliness. It's just another emotion that's passing through your psyche or passing through your awareness at any given moment. And like any uncomfortable thing that we must confront as human beings having a human experience, this too shall pass. That's my take on loneliness. And now I'd love to hear from you. How do you cope with loneliness? Whether you're at home or whether you are alone during the pandemic, or whether you're out there traveling the world, share your lessons and insights and tips with us. You can join us in the Facebook group, Badass Digital Nomads, or you can send me an email to hello@travelingwithKristin.com. I have really loved getting your feedback and emails and comments and messages and in the Facebook group, so feel free to reach out anytime and see you next week.  

Kristin:    00:29:13    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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