Grecia, Costa Rica
Fear.
Fear is the biggest downside to being a digital nomad.
Unearthing, facing, feeling and looking past fear sitting squarely in your mind feels uncomfortable. Nobody likes doing this at first. Blaming a country feels more comfortable. Blasting a culture feels more familiar.
This country sucked.
That city was annoying.
These people are stupid.
I did not like that place.
People sitting in buildings making laws in my home country control me. Or free me.
Digital nomads make these observations based on:
- intimately personal projections
- intimately personal fears
- intimately personal preferences
- intimately personal condemnations
The longest journey a digital nomad takes is not a long haul flight but a migration deep into their unconscious mind to see all personal fears projected as grievances onto neutral geographic locations.
This is the biggest downside to being a digital nomad.
When you visit enough places, choose to peel open your mind and slowly discover the truth of life….it ain’t the places, but you.
Your mind colors everything.
Everything just is.
This is a tough pill to swallow but only for the ego. Who you really are knows that this biggest downside is the greatest lesson one learns on planet earth.
The world plays out your beliefs.
When you’re doing it to yourself, you’re no longer afraid because no world out there victimizes you. You can just observe how your mind acts out and slowly but surely take the fear out of every experience.
However, most beliefs are unconscious.
Most people avoid circling the globe all together. Most never travel for sustained periods. Spending a few hours, days, weeks, months or years in countries where few look like you, speak like you or behave like you triggers the unconscious fears long pushed out of awareness, allowing these grievances to bubble to the surface.
If you travel non-stop long enough and open your mind, this process becomes inevitable. The fear has to come up, be felt, forgiven, then you experience increasing peace of mind. Marvel at this beautiful process. Appreciate this liberation.
The world acts out your beliefs. Most unconscious beliefs drip with fear. Being abroad makes the acting out process more acute because you consciously choose to be outside of your comfort zone and face more fears than the average home-based mind, at least on a worldly level.
The issue with not traveling is that your unconscious fears remain since you appear to remain in your comfort zone and never really trigger ’em and deal with ’em. Projection and victimization follow; pay close attention to how most non-travelers project their thoughts onto politicians, national laws, local laws, employers, special relationships and pretty much anything outside of their unconscious mind as the cause of their problems.
This one out there is my hero.
This one out there is the villain.
Open-minded travelers see this trick eventually and understand that no person can at all affect your unlimited mind….but only because these select few faced, felt and forgave the fears fueling projection/victimization consistently for a long time.
Sedentary Minds Retard Themselves
Homebody, sedentary minds retard themselves.
As far as some of my more colorful interactions which elicited a mental chuckle, some seemed surprised at the fact that Cambodia possessed grocery stores, Kathmandu had Italian restaurants and women in Bali did not wear coconuts over their boobies.
I condemn none of these minds but intend to demonstrate how fear in the mind creates a state of ignorance, delusion and complete insanity to where minds raised in the most developed, wealthiest country on earth actually believe that most of the world is third world and lives a few steps beyond the Dark Ages.
This is why the biggest downside to being a digital nomad is the greatest upside. Facing travel-related fears clears ’em out to create a peaceful, poised, informed, present state of mind. Not facing these fears creates an insane time warp effect where one is utterly ignorant of almost everything save their own survival.
Practical Example
I walked to the pulperia in Costa Rica today.
On the way, an aggressive dog rushed me to nip my heels. I chuckled and peacefully proceeded because no fear in my mind stuck around to project onto the dog. I have the intimately personal experience of 100’s of charged street dogs rushing me or barking at me all over the globe in developing nations; those pooches triggered all manner of stray dog terror I clung to for a long time in my native New Jersey, where leashed dogs are the norm and stray dogs scared the bejesus out of me. Bali and Thailand got me over the stray dog fears real fast. Almost all dogs are free range strays or free range pets on this island and in this nation.
I understood and spoke Spanish with the shopkeeper. She asked a question and I answered. I chatted with a local on the street who also asked me a question in rapid fire fashion. I understood him and answered because I overcame self conscious fears, communication barriers and the head trash I carried for decades before I circled the globe.
I chose to travel non-stop for 13 years.
I decided to face those fears.
I chose to make life about having fun while facing fears.
I did that.
None happened to me.
I made clear inner choices.
This is also a big downside to being a digital nomad as the ego sees it; taking full personal responsibility for your life.
I do not blame my:
- employer (I do not have one.)
- home state (I do not live there.)
- home country (I do not live there.)
As the world judges it, I am a citizen of the United States. But I have as much to do with the United States as a Buddhist monk trawling for poon in the Soi Cowboy District of Bangkok. I was birthed in that location but its cultures, conditioning and programming do not influence my mind these days because a place on a map does not compare to my mind. A place on a map has nothing to do with your mind, either. Pride creates that pinhole view which makes you an expert on issues within the impossibly tiny pinhole and ignorant of pretty much everything outside of the pinhole.
Taking full responsibility for your mind and life in a world which thinks the opposite feels highly uncomfortable at first. The one who does not view themselves as a victim feels oddly out of place.
But you come to love it because liberating yourself from fear as you circle the globe enlightens you mind, one grievance at a time.
Open-Minded Traveling Makes One Graceful
The biggest downside – facing fear – dissolves said fear which creates an organic state of grace.
Observe how the world typically complains about the tiniest change. This is not graceful but childish, egocentric and literally insane. Morphing almost imperceptible change into the most ghastly nightmare is typical of the world.
Open-minded travelers gracefully handles changes that the world judges as being so seismic that you may as well be a god in their minds.
My schedule, routines and way of life changes every few days, weeks or months and has for the prior 13 years. I largely handle all change gracefully with the odd grievance here and there because I chose to:
- travel as a digital nomad
- train my mind
- realize that all peace is internal not through external rituals, customs or familiarity
No Travel Fairy sprinkled Digital Nomad Pixie Dust onto me 13 years ago when I embarked on this journey. I made a firm decision to do it even though some aspects of circling the globe scared me.
What choice did I have?
I could see the world through the ignorant pinhole of fear or become peaceful through a wide-open, 360 degree view, from the inside-out.
The more you change locations with an open-mind the more you see that it is your mind, not the place, that causes the problems.
Being aware of this truth makes one less likely to complain and more likely to face fear, look past it and appreciate strong contrast versus condemning a geographic point on a map for your personal grievances.
Central American culture and cuisine personally do not resonate with me. But my personal preferences do not make a country “bad” or “a place that I didn’t like at all”. I may offer personal upsides and downsides of traveling to Costa Rica but never charged with condemnation, or haughty judgment. I would be an asshole to say that I didn’t like Costa Rica because vegetarian fare is not as plentiful here as Thailand. Double the assholiness if I actually wrote a post telling people not to come here because the locals prefer refried beans to seitan.
Taking this level of mental responsibility sure as hell ain’t easy at first until one figures out it is the greatest upside of being a digital nomad.
Imagine cutting down on complaining.
Picture yourself not airing grievances publicly.
Imagine having the integrity to share a truthful account of some place without coloring the experience with:
- egoic grievances
- personal fears
- guilt-generated complaints
The biggest downside to being a digital nomad is facing, feeling and looking past these fears.
The biggest upside to that downside is to share a peaceful, relaxed take on the pros and cons of your travel destinations, doing a fine job not to allow personal grievances to mislead fellow travelers.
Never mind the fact that you will largely bring peace with you across the globe no matter what changes occur.
How does “that” sound?
