Hello and welcome to the last day of the Freedom Plan Blog Challenge. Today’s challenge was to: think back to the journey you’ve been on in the last 10 days. I encourage you to read through all your posts to celebrate all that you’ve written, learned and experienced as part of this daily blog challenge. And in today’s blog post, I want you to write about:
• What you enjoyed most about your experience of taking part in the blog challenge
This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 10
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Hello and welcome to the Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 9. Today’s question is: Imagine you are on a long holiday in Portugal (or wherever your dream destination is). There are castles to explore, secret bars to discover, and sunny beaches to laze around on. In today’s post, I want you to write about how you will balance your adventure and work while you are away on this holiday. So this is exactly what we are doing right now is experimenting with traveling and working via internet connection. We are over three months in and doing a fairly good job. Basically we are slow traveling. I suppose slow travel might be different for each person, but on average we are staying the majority of places a week. This gives us time to go out and explore also have time to work on the blog and not feel too stressed. We have also each have a delegated areas we focus on. Chris does almost everything related to downloading, storing and editing photos. He also does the majority of the trip planning. I do all the writing and article ideas. We will both check in over these things in bullet points later on, but otherwise we can each be sitting next to each other for hours just doing our things. Thus far, we are enjoying this. It’s nice when we find a spot we really like and just get a bunch of stuff done. I find I like accommodations that have a nice introvert aspect to them with a little bit of social. I get anxious when everyone is asking over and over, what are you doing today? What are you doing today? And I’m like, staying in my room and working on projects. So I like a place where I feel I can just do that with a lot of fuss. We’ve been designating days as well to work on things and then days where we will go off all day to explore the area. I have found 20 min wonders just to respond to social media, comments, etc. The thing I want and need to improve on is growing the blog and sources that actually pay for my work. I think my productivity is up because usually about once a week I’m like, ‘Oh no, so much has crept up’ then I write a list and power through it. I have more things in order now that I have ever before so I am hopeful. Alright, day 9 down, only one more to go! :) This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 9 Hello and welcome to the Freedom Plan Blog Challenge day 8. Today’s challenge was to go out and do something that you’ve wanted to do for a long time. Go out play, enjoy, and come back and write about what you did. Also, write about how you can make such adventures part of your new lifestyle.
Well this part of the challenge I am already succeeding in fairly well. I go on adventures all the time. I am currently living and traveling throughout Southeast Asia for an indefinite amount of time and at minimum one year. Over the past ten years my husband, Chris, and myself have paid off all our debt and been traveling around the world to over 30 countries. We have continuously been able to grown our savings, increase our professional development and have crazy adventures! We’ve driven over 54,000kms throughout Australia, dove with a dozen bull sharks at once and climbed to trees taller than Niagara Falls. Last night I went on a night hike in the rain forest and saw a snake, flying lemur, big gecko, two different bat species, wild pig and a bunch of insects. I feel so thankful for the life I have and that I have found a partner to share it with. In many ways, I am already living the freedom lifestyle. What we want to experiment with and see, is can we do it more remotely and work for ourselves? That is what we are looking into during this year. I think visualization is important, so I am dreaming big, but also I don’t want to completely put myself in a box either. We are going to try this working remotely and see if we like it. Otherwise our seasonal working life style is also fitting to us. So with that, I am off to go on a 4WD night safari in a national park in Malaysia to hopefully find more wildlife. This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 8 Hello and welcome to the Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 7. Today’s challenge is: to pick one imperfect action that you can take every day that will move you closer to the life you have envisioned.
My one imperfect action. I like this. Well, it would have to be to keep working on focusing on one thing at a time. My cycle is to often have the task I know I want to do, but then all these ideas start swirling about and they’re great, but they lead to overwhelm. When I feel overwhelmed I in turn do nothing. I find if I can keep my energy in check and not let my mind run wild, I can achieve at least one thing off my goals list. Letting our minds run wild – isn’t that a fun thing to do sometimes? I think it can be one of my strongest qualities because it allows me to have a hope and vision of what I want to see. But I find I must execute some control over my mind otherwise it will do its own thing. (Like right this second writing this I wanted to google cool jobs in Maine. Why? Writing is how I am looking to make money and where my focus should be.) So there is a prime example of the positive effect of keeping my mind in check, otherwise google would have had me for at least a good ten minutes, if not longer. I do like how Natalie put it in the beginning video, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. It’s how we choose to use it that sets us apart. So I hope continue pushing myself to use my time in an efficient way that allows me to accomplish the goals I have set out to succeed with. This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 7 Hello and welcome to the Freedom Plan Blog Challenge day 6. Today’s question is: Find 1 or 2 people who are living the kind of life you want to live, and whose tribe you’d love to be part of. Then write a short post about why you find them inspiring and the one question you would ask them if you met in real life. One or two people – on my I know so many people who have inspired me! My mind goes from house hold names like Tim Ferris to ladies like Tracy the Bug Lady who lives out in Costa Rica and took me on one of the best night hikes I have ever been on. The one thing all these people have in common is there seem to have a spark for what they are doing and I like that energy. That is the energy I want to emulate. Nora Dunn of the Professional Hobo and Goats on the Road are two examples of fellow travel bloggers who have found a way to create a traveling life for themselves. There’s so many ways one can live this life and I love following this bloggers and others because I find following our dreams inspiring. I also think creating our dreams is a big part of the energy. Sometimes we may not know exactly what we want, but we do know what we don’t want. So we go about and find ways to create that. That’s why these people inspire me, I want them in my tribe and I want to attract others with a passion to follow their dreams in a constructive way into my tribe. In real life I would ask them two things: how do you self talk your mind to keep going when you were/are feeling really down? This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 6 Hello and welcome to the blog challenge day 5. Today's challenge is to create a daily success plan.
