As a digital nomad of over 15 years – don’t get me wrong, travel is great.
But it’s overrated.

It doesn’t magically fix all your problems. Make you special. Or automatically give your life purpose.

However many people DO experience a magic in travel.

But it’s not from the travel itself, per se. From buying a plane ticket, landing in a new country, trying to speak a new language, or having adventures with new friends.

The magic comes from what it’s NOT.

In taking a break from the deadened autopilot that’s become your life.

A break from doing shit you don’t want to, day in and day out.

A break from following the same routines, the same rules, inhabiting the same roles…over and over again.

It’s a momentary disruption to the layers of deadness you’ve encased yourself in.

And in that, you feel a glimpse of the aliveness that your life could be.
You catch a taste of what life could be like without the endless wall of cages you cram yourself in.

Of the infinite possibility that actually lays before you. Of what you could experience. Of who you could be.

But it’s just a taste.

And a surface-level one at that.

It may feel like a giant disruption to your existence – but without an actual, deeper re-orientation of your entire way of living – it’s just barely scratching the surface of the Aliveness you truly are.

And then one week/month/year later and you’re catching a flight home, back to life as you know it.

Daydreaming about the next time you’ll get to catch another glimpse of your true nature.

Or maybe daydreaming about becoming a digital nomad yourself, so you could travel 24/7 and make it your lifestyle.

That would be the answer, right? Endless beaches and freedom and aliveness?

No, it’s not.

Anyone who manages to travel long enough – especially if you have to work while doing so – knows that it’s not long before the routines, rules, and deadness sets back in.

Before new cages come along that you shove yourself back into.
That’s because travel, as radical of a shift as it may seem, is really just an external, surface level change.

It’s just a change in window dressing.

The aliveness that you caught a glimpse of isn’t in the new country, language, or culture.

It’s not in ANYTHING external to you.

In fact, it IS you.

The natural you that exists when everything that ISN’T you gets stripped away: the conditioning, the routines, the rule-based living, the “shoulds”.

And you’re able to do more than just catch a glimpse of it while traveling.

You can learn to live there. On a moment to moment basis.

Continuously choosing YOU over the programming that’s been instilled in you.

Leading to a quality of life that is truly unimaginable.

(And at the same time, what you’ve ALWAYS sensed you were meant for.)

A life in which you no longer need travel – or anything external to you – to inhabit the aliveness that you know you are at your core.

Truly being at home, no matter where in the world you are.