It doesn't matter how good your life looks from the outside,
what really matters is how you're feeling on the inside.
For the past two and a half years,
I have lived in what many people consider to be the most perfect
place on the planet.
A town that is so high in demand that people from around the
world spend upwards of a million dollars per bedroom to call
my neighborhood their home. Despite all of that, I left,
but not without some regret. You know,
being out here on a Monday morning and just paddling around the islands
in front of my house, it seems crazy to leave, like,
why would you leave such a beautiful paradise like this?
But I think that things go deeper than just the surface of
living in a beautiful place, living in a very comfortable place,
and living an idyllic existence.
And if comfort brought happiness,
then billions of people would be really happy. And so,
even though I definitely appreciate where I live and it's gonna be bittersweet
to leave, I still think that it's the right time and it's the right thing to do.
But leaving,
you always start to appreciate some of the things that maybe
you took for granted. When you lose something or when you leave something,
you start to really think more deeply and appreciate what it was that
you had in that moment.
And that's why it's so important to live in the moment and live each
day to the fullest,
and try to find pieces of time within your day or within your week
to really do something for yourself and to really engage with your
surroundings and just live.
And so here I am, one week later in Amsterdam.
It's official. I'm nomadic again, and you know,
feels really good. As soon as I got on the plane,
I felt like all of my adrenaline and anxiety just melted
away.
And then I also felt that way when I landed here in Amsterdam
at the airport just a week ago.
So now I'm sitting here watching other planes take off and land,
and it's just surreal that I'm actually starting this new chapter of my
life here today. Now, if you've watched my channel before,
you know that this lifestyle is nothing new to me.
It's something that I've been doing for most of my adult life,
living Nomadically, living abroad, and traveling through different countries.
But this time is different because this is the first time that I have been
living abroad since 2020 and the Pandemic Pandemic started,
and it's the first time that I've transitioned into this lifestyle
after so many consecutive years living back in the United States.
It's actually the the longest I've lived in the United States since I was a
college student. So even though I've done this before,
and even though I help people live abroad and become digital
nomads, I'm still human.
And it still felt to me like a hard
change in my life.
And so that's why I'm making this video to hopefully explain some of the
reasons behind why I made this decision and possibly inspire you
to make some changes in your life if that's what you're feeling like you need at
the moment.
During these past couple of years living back in my home state of Florida,
there were moments when I thought maybe I was getting a little bit too
comfortable. I started feeling again, like maybe I would never leave. I mean,
I had my friends there, my family there, I had my stuff there.
I bought furniture, I rented an apartment, I signed a long-term lease,
I bought plants. I started growing tomatoes on my balcony.
And yeah, I just thought that maybe that was it for me.
Maybe I had gotten all of this traveling out of my system when I was younger
and maybe it was time to live a quote unquote normal life.
And so it did feel like a big change to re-enter
this lifestyle and give up a lot of the comfort and convenience
and feeling of safety and security that I had developed
over the past few years.
But what starts to happen after you've lived in one place for a long time,
and maybe you can relate to this, is that you start to feel stuck.
Like the longer you've lived somewhere,
the harder it becomes to leave and the more that inertia
starts to set in,
and it takes even more energy to get unstuck and to
shift the momentum of your life in a new direction.
And that's what I started to feel after a couple years of living in the US.
It was like it took me a whole nother year of thinking about moving before
I actually went into action.
And I think this is because of a quote that I think that comes from Tony Robbins
where he says that change only happens when the pain of
staying the same becomes greater than the fear of taking
action. And I think that as human beings,
we can all relate to it being easier to think about change
than it is to actually make changes in your life.
But having put myself in uncomfortable situations before,
I knew that once I crossed that threshold, that it was time to take action.
And so I did. Now,
there are plenty of logical and completely valid reasons
why you might want to leave the United States or wherever your home country is.
And those were the reasons that I left the first couple of times. I mean,
every time there's a national election,
half of the population threatens to move to Canada.
Although I am very grateful to have been born in the United States,
I am well aware of the problems that my country has.
There's the intense political divisions. There's the high cost of living,
the skyrocketing inflation, the dysfunctional healthcare system,
the gun violence, the consumer culture,
the constant anxiety and rush of the rat race
and keeping up with the Joneses. I mean, there's,
there's plenty of issues that go on in the United States,
but if I'm honest with myself and with you guys,
the real reason why I left the US this time wasn't because
of all of the things that are wrong with America.
It was more personal reasons. Now,
I am not saying that traveling is going to solve all of your problems. I mean,
it probably will create more new and different problems that you didn't
have when you were living at home.
But one thing that travel can do is that it can give you a new
perspective.
It can give you a little bit of a reset and a fresh start
in life.
And I know that each time that I've traveled to a new place and each
time I've made a big change,
it's always resulted in personal growth and learning.
I mean, travel to me is the best real world education,
but it's also the best education about who you are in this world.
And the longer that I stayed in the US and
in my daily routine,
the more I felt like I was losing that sense of connection
with the outside world, outside of my local community.