A big part of my success is having short must do lists for my day. I am a big list maker so it’s easy for me to write down twenty things I want to. The result is feeling overwhelmed when I look at all that, particularly when I am tired. So – I have been trying to make big picture, monthly, weekly and daily visualizations in my mind. I get really stressed out if I look at a big chunk of traveling time (which is what we’re here to do!) but then get super anxious I will get so behind on other things. I also used to make separate lists. I would have all these pieces of paper, thinking it would be great feeling to throw them out when I was done. But then I ran into the problem of not being able to find my list. So I started utilizing my notebook. My notebook goes everywhere with me and I write down all my lists in there. I am now incorporating a new habit and trying to use my computer for most things. There is always something about actually writing. I love pens and paper and the texture and the rhythmic process of writing, so I never want to limit myself to say don’t write on paper. But being long term travelers now and weight being such an issue, I am trying to use my computer more. It’s a habit change I don’t particularly like at first, but I am getting more and more used to it and seeing the direct result of time saved by doing so. So ultimately, my only true goal every day is to at least write down bullet points of what happened that day. And to see. I notice this especially in working life, but it happens in travel life too when it gets really busy. I might miss things that happen in the day. Little moments that are quietly happening around me, like a kind gesture of a mother and child, or how at first I couldn’t find napkins at this restaurant only to realize they were attached to the wall. At the very least I hope to capture these thoughts if only I take 10 minutes. The other thing I push myself to do is utilize the time I have. I can totally talk myself into saying, ‘It’s not a good time, I don’t want to pull my computer out if I’m only waiting 20 min for the bus.’ But more and more I am pushing myself to do this and I am seeing results. That’s where all these goals are interconnected because by using my computer more, than everything is in this one place. And if I am just getting a bit stuck and staring at the screen on one article I can easily switch and just knock out three paragraphs of something else. By continuing to push myself and make this my habit, slowly but surely I am seeing different results. I am doing a better job than ever before on keeping up on social media updates, posts, etc. So it’s happening. So to sum all this up more concisely, my one must do item every day to take 10 minutes and write down observations for the day. This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 5 Hello and welcome to the Freedom Blog Challenge Day 4.
I believe my super power lays in my ability to constantly see and hope for the way things could be. I have an unceasing ability to be optimistic and have always felt this burning desire from within about the power of the individual. My outlook has matured and changed a lot over the years and this enthusiasm is what I am looking to share with the world. When I interview people, often they tell in a positive way, ‘Whoa, your questions are different and no one has quite asked me about xyz.’ I use these comments and memories to keep myself optimistic in believing that I do have a unique voice to share with the world. So I believe and hope that as I work to develop and own my superpowers, that the positive vibes it spreads, my unique voice, the strive for excellence, the learning how to be the best one can be, the pursuit of happiness and belief that each of us are able to create and lifestyle that is meaningful to us, is what will help propel me towards this freedom lifestyle. This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 4 Hello and welcome to the Freedom Blog Challenge Day 3.
Day 3 Challenge is to describe my Perfect Day. Ah, I hate these types of questions. Just like when people ask me where my favorite place is, I’m like well I don’t have just a favorite. I have many special and favorite places all for different reasons. So for me to really answer this question I’d have to describe a whole week because then I could get in a little bit of everything I like to do. Just like some days I love to climb mountains for the challenge, but I don’t want to climb a mountain every single day. And some days I could pass all my waking hours in a coffee shop, but I wouldn’t want to do that every single day. There are some things that would be incorporated into any ideal day I have and that is one of the most simplest luxuries I know, an unhurried morning and breakfast. If all is going well and I am in my ideal flow, I love waking up early. I like to rise with the sun and go to bed shortly after it goes down. I really enjoy a quiet morning without having to see anyone else for at least an hour until after I’ve woken up. I will use this time to drink coffee, write, stare out the window and make a plan for the day. Given the broadness of the question, here are my bullet points of what I love to have in a general day:
And that is what would be components of my ideal day(s). