How To Live Like A Nomad And Travel Perpetually

What's up? Welcome to make more marvels. My name is Brad Hart. As always, I'm coming to you from sunny Santa Monica, California. And today I have a request from one of my readers. This is one of my friends in the Eastern Bloc. I think Czechoslovakia wants me to go through some of my strategies that I've used to travel perpetually for a long period of time. So I've done stints of up to, I believe, four months on the road, which isn't, you know, maybe terribly long for some people, like a guy like Ralph Potts, that might travel for years at a time. And I don't necessarily consider myself an expert at traveling, but I have figured out a lot of great hacks that help me to keep consistency and momentum on my goals and make sure that when I am traveling, I'm not taking, you know, my health for granted. I'm not taking my financial picture for granted. And all the things that I'm trying to do continue to happen, regardless of whether I'm in Africa or in Long island or here in California or Canada, it doesn't matter. Traveled to five different continents, been all over the world, almost filled up my last passport. So if you want to learn a few things from somebody who's been there and somebody who's kept it all together on the road and hasn't gotten necessarily beat up too bad as a result, then this is a great video to watch. So I just want to share some of my tips, my hacks, my tricks, all the things that you can use to travel perpetually. So first things first, you need a traveler's mindset, right? And that just means being open to new experiences, being open to new people, new situations, things that you may not have tried before, things that you might be afraid to do in your normal life, because those are going to make the most memories, right? And the reason you're traveling is not so that you can collect a bunch of pictures necessarily. All those are important, but it's really to have those experiences, those really deep experiences of the world and different cultures and different people that you meet and the amazing experiences that you're going to create and just by traveling. So, you know, wherever you go, there you are. I think that's a really great way to sum it all up. If I was going to put the traveler's mindset into one phrase, that would be it. It's just being able to go to wherever you are and be there, be there in that moment and enjoy whatever it has to offer and not judge it or try to wish it was different, but just to be there and whether it's a great moment. Like, you know, one time I went to Ireland and I got invited to somebody's wedding. That was amazing, you know, or if it's not so great moment, that same trip when I was stuck in a phone booth at 2am with nowhere to go. And you know, it's pouring outside and we have hot dogs to eat, no money left. So, you know, whatever it is, there you are. I could go on stories forever. I mean, almost getting trampled in Africa by donkeys and malaria and getting stalked by jaguars in the jungle. I mean, forget it. I could go on for a 30 minute video just about that kind of stuff. So let's move on to something a little more useful and practical. We'll talk about logistics of traveling perpetually. Right, so let's say you wanted to just cast off the shackles of modern society. You're not checking the boxes, you're not interested in having a lease, an apartment, a house, any assets to tie you down, any places to live that tie you down. You want to be free to travel wherever. Well, there are some logistical issues with that that I want to discuss real quick. So what you really need is a plan. So solid planning, solid systems and leverage in order to gain back some of your time that will be spent otherwise frittered about trying to find X, Y and Z to happen. Right. So, you know, if you want to travel perpetually, it helps to have a plan. Of course, it helps to understand what you want. So for me, I have an actual travel checklist. Okay, where's my gym, where's my library, where's my food stores? Where are my farmers markets if they're available, where are my, you know, I like to swim, so where is a pool I can access? And I try to plan my travel around that so that I have these things relatively close to where I'm staying. And if I can't find a few of them, it's not a big deal. But if I can find 80 or 90% of them, it'll make my stay there a hell of a lot more enjoyable. Now when you travel abroad, different things might be different, but you can improvise, obviously. Like if you're staying near an ocean, you don't need a swimming pool. If you're in a place where street food is cheap or healthy, which it's not in America. But if you, if you're in a place like that where you can get really decent quality meals and plan around that, then you don't Necessarily need to cook. I love to cook. I cook every day. So that's something I really look for. So a kitchen, for example, might be something that you really like, but this is more of a personal thing. I just think writing it down is really important. This way you're not thrown into a new situation where you have to scramble and find everything. You have it planned out a little bit ahead of time. And I'm not for over planning either. I think there's a certain amount of little bit of je ne sais quoi that comes with travel of the experience and the variety that you want to experience as