5 Life lessons learned as a full-time traveling entrepreneur in 2022
This year was an adventure.
I started 2022 dancing in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. We spent the winter venturing through Italy–Trieste, Venice, Florence, and Rome. We went on to meet great friends in Porto, Portugal in February.
Took a trip to the US to visit family (and a short detour in Mexico) over the spring. Hopped back across the pond to spend the summer in Madeira, Portugal with said friends from Porto.
For the fall season, we checked out of the Schengen Zone and to Croatia where we visited Dubrovnik, Hvar, and Zagreb.
Now I’m writing this from Greece where we’ll be celebrating Christmas, and ringing in the first two months of 2023 in Cyprus.
This year I will have traveled to 11 countries, and I would say lived in (trips longer than a week) 5 countries.
All while running a successful online coaching business.
After taking a moment to pause and reflect on 2022, here are my life lessons learned this year. (In no particular order).
As well as how I’ll take each lesson ahead into the new year with me to continue growing and thriving.
Life lessons learned in 2022
This is the third time I’m doing a yearly recap, which means I’m approaching 3 years as a holistic time management coach this upcoming January! Woohoo!
As someone whose main passion in life is to just be more of herself, it’s really cool to be able to go back and read past life lessons. It’s amazing to see my healing and progress and say, “Yep! I’m still living and now teaching these lessons I learned two years ago.”
<<Read my life lessons learned in 2021 and 2020>>
Here’s to all of us becoming more of ourselves! 🥂✨
Life Lesson One: Get comfy with uncertainty.
As a digital nomad, I have no idea where I’ll live two months from now. As a business owner, I have no guarantee of a paycheck. When I first started traveling full-time back in July 2020, the uncertainty was absolutely terrifying. To the point of losing hair, tears, and many sleepless nights.
I wanted to be in as much control of my life as I feel like I could be. I wanted to feel at home within myself, no matter where in the world I was. Most importantly, I wanted to get out of my box and see the world. And all of those desires continued to outweigh my anxiety and worry, so I kept on.
It took about 2 years of traveling full-time to get to the place where I landed this summer: Comfortable with uncertainty. At one point, I had no idea where I was going to live the next week. I’ve learned how to be okay with not knowing where I’ll live or where my next client comes from.
I trust that no matter what, I can and will figure it out.
This is a huge, massive, ginormous life lesson that’s taken a lot to learn. However, the amount of peace that I live with is totally worth the effort. So with this, I plan to continue to travel in 2023, let the places I want to live call to me, run my business, and see what happens.
Though, if you’re like, “Yo, you went to an extreme for this life lesson…” you’re right. This leads me to lesson number two.
Life Lesson Two. Find the gray zone.
Black-or-white thinking sucks.
For example, hustle culture and anti-hustle culture. Hustle culture tells us we are worthy if we work all the time, feel exhausted, disregard needing breaks, and neglect our health. Anti-hustle culture says if we’re working hard, we’re doing it wrong. Success in business is somewhere in the messy middle.
Another example, oppressive society and culture tell us we have no agency over our time. Spiritual gurus gaslight us and tell us we have complete agency over our time. The agency we have is somewhere in the messy middle.
Want another? Rigidity versus openness. We’ve been taught time management, structure, and schedules need to be super rigid. Due to anti-hustle culture, many of us have tossed out all structure in the seek for freedom. Structure that truly benefits us is somewhere in the messy middle.
Everything we do and are as humans are in the messy middle ground. The balance between masculine and feminine or yin and yang. As I approach the new year, I want to use this life lesson learned to be even more creative with solutions to any frustration, new ideas, places to travel, and just life in general.
Life Lesson Three. I create my own time paradigm.
As I travel across time zones and cultures, I realize more than ever how deep the societal construct of time runs within us. From what time we should wake up, eat meals, work, and go to bed… it’s all made up. And vaguely changes depending on what country you’re in.
You could make your new year tomorrow if you wanted. Literally.