And the more I started to forget who I was before the pandemic,
the first thing that happens when you announce a decision of this magnitude is
you get met with a lot of pushback. My friends, my family, everyone was like,
why? Like,
why would you leave this beautiful life that you've created this beautiful
place? So many questions.
And I couldn't answer all of those logically or rationally.
It was mostly just a feeling that this chapter in my life
was closing and it was closing fast and it was time to move on.
A problem that many of the naysayers face when you're telling
them about your plans to make a big life change like quitting your job or moving
to a foreign country,
is that they are stuck in the status quo.
There's two main problems facing modern day humans
are physiological and evolutionary programming,
and also our societal and cultural programming. You see,
both of these sets of programmings are to keep us safe and to
help maintain the status quo and the species for that matter.
And so to break out of that is very difficult.
And it's understandable that people have questions and people want to play
devil's advocate when you do something that's out of the ordinary.
The other thing you have to contend with is your brain,
because 95% of your thoughts are the same every day.
And unfortunately, the majority of those thoughts are negative.
So this can lead to feeling in a rut,
and I was definitely feeling that rut.
And the quickest way to get out of a rut is a pattern interrupt,
changing your behavior, changing your habits,
or even changing your country. When you travel,
everything is new, everything is different, everything is challenging.
And even though it's not always comfortable,
you always feel more present and feel more alive.
And that is the feeling that I've been missing and craving during these
pandemic years.
I want to reconnect with that spark of life and that
aliveness that only comes through new experiences,
personal growth, and meeting new people. On a similar note,
I've noticed over the past couple years that I have not
acclimated to the US culture. Like I mentioned,
I lived abroad for 20 years. I came back,
and then last year I published a video about how I see the US living abroad and
the reverse culture shock that I felt after six or nine months of
living here. And now that hasn't gone away.
I still feel like an outsider in my home country,
and I still don't relate or identify with a lot of
the topics of conversation and the wants and the desires of
many of the people in my community. I'm not interested in shopping,
don't wanna talk about politics.
I don't have any office politics or work drama to talk about.
I'm not interested in gossip and there's a lot of people here of course,
but I just really miss the um,
conversations that I have with travelers and with locals in other countries.
I'm also a bit weirded out by the whole consumer demand cycle
in the US It's like you can just tell what time of year it is by walking into a
grocery store or walking into a pharmacy at any given time of year.
You've got a Valentine's Day that turns into St. Patrick's Day,
that turns into the 4th of July, labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
It's like from one day to the next,
everything changes color from pink to green to red, white, and blue.
And it's just like a little bit weird,
and I feel like I'm living in this weird twilight zone.
It's like everything is the same.
Like they just changed the flavors of the candies and the foods and the colors
of the packaging and, and it's just, I don't know.
I don't know how to describe it,
but like I quite literally feel like I'm living my own version of Groundhog Day,
and I can't tell if it's 2022 or 2020 sometimes.
Another big reason why I'm leaving is because I can,
but not just me.
Hundreds of millions of people have found a new sense of
work freedom, of location freedom, and they are taking advantage of it.
So whether you are moving throughout your country or throughout the world,
so many millions of people have been freed from the cubicle,
have been freed from the office, and are working remotely.
And this is an unprecedented time in history where even in the past
year or so,
upwards of 50 countries have announced new remote work or
digital nomad visas that allow people to apply to live there
for one to five years at a time if you earn an online
income. And so this is a very exciting time to be alive.
You have a one in three or four quadrillion chance
of being born at this time.
And so I think it's time to seize the day,
and that is certainly what I'm going to do.
No matter how much of the world you've seen,
there's always more to explore and there's plenty of places
that maybe you're even afraid to go.
But magic is what is on the other side of fear.
As Jen sincere says,
you can't experience new lands from the confines of
your comfort zone.
The truth of the matter is that true fulfillment comes from doing the
hard stuff, the messy stuff. It comes from discomfort.
It comes from stretching and challenging yourself.
And one of my favorite ways to do that is through travel.
Now, as grateful as I am to be from the US,
I don't want to live a normal life.
I'm much more interested in what people like Mark Twain have to say about it,
which is if you find yourself on the side of the majority,
it's time to pause and reflect. Now, I don't know about you,
but I've had plenty of time to pause and reflect over the past couple years,
and I've come to the conclusion that I want to take the path less traveled.
I want to live an unconventional life,
and to all of my friends and family and people who don't understand why I would
leave a good thing for the unknown,
I just have to say that it doesn't matter how good your life looks on paper,
it doesn't matter how good your life looks from the outside.
What really matters is how you're feeling on the inside.
So did I make the right decision by packing up all of my stuff and
setting off around the world again with a one-way ticket? I don't know.
You know, if you were to ask me right here, right now, I would say yes.
I'm feeling very at home here in Amsterdam,
and I'm very much looking forward to my next destination of Portugal.
I think that time will tell,
but regardless of where I go next,
I hope that you will join me here on the journey.