Tips for Staying Sane on the Move

Traveling for a short time can be great for bringing balance to your life, but when you travel longer it might have some consequences that will challenge your mental wellness and emotional balance. The biggest sources of stress and emotional fatigue are connected to the uncertainty of travel, lack of information and generally not having a secure and private home that you can run to. When traveling, everything is constantly changing, and it’s easy to fall into a bad place mentally.  This could be a place where you feel lonely, inefficient, or perhaps disconnected from society entirely. A situation of emotional unbalance is self growing, like a snow ball and will damage your ability to make decisions and lose sight of your priorities, especially when you lack your regular environment of Family, friends, jobs, and daily routines. We have to find stability and sanity within our own conscience and discipline.

5 Tips for Maintaining Good Mental Health while traveling:

Avoid the Loneliness Trap: Having a stable environment helps you create a circle of people around you that becomes your support system.  Since a a traveler’s environment changes so often, we have to work much harder to keep this kind of interaction up!  It is immensely important to work hard to spend time with good people that you enjoy spending time with.  A general, important rule for keeping sanity, find people that actually make you happy.  Refer to the How To Meet New People section for related articles.

Have a Goal: As a long term traveler, the goal should not be just to ‘wander aimlessly’.  Try to find something else that keeps you going, a meaning.  If the goal is only to simply explore and be exposed to new things constantly, it will become redundant and boring.  You may feel like your adventure is becoming insufficient – that you need more out of it.  Usually you have your family or career to give you a goal to work towards when you’re living a sedentary lifestyle.  When you’re on the move, you have to be a lot more self-disciplined and goal-oriented.  Nomadic wandering – without a purposeful goal – can actually result in more loss than gain monetarily. Build something cool, Volunteer, write.

Make a List: Knowing yourself is key. Make sure you know what makes you happy, and work to get yourself in those situations. e.g. if running is your thing, run, regardless of where you are. If you like salad, find a great salad place. If you need company and friends, work on building a social life. Spend a good chunk of your day working towards getting those and your soul will thank you! 

Stay away from constant change: One more thing that I feel is important to mention is the concept of constant change.  When you are constantly changing location, it can get really tiresome. I did an experiment about this constant-change concept and gave myself only one rule: don’t stay in the same place for more than one day.  I can assure you that changing locations in great pace will wear you down.  Slow traveling is important, Take your time and, in a way, create a home wherever you are (even if that doesn’t seem so nomadic).  Adopt a kind of mindset where “I know I’m going to leave, but I’m here right now so I’m going to enjoy it and try to become a local.”  Stay for a decent time (in a city, for example, I’d recommend two months to get to know it and to establish daily routines).  Every place is worth exploring and you have to stay a sufficient amount of time to really be able to get to know it well.  

Body and Mind: There is a saying that your mind is healthy when your body is healthy.  When you’re on the move, it can seem more difficult to find the opportunity to exercise.  Take any opportunity you have to walk, try running or swimming and be aware that if you dedicate the time to keep fit, your emotional wellness will improve. I recommend to keep it easy, and instead of getting a gym, or special equipment, exercise in Parks, run, or swim at sea. For me, swimming is what I go to to stay active but for you it might be soccer, tennis or Yoga. Experts like https://www.hotyogaofeastnashville.com/classes-and-schedule can help if you choose. You know yourself best.

To sum it all up, since a traveling lifestyle is challenging and requires above-average mental stability, we can’t take things for granted.  There are just two main keys to staying sane: consciousness and discipline.  Consciousness is all about knowing yourself and understanding the things you need.  As far as discipline goes, it’s not enough to just know or decide – you have to actually invest the time, energy, and money to pursue and accomplish your goals.  Make things happen, and invest in your emotional health!