Of course, with a “normal” job and external constraints, the more you’ll live in society’s construct of time. However, over the last 2.5 years, I have been reclaiming more and more agency over my time (see lesson 2) by choosing how much I want to subscribe to society’s time construct.
The more I define and live within my own time construct, the more manageable my life feels.
So as of now, I’m taking this lesson learned by fully stepping into cyclical planning with my astrological chart. No more going back and forth between the moons and the gregorian calendar.
What this looks like is: I’ll be essentially letting go of months in the traditional sense and planning completely aligned with each new moon. My “new year” will be celebrated on July 23rd, the Leo (my ascendant) new moon.
I’m allowing things on a day-to-day level, and a macro level to take as much time as they want to take. I’m learning more about mother earth and indigenous wisdom.
Life Lesson Four. This shit really works.
As I enter my fourth year of developing holistic time management and coaching people, I am still astounded every time one of my clients creates literal magic.
From starting podcasts, writing books, making tons of money, starting businesses, traveling the world, managing teams more effectively, healing deep wounds, and creating trust and safety within. I’ve witnessed so many amazing humans accomplish deeply meaningful goals and finally be the person they want to be all because they teamed up with time.
Absolutely magical. ✨
Not to brag or anything, but on a personal note, I feel like everyone right about now (late Nov/early Dec) is t.i.r.e.d. where I’m feeling really energized and good. I’ve taken lots of breaks, short and long, throughout the year. I’ve imperfectly stayed balanced while focused on and aligned with my priorities.
I knew this before, but this year I feel like I finally understand it on a deeper, more holistic level with each day and with each person I get to work with.
With this life lesson, I plan to continue healing my own time misunderstandings and doing this deeply meaningful and important work of holistic time coaching.
Life Lesson Five. My home is inside of me.
In November this year, as I traveled on a Bus from Croatia to Bosnia, it finally hit me. There are buses, trees, roads, dogs, construction, and clouds everywhere on this planet.
The only thing that stays constant throughout is me. My heart. My mind. My body.
This life lesson may seem obvious, but it wasn't to me as someone who sought her worthiness and fulfillment through productivity and achievements. My happiness and peace were dependent on my external success and the approval of others.
If this year has taught me anything, what keeps me healthy and makes me successful is listening to myself, my joy, and my gut. Period.
I can leave places and situations that suck. I can speak up for myself. I can do what I need to do to feel safe.
It’s my job to build a strong home for myself, and protect it at all costs.
This is what holistic time management is all about, and I’m excited to see what the next 6 months bring as I now celebrate the new year in July!
What lessons did you learn in 2022?
I’d love to hear in the comments below or send me a DM on Instagram.
Is 2023 the year you get more intentional around your time?
Click here to learn how time coaching can help you thrive in the coming year.
Want to know what I learned this year? My 5 Biggest lessons from 2021
If I had to say one main truth about being on this planet, it’s this:
Life is about learning.
It’s the reason we go to school as kids. In fact, now that I say that… life IS a school.
This makes me giggle now as an adult because ever since I can remember, I loved school. I loved the scent of fresh new books, organizing my planner, and the energy of possibilities.
But just because I loved school, doesn’t mean it was easy.
Just like life, it takes desire, effort, time, dedication, and repetition to learn and more importantly, integrate what we learn.
That’s why I do these year recap blog posts.
One so I can share and connect with you. Two so I can go back, recognize my own progress next year, and continue integrating lessons. Wanna see what I learned in 2020? Click here.
Here’s to us learning, integrating, and living together. 🌱
What I learned this year
(In no particular order)
1) Good rest is the cure
Rest is one of those things that everyone should do more. Especially nowadays with the great resignation and antiwork movements. We’re all preaching rest, rest, rest.
Since burning out in 2013, I’ve been learning and teaching others how to slow down, rest, and heal internalized hustle. I am a rest preacher and truly believe deep down that pausing, resting, taking care of ourselves is the cure to every modern problem we face.
However this year, I integrated this lesson into my bones. In may I was playing tennis with my little brothers while I was home (I never play tennis), and I fell while running after a ball. I thought I rolled my ankle.
