In this week’s video, Chelsea reflects on the good habits that traveling as an adult has helped her build. Looking to travel on a budget? Check out this video:
Hey guys it’s chelsea from the financial diet and this week’s video is brought to you by t-mobile and this week i wanted to talk to you about something kind of fun and different for two reasons one we’ve been doing a lot more of that kind of serious financial stuff on tfd lately between the financial scams and the tax refund stuff and i thought it would be fun to
Talk about something a little bit more lighthearted and also because as you can probably currently see i am traveling right now i’m actually here in austin texas with lauren for a stop on our book tour and we love it so far but we thought it would also be a great occasion to talk about travel so i’m someone who used to not travel that often i mean obviously like i
Would go on vacations with my friends or you know somewhere with my parents when i was young but i definitely didn’t really travel for work very much and it wasn’t really a part of my everyday life but now for both work reasons and also personal because as you guys probably know my husband is french which requires quite a lot of travel just for that alone i travel
Really frequently i would say at least once a month i’m taking a plane now which is very very strange for me but now the travel is such a big part of my life it’s become super important that i learn how to travel well in the sense that it doesn’t like totally disrupt my day-to-day routines and my work but also that i learned to take what i love about travel and
What i find really healthy about travel and integrate it into the rest of my life i would say that now i’m generally someone who can pack a bag really easily and really well who can stay on her work schedule even when she’s got really chaotic days and also someone who can generally find like her daily routines and habits wherever she is but the opposite is also
Important i noticed that when i was traveling whether for work or personal reasons that i was doing certain things that were really wonderful and that had nothing to do with the actual place that i was in and so over the past year i really worked to integrate these habits into my non travel life i consider them just little rules for living well but they all come
Specifically from the act of traveling but like i said you don’t even have to leave your home to really do them so without further ado i wanted to share with you guys the five life rules that i only learned from traveling number one is take notes about nearly everything now this might sound a little strange but i found that when i try and specifically when i’m
Traveling alone i tend to become a huge note-taker last year for example i went on an almost two-week trip entirely by myself and i found that everything that i did because there was no one to automatically share it with felt so important to write down either in the notes app on my phone or in a little journal that i had in my purse i found myself remembering
Things that i wanted to look up later or little things that i noticed that we’re funny or even ideas for work i wanted to become an observer of life again specifically because no one was next to me and while i do think that there is huge value in solo travel in the sense that it is important to remember that you alone are good enough company to enjoy these things
It’s also a really wonderful habit to just start observing in a much more active way your day-to-day life note-taking shouldn’t just be for meetings it should be when you’re sitting at the cafe or when you’re on your morning commute assuming you’re not in the middle of driving or even just when you’re hanging out with your friends you would be really surprised
How many really interesting ideas and observations fly through your head day to day that you often just let totally slip remembering to just jot them down almost as if you were on safari in your own life is a great way to start catching them and also start being more appreciative and more aware of the beautiful things that are happening around you i started taking
Notes way more than i used to in my day to day life and i’m so glad that i do number two is schedule things down to the minute now one thing that is obviously fairly difficult when traveling for work is having to stay on a relatively consistent schedule while you’re in a totally different time zone aside from the fact that you might be waking up at a really wonky
Time it’s also important that you connect with people on their terms and not switch everything around and make it chaotic just because you’re no longer in the same time zone for example here in austin we have to wake up earlier to make our normal meetings on their regular schedules and have to remember to be super conscious not to forget things whether it’s a phone
Call or reaching out to a client or a meeting just because we’re an hour behind to come back this when i’m traveling and also to make sure that i’m doing the things that i want to be doing i have to schedule my days really really tightly and that doesn’t mean that i’m packing it full of activities but rather that i visually on my calendar app chunk out my day and
Make sure that everything is accounted for even really small things like send this email and also when you’re traveling even if it’s for work you want to make sure you’re using all of that spare time you have to do the sightseeing or maybe try a restaurant or bar you read about or even just get a good walk outside of your house and when making sure to stay on a
Work schedule that stuff has to be accounted for and planned for – but i’ve found that interestingly instead of scheduling making my day feel totally overwhelming it actually makes me feel incredibly liberated because a i know i don’t have to remember things all the time but b i’m making sure that i’m making time for the stuff that is important whether that’s for
Work or for personal enjoyment and while i definitely don’t schedule my days as tightly when i’m back home versus when i’m traveling i’ve started scheduling them much more actively and breaking them down into both personal and work stuff on the same calendar i call or code them for the category that they’re in but the point is that i plan my day out in a very visual
Way so that it can make sure that anything that’s important enough for me to want to do is important enough to be scheduled doing this has allowed me for example to add pilates into my regular schedule almost every day without feeling like everything else is being shoved to the side just like with note-taking the point as being more active and present in your day to
Day life number three is let the small stuff go so one thing i’ve really noticed about how i am when i’m traveling versus how i am when i’m home is how much i let really small details or grievances roll off my back it’s partially because i’m always tired and i just can’t muster up enough energy to care about these things but also because it feels like there’s so
Much to do and see that i don’t want to waste even a minute being irritated about something objectively unimportant a perfect example is when i get to the airport and i have that panicked moment of like oh my god what if i forgot like this tank top or that little mini bottle of shampoo i’m able to quickly calm myself down in that moment and be like chill out if you
Really need like that $2 travel bottle of shampoo you can get it when you get there yet in my day-to-day life little anxieties or frustrations of a similar level of unimportance tend to send me into a little bit of a spiral even for example a work email that’s lightly irritating or perhaps a little rude but definitely doesn’t change much of anything i can harp on
