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.
Themed Days: A surprisingly powerful way to make time to create
If you’re here, you’ve most likely got big dreams, a big heart, and somehow… never enough time to create the things you want to create.
Whether it’s writing, art, bringing new offerings into the world, or anything else that brings you joy.
Now if you’re a creative soul, traditional time management advice isn’t usually your cup of tea. For good reason, most of it feels shame-y and icky.
However, when used in a curious and compassionate way, I’ve seen the most anti-structure folks find a way forward that works for them and helps them do the things they’ve been trying to do for years.
If you’ve been struggling with never having enough time to create, themed days are here to help you make the most of your day.
Keep reading to learn more.
Why is finding creative time such a challenge?
Bills! Survival Mode! Valuing working/doing over creating! Self-sabotage! Limited capacity! Feeling undeserving of creative time! Etc! Etc! Etc!
There are so many reasons why finding time to create such a challenge, and so many things fighting for our precious time and energy. Know you’re not alone in this.
If you wear tons of different hats, finding a way to collaborate with time is extremely important. And themed days are a surprisingly powerful way to heal what might be keeping you from creating and finally, create.
Who might benefit the most from using themed days?
If you…
Never have enough time to create/make things for any reason. Often because you seem to always do other things.
Struggle with the “time is up” phenomenon (you feel inspired one day and would like to spend more time on something. Yet the schedule you’d made tells you that time is up and you need to move to your next time slot. UGH, the worst!)
Want to be more space + flowy + intuitive with your scheduling. Click here to read about why intuition is so important when it comes to your schedule.
Want to make easier or faster progress on a project you care about.
Find yourself multi-tasking or getting distracted more than you’d like to.
Struggling with being consistent and/or self-disciplined.
Resonate with any of these? Then themed days might be a good next thing to experiment with!
What are themed days?
As defined by Leonard Alexandru, themed days are about “Having each day of the week (or the work-week) dedicated to a certain topic or project.”
Blaz Kos shares, “Themed days are strategically planned days in your calendar which are completely dedicated to one single thing.”
I wanted to share both of those definitions as they might be helpful for your understanding. However, I’m a rebellious, creative, spiritual soul language is really important to me. How things are said makes a huge difference in being able to buy into and effectively use tools and strategies.
That being said, I would define themed days as, “Regular scared containers of time dedicated to deeply important things.”
Is language important to you too? Do you have a different definition? I’d love to hear it in the comments below.
How to create themed days that feel good to you
Identify the things that are deeply important to you (see definition of themed days above).
Open your calendar or the thing you use to visualize your time. See what time you have or can make available.*
If you don’t have something, pick someplace you’re going to use to visualize your time (I use my google calendar for everything!)
Pick a set amount of time (half-day, day, etc.) that you can turn into a sacred container.
Pair the important things with the sacred container, and that’s your theme!
After you’ve set up a themed day, you can get more granular and turn that time into smaller blocks of time connected to specific things you’d like to do.
Ask yourself what you need to have in place or do to commit to your sacred container.
This can range from communicating boundaries with others, changing your availability in your scheduling system, or sitting with it until the theme feels right to you.
These steps might feel simple, but they are profound when integrated. When themed days are properly set up, following them feels natural and 10x easier to do.
*A solid foundation for themed days is knowing your capacity, availability, and responsibilities and having a home for them. Again, I use a weekly schedule template in my google calendar to holistically capture all of this.
How I’ve historically used themed days in my life
When I was starting out with my business, I was also an engineer working 5 days a week. I themed out 3 hours each day of the week for all of the things I needed to do to grow my business.
Monday’s were CEO days (planning, reviewing, mindset, strategy).
Tuesdays were building days (develop offerings).
Wednesdays were writing content days.
Thursdays were grow days (networking, talking to people, etc.)
Fridays were bonus days to do anything I didn’t get to.
Now, my themed days have simplified a bit and have gotten more intuitive:
Monday’s are to create whatever I want to create.
Tuesday - Thursday are call-focused days (clients, networking, podcasting, etc.)
The rest of my time is off/unscheduled.
Watch out for these common themed day pitfalls
1. Automatically assuming themed days won’t work for you.
Of course, never try to force things on you if they don’t feel right. However, when we immediately think about why something won’t work for us, we won’t see what parts might work for us. Ultimately this keeps up stuck.
2. Not experimenting with your themes until you find what feels good.
Themes (aka what’s most important to us) are always evolving and changing. Try not to expect them to perfectly work at first, or forever.
3. Not being flexible in real-time.
Things come up in life and they change things. This is expected, and it doesn’t mean you or your themed days suck. You are completely in control of your themes, sacred containers, and time.
4. Overdoing it.
It can be really easy to overdo planning in an attempt to feel safe and keep uncertainty at bay. If you create many different themed days before integrating even one, it will most likely feel overwhelming and you’ll want to scrap it all.
Give yourself permission to get creative with time strategies!
Themed days are one of those things that can be used rigidly, ineffectively, and shame-y. They can also be used in a powerful, creative, and spiritual way.
When themed days are used with curiosity and compassion, I’ve seen even the most anti-structure folks find a way forward that works for them and helps them do the things they’ve been trying to do for years. You can too!
Want to set up themed days that’ll WORK (no messin’ around)? Read more about my Sustainable Schedule VIP Day.
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.
Want to feel confident, in control, and at peace with your time in the new year? Click here to get free + supportive resources!
4 Personalized steps to get back on track when your day gets derailed
4 Personalized steps to get back on track when your day gets derailed
Don’t you think that life seems to have completely different plans than us some days?
You just want to know how to get back on track when the day seems to just get away from you, that's why you clicked on this blog post and I got you!
At the end of this post, you are going to have a super short and quick plan for what to do when your day gets completely thrown off.
Ok so, the kids are sick, you get stuck down a social media rabbit hole for an hour or two, you forgot about a meeting, your dog needs to go to the vet, maybe you just had a bad night of sleep last night and you're in a crappy mood today?
Let's be real, COVID has derailed over an entire year of our lives too!
It never feels good when you make plans and yet you can't do it because of some of the things I just mentioned. It feels like you only get an hour of real work in a day. Ugh.
Personally speaking, in my life when my day gets derailed or my schedule gets derailed it's because I just don't feel like doing something. I wanted to bring that up because sometimes it's not external, maybe it's internal and oftentimes I blame myself. I can get into those shame and blame cycles of “oh it's my fault that my schedule got thrown off, I could have if I had more self-discipline or actually followed through”.
Like I talked about in the procrastination blog post (if you haven't read it, check it out!) it's okay to let things marinate, sit, enjoy the creative process, and give things more time. Sometimes the longer you wait to do something some beautiful ideas might come from that time.
How to get back on track
Let's get right to the solution, how to get back on track, and then I want to share with you how to prevent it in the future so things don't go haywire as often as they are right now.
1. When you notice that your day has been derailed, pause.
Awareness is the first piece, you have to notice that everything got thrown off or something happened that doesn't go according to plan. Honor it, honor this, it sucks big time when you create plans and they don't happen according to the plan that you want.
2. After you pause, ask yourself what do I need to do right here at this moment to get it back on track?
Instead of ruminating and sitting in the why is this happening to me and why can't I control everything, start just by asking yourself, “what I can do right here in this present moment? What can I do to get it back feeling good, feeling easeful, or accomplishing what I need to accomplish?”
Oftentimes for me, it's yoga, breathing, taking time to journal, talk to a friend, whatever I need to just like get back in my body.
3. Ask yourself, can you do what you need?
Can you actually do that yoga class, can you breathe, can you call a friend, can you take a nap. If so…
4. Do it!
If you can’t, go back and ask yourself “okay, so what can I do? How do I get my day back on track, what do I need to feel better?”
How do you prevent your day from being derailed?
So that is what you need to do when your day is derailed but how do you prevent your schedule, plans, and your day from being derailed in the future?
Something that my clients and I often talk about is that whenever your day or plans get derailed it is because of high expectations and this illusion of control over your time, the day, or your schedule. It's the high stakes and the pressure that we put on ourselves to be perfect.
As much as we love being in control we have to realize that, at some point, we're just not. So shifting your mindset to being more human, being more flexible, being more compassionate is going to take you to have more success.
Every single time that you create a plan add extra space for things to move around. Or simply knowing that your plans 99% most likely will shift and that is what it is. That is what being human is about.
So tangibly this is why I love digital calendars because when you put your to-do list in your calendar you can move your tasks around and still have a visual that it IS possible to still get everything done.
Also, you can create extra space in between tasks, client calls, meetings, etc. That's the beautiful part about your digital calendar too. When you create more space you allow yourself to live, you allow more compassion, ease, and space. And that is so beautiful.
No matter if you are trying to figure out how to get back on track and taking care of yourself at this moment reading this post or you are attempting to be more proactive in your scheduling. Or in your time management to allow derails to affect you less and less. You are adding more compassion to your day and to your life so that needs to be celebrated. That is going to help you so so much in your business, your life, your relationships, your health and you'll be more productive (that’s like the understatement here).
I help people be more productive but at the end of the day, it's more about compassion, just being human, and living our lives. That is possible when you are flexible and intuitive with your time. If you enjoyed this post leave a comment below sharing what your biggest takeaway from this post was and what you are going to do to make a shift in your life, whether it's on the mindset side or, the tool side.
Want to feel confident, in control, and at peace with your time? Click here to get free + supportive resources!
The 3 best strategies to finally heal the multi tasker in you
The 3 best strategies to finally heal the multi tasker in you
As entrepreneurs, we end up getting stuck in a to-do list hamster wheel of busyness!
We end up feeling behind all the time on our own self-imposed deadlines and then, really struggle to balance our work and our lives so we end up trying to multitask.
If that is you, if you end up trying to multitask to get more things done in a day, this blog post is for you! I'm going to share three reasons why multitasking doesn't make you more productive and what to do instead so you can get more things done but in less time, less chaos, and less stress!
Our brains are not made to multitask!
What is the first reason why multitasking does not make you more productive? Our brains are not made to multitask, simple as that!
We are not made to do more than one thing at once. Our brains are designed to just accomplish one thing at a time. What we end up thinking is, multitasking is really just switching between things super fast or maybe even super slow. So putting all that pressure on your brain to do more than one thing at once is going against its nature.
It takes a lot more time to accomplish the few things that you're trying to accomplish at once and that is going to add so much stress onto your brain and onto yourself. A study on psychology today that showed how multi-taskers are 40% less productive and it can take as long as 25 minutes to resume working after an interruption or trying to switch to the other task. For example, if you end up checking Instagram while you are trying to write a blog post.
The best thing that we can do here is recognize, acknowledge and appreciate our human nature, our brains. This is where deep self-compassion comes into the picture.
What to do instead
When you find yourself trying to multitask because you feel behind or for whatever other reason, pause, remember that you, your brain just doesn’t work this way.
Then figure out what is the one task that you want to focus on, write it down on a piece of paper and have that front and center for you to remember.
This is a practice you're gonna keep coming back to. Just like if you've ever tried meditation and your brain starts thinking, you simply remember that you're thinking and come back to your breath.
Multitasking decreases your creativity
The next reason why multitasking does not make you more productive is that it kills your creativity.
When you're over there trying to switch between tasks, from task to task, your creativity is dampened, you probably have a lot harder time thinking outside of the box. Especially when you are trying to start your own business and be of service to other people, you're not going to be in that mindset or that frame of mind when you are just jumping from thing to thing.
And let's be honest, how many times have you had a brilliant idea when you're washing the dishes or in the shower? It's because, during those times, you are most likely just focusing on one thing.
The reason why that happens is that ideas are born from the prefrontal cortex, which is the forehead area, but this is the part of our brains that really truly can only focus on one thing at once.
So, as an entrepreneur, you know you need your most brainpower and your most creativity so it's not going to make you more productive by multitasking.
What to do instead
The solution here, or the way to move forward, is to define clear boundaries around your creative or deep thought focused time. Try to uphold them as best as possible, obviously knowing that this again, is a practice. You are never going to be perfect at upholding your boundaries and perfectionism is just not possible.
Multitasking takes you out of the present moment
The third reason why multitasking does not make you more productive is that you are not living or working in the present moment. When we race through life without truly experiencing all the small simple things about it, we are experiencing much less.
When we continue to try to multitask, eventually it does start to erode our focus and our ability to pay attention and stillness becomes completely impossible for us to even imagine integrating into our lives.
When you are present and add more mindfulness into your day-to-day, you are more able to focus and get more things done and do it without the stress and the chaos.