well and leave it up to chance. But at the same time, if you have a diet or exercise program or just habits that you've built that you don't want to have crumble just because you're on a whim and you're traveling and you want to keep that willpower going, it helps to plan ahead a little bit. Right? So the older I get, the more I realize that my immunity and my health and my ability to be productive are hinged on these habits that I've developed over the years, the more I'm likely to go ahead and do that and plan ahead. So that's fine. That being said, there's something great about showing up to vacation where you don't have to plan anything. So to this end, you can use great systems. I talk a lot about this in my productivity hacks. Cheat sheet. A few things I'll point out right now, but I'll expand on later, are Airbnb. Airbnb is great. You can actually get. I mean, I spend $2,500 a month to live in Los Angeles. I could probably do four. Less than maybe like 15 or 1800amonth. I could probably Airbnb perpetually. That works out to about $60 a day. The longer you stay at an Airbnb, the more of a discount you actually get with a lot of these landlords. So that's awesome. You can use that. You can use short term stays with friends, you can do hotel points. You can do all different things to save a little bit of money when you travel. And the key, I think is not to lock yourself in, but to spend maybe two or three weeks or a month in each place so that you can kind of have the variety of travel, but not the headaches of having, you know, being stuck one place or another. So, you know, again, that just takes a little bit of planning. Totally doable. Not having a car is a huge benefit. Not having extra stuff that you have to stick in storage or sell or deal with every time you move. Being a minimalist, I mean, if you were to look around my apartment right now, I know we're kind of just staring at the wall, but, you know, I got my hammock and my table and my standing desk and a couple other things, and I could probably sell this stuff in a week and be out of here. So that's actually the plan soon is I'm looking to travel a little bit more and I'll be moving out of my place here in Santa Monica, which is great, and putting some stuff in storage and just bouncing around for a while. It's gonna be a lot of fun. And I'll actually save money doing it, which is kind of incredible. So all possible. You just gotta think about it a little bit differently. So to this end, you know, having transportation options is wonderful. Where you don't have to deal with, you know, particularly difficult things about travel, which is finding cabs, finding public transit. You know, if you have an Uber, you know, it's Uber. Wherever you go, wherever you're traveling to, it's going to make the trip a lot easier, right? Because you just know that there's your trail, there's your transit. So just make sure you have extra batteries for your phone. The Mophie Juice pack's a great idea. And make sure that you have access to Internet as well. So moving on, some other things you can use that are kind of more logistically easy. You want to have an address, right? So you can continue to get mail and claim residency and do all these things. Things a great service for that is either get a PO Box that your family can check where you can change the address. So if you have a P.O. box, you can actually change it to the street address of the post office and then just do suite and the number of the PO Box. That's a really great tip. Or if you don't have somebody that can check your mail, you can do a service like Earth Class Mail or Virtual Post Mail, which will actually collect and categorize, scan all of your email, send it to your email, and you never want to miss anything that's going on when you're traveling. So that's awesome. You got Google Voice, which can be configured to call any number of countries. It's relatively cheap. You can put a real landline phone in that. I put that in my productivity hacks, Cheat Sheet and hundreds of others, different services like Zirtual and Fancy Hands and all these different things that can help you leverage your freedom of location. So I really recommend checking that out. The person that really got me into this in the first place was a guy named Tim Ferriss. I'm sure you're familiar. If you have read his blog, check it out. But, you know, when I was first figuring out what I wanted to do, I took a lot of cues from Tim and his kind of view towards the world. And it's, you know, expanded on that, of course, as I've traveled and learned more and done different things. But, you know, for example, we spent 10 days in Africa, which was great. And, you know, I got to kind of see firsthand how he travels. He's got a lot of great tips and hacks as well, so I recommend that highly. Okay, so next thing, emotions. This is going to be the biggest thing about travel, right? So if you're the kind of person who's super extroverted like me, you want to be around people all the time. I think I scored like 96% on the extroversion scale. If you believe that, you want to kind of be aware of that and plan ahead so that you always have time around people when you need it, right? So you can recharge your batteries. And if you're an introvert, the opposite, right? You want to have time when you can be alone. But the problem with travel, especially perpetual