My husband told me to try walking on it. I tried, but my body said absolutely not. I went to urgent care and found out, sadly, I broke a bone in my foot.
For the next 4 weeks, I didn’t put a single ounce of weight on my foot. I truly rested it. Then the following 4, I slowly reintegrated weight without trying to push myself.
When it comes to resting most of us rest a little, then feel a lot better and rush back to our to-do lists. We rarely get past that point and experience deep, good, true rest. At least I didn’t prior to 2021.
This year and particular experience taught me about the kind of rest that feels uncomfortable. That feels like our skin is kind of crawling. The rest that makes you feel all the feelings always bubbling beneath the surface, ready and waiting to surface.
And yet, when you get past those initial feelings and get to the good rest…the healing, the renewal, and the peace that comes forth is everything you’ve been looking for.
2) Clear communication is key to business + life
This year I spend quite a lot of time and money learning how to communicate better.
I got so much clarity on my messaging in my business with the help of Lindsay, from Forza Collective. And I graduated from the best holistic coaching certification program ever (in my opinion of course), and am currently in the process of becoming an ICF-certified coach.
I learned just how important communication is for a successful business, relationship, and pretty much…life.
My communication is still a work in progress, as I believe it will always be. But this year I learned how to communicate with so much more clarity, confidence, and ease.
3) Self-expression is my true goal (and vulnerable AF)
When starting a business or embarking on any goal in life, knowing what you really want is something I learned this year.
As humans, we can easily create external measures of success that aren’t actually success to us. For example, as business owners, it’s easy to set a goal (financial or otherwise) because we see others setting similar goals. I’m looking at you… “The American Dream.”
What often happens is we spend a ton of time, energy, money, and precious life working towards that goal to later realize we still aren’t content.
Wouldn’t it be much easier to figure out what success really looked like, instead of waiting until that really de-stabilizing and sorta, depressing point? That’s what I’ve been learning in 2021.
While yes, I need money to pay my bills and take care of myself… when money comes in, I can still feel empty. What I’ve realized success actually looks like is being able to fully express myself (aka communicate), be creative and feel free, and be seen and heard by loved ones and people in my community.
True self-expression is another story, and something I’m focusing on now and in the next year!
4) How to validate myself
Prior to 2021, I was using social media and others to validate myself. That need for validation was a rocky and toxic relationship that I was desperate to get out of.
That’s one of the reasons why I made my word for 2021 was held.
I wanted to learn how to be with myself when difficult situations and emotions arose. I knew holding myself would be the key to letting go of past hurts, doing hard things with more ease, and expressing myself more authentically.
Validating and holding myself has been a work in progress for years but this year was a year of embodying this. I’m also extremely grateful to have Susan Pitler, an amazing somatic therapist, and other groups to support me in this journey.
This year, I’ve learned what it’s like to validate and deeply care for the tender part in my heart. And I learned what it’s like when I forget to validate myself and how much I’m not interested in living a life of shame, guilt, and shoulds.
I’m so grateful for the ability to validate myself in order to express myself and communicate even more in 2022.
5) Trusting me and the universe is a process
We’ve all been on a journey of reckoning with uncertainty over the last 2 years, and I’m no different. When life is uncertain, our tendency is to control as much as possible.
For the business owners I work with and myself that attempt at control looks like rushing around, pushing towards our goals, and scarcity thinking.
The antidote? Trust.
Trusting ourselves, and if you’re spiritual, trusting the universe/higher power/source/your God.
I’ve known this for quite some time, but this year I learned more about the process of trust, what it looks like, and red flags for when I’m lacking in trust.
Anytime I remember and relax into trust, everything feels so much easier.
How can you make your life easier?
To summarize, 2021 has been a year about making my life easier through deeply caring for myself–whether that looks like communicating better, resting, validating myself, or trusting the universe.
Have you reflected on your year and figured out what you’ve learned yet? If not, I have a blog post of self-reflection questions for an end-of-the-year review session. Click here to find out your 2021 lessons now.