All day if i let myself and i found that when i’m traveling i actually sometimes will say out loud to myself okay it’s not that big of a deal and that’s something that i’ve started to force myself to say more and more in my actual everyday life because the truth is that feeling that you have when you’re traveling that time is precious and you have better to worry
About is actually true in your day to day life there’s always something at home that you could be doing seeing enjoying more or simply not worrying about allowing yourself to get really caught up on small unimportant details is probably a sign that you’re just not enjoying the world around you enough number 4 is let yourself enjoy things more fully i’m sure most
Of us know that feeling you have when you’re traveling that you just can’t believe how cool it is to be in this new place to be doing this new thing and seeing what you’re seeing it’s that childlike excitement of being so unsure and where everything feels new and granted it would be hard to recreate that exact same level of amazement and presence in your regular
Day-to-day life but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try on a more philosophical sense it’s always a good idea to remind yourself how many of the little luxuries and conveniences of your everyday life are actually kind of miracles and not just in terms of the technology that might allow them but also the fact that they are not a given for everyone in the world
Even things like being able to turn on a tap and let the water run or open up your phone and have basically all the information in the world accessible at your fingertips is not something that we shouldn’t be amazed by just because it’s common but in a more practical sense your day to day life in whatever town you live in can and should feel just as intentional
As it does when you’re traveling now that could be something as simple as just not staring at your phone the entire time when you walk around your town or go about your daily routines but it could also be something like finally making a point to go to that museum or this theatre or that park and do something that you’ve been putting off because you always assume
You’ll have time to do it i live in new york and it’s a very very common thing for new yorkers to say like oh i’ve been meaning to go to that place forever or i’ll go eventually or i almost never go there and it’s because they have this overwhelming sense that it’s so available to them that they never need to make time for it quite frankly i know more people who
Don’t live in new york who’ve done all the museum’s in manhattan than actual new yorkers but nothing is preventing us from making a point to live that fully and in the moment in our actual lives and it’s also a great way to make sure that travel doesn’t always feel like you have to go somewhere you can travel in your own city because all you’re really doing and
Traveling is forcing yourself to see things in a new way or see things you haven’t seen before no matter what it is you choose to do though the point is the more actively you can plan to do things instead of just letting your life happen when you’re at home the more you can be sure to enjoy it in the moment and not just let it pass you by for this i’ve really
Started especially in the past year going on a lot of solo dates where maybe i’ll go to a movie or a restaurant by myself or just take a really really long walk to somewhere i haven’t been before even something as simple as going to a new city block that i haven’t actually seen can make me feel like i’m traveling and for a fraction of the price lastly number five
Is get your best work done when it makes sense as i said when traveling for work one of the most difficult things is keeping your work schedule tight when you are totally thrown off by jetlag and likely in a different time zone and what does that mean most practically aside from possibly waking up at an ungodly hour to go to meetings it also means accepting that
The best work you’re gonna do is when you have the energy and time to do it now this really manifests in two ways both dealing with things as they arise if you have the capacity to instead of automatically putting them off because you don’t want to deal with it and also powering through tasks when you feel that burst of energy because you don’t know when it will
Come again obviously it’s a lot easier to justify answering a bunch of emails at 10 p.m. because you feel really awake or responding to an email right away instead of putting it off when you’re traveling and therefore full of all kinds of things to do and low on energy but it’s something you can recreate at home and in fact one of the best ways to use it at home
And one of the ways that i’ve started using it in my day to day life is saving that time for really special projects that are hard to dedicate time to in your day-to-day workflow at the average job there are always a couple of bigger level projects that you could be working on that aren’t really time-sensitive and might be entirely out of the scope of your day to
Day but deserve to be chipped away at or you might be working on a personal project like learning a language or writing a book or just doing something that’s for you when i’m traveling and i feel both that create energy and that general excitement it’s so much easier to take those little bursts of energy or window of time and channel them into something that will
Actually mean something to me when i’m home it’s so easy to take that same window of time and watch another show on netflix so i recommend finding at least one thing whether it’s a bigger level project at work or something even just for you personally and say that is my little go-to thing when i feel that little burst and again you might not dedicate more than 10
Minutes a day to it but just making sure that you lean into those times and embrace them for what they are and combine that with doing tasks as they come in whenever you can versus putting them off just for the sake of putting them off you will be so surprised at how much more full and energized and awesome your day-to-day life feels at the end of the day travel
Is really about one thing and that’s being present and aware in your own life obviously all of the newness and excitement makes that a lot easier when you’re actually traveling but it doesn’t have to only be during those times i’ve found that these life rules are super helpful to live by in my day-to-day life and make me put myself in that appreciative and present
Travel mindset even following one or two of these rules i think will make you feel so much more grateful for the everyday life you’re living and one thing that’s always super important to consider when you travel is what phone you’ll use and how your plan will fit into that nothing will slap you out of that dreamy grateful vacation mode faster than coming home to a
Nightmarish lehigh bill because of roaming or other fees and that is definitely something everyone in the tfd team has been guilty of but going abroad these days without a good phone and phone plan will make your life unnecessarily difficult keeping you from doing things like using google maps to find stuff booking lodging on-the-go or just keeping in touch with
People back home if you’re looking for a good option t mobile offers texting and data abroad in more than 140 countries plus in-flight texting and an hour of data on qualifying flights and if you’re just going to canada or mexico you have unlimited texting and talking and up to five gigabytes of data for all of you planning study abroad trip soon t-mobile has a
Special offer of $100 off for college students and teachers of all grades check it all out in the link in the description as always guys thank you so much for watching and don’t forget to hit the subscribe button to come back every tuesday and thursday for new and awesome videos by you
Transcribed from video
5 Life Rules I Only Learned From Traveling | The Financial Diet By The Financial Diet