solo travel, is that a lot of times you neglect your basic core needs as a person because you're always being shuttled to the next thing and you can't really develop habits and relationships. You just have to plan a little bit ahead. You have to take the time and the vision and the wherewithal to keep your physicality up, keep your mental, emotional strength up, keep doing your daily habits, your routines, writing what you feel and doing those things that you maintain your emotional intelligence so that you can make solid decisions about your growth, your habits, and everything that you want to do. What do I want to get out of this experience? What I want to give to the people that I'm meeting? What do I want to experience? How can I help people? So basically, just get to know your type. You know, whether it is, whether it's extroversion, introversion, whatever you need, make sure that you're getting your needs met. Get involved, experience and help. You know, you're going to travel to a lot of different places in the world. You might go to a place that you know might need some help. It might need somebody to pick up a shovel and dig in. Or maybe your specific skill set could be really well received there. Like, for example, you know, I'm going on a trip soon, hopefully to Africa again to dig some water wells. And that's going to be great. And I can get my hands dirty there. I have a friend, Alyssa, that just went. She's an acupuncturist. She just went to help out with the earthquake in Nepal. Things along these lines blend travel with service, which is a really great thing because you always want to be growing and contributing. And that's kind of. My next point is to continue to grow and contribute. Just because you're on the road doesn't mean you're stopping growing. It's not a vacation necessarily. It's just a change of perspective. It's just a little bit of variety to keep your life interesting and, and passionate and all these different things. So that's awesome. And then finally find certainty in the little things. Whether it be a breath of fresh air, a dip in a nice cold pool, a hot shower, a beautiful meal prepared lovingly by family and friends, the stories of the people that you relish that you share with, the experiences and connections that you make on the road. It's so much easier to keep in touch with people from all over the world. I have friends in every major city now. And it's not because I'm a super networker, although I do really try hard to connect as many people as possible. It's because I have created systems to keep in touch with these people over the years. And I think Facebook has been a great example of that. Different various mastermind groups that we have together, secret groups and also not so secret groups, publicly online email, phone calls, just giving somebody a call, even if they're in another time zone, 12 time zones away. Making the time to do that, regardless of whether you have to get up early or go to sleep. I mean, that means a lot. That helps you to form these relationships. And I know no matter where I go in the world, there's somebody there that I know and I feel at home there. So if I travel to Dubai or Hong Kong or Hawaii or South America or Europe, it doesn't matter. There's somewhere to stay because I've spent the last 10 years of my life developing those relationships. And I really hope that you do that too, because it's beautiful world to live in when it's open and abundant and free. So I hope you found this interesting. Don't forget to have a blast out there on the road. It's going to be an amazing time. You're going to have a Blast. You're going to have an incredible experience and I want you to share with me. Let me know. I'm going to share more tips like this. Travel hacks, let me know what you're struggling with. Let me know. It's still unclear. And if you just needed a little kick in the ass to get going, here it is. Get out there, see the world, get your passport, do what you must. Check out my friend Ginger's passport project, which is just getting started. Now, if you have any kind of monetary struggle around that, we want you to get out there and travel the world because too few people actually take advantage of that and your life's going to go by like that. So if you don't get out there and see some different things, you're never going to grow as a person and you're never going to realize that we all have different beliefs, we all have different structures, values, cultures, and it makes humanity and the experience of it that much more magical. When you go out and get it, get into it and get your fingers dirty and really like dig in with both fingers and you'll start to realize that you learn more about yourself by doing that as well. So again, this is Brad Hart coming to you from Make More Marbles. I know this video is a little bit long today, but I'll put some more notes and great resources in the comments. Please do leave a comment. Ask me questions. Let's interact. If you haven't signed up yet for my productivity hacks cheat sheet, I recommend you do that too. It's a free 15 page guide all about that. And as always, subscribe. Like share if you found anything valuable here. I really appreciate it. I want to spread this message to more people so that more people get out there and travel. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Makemoremarvels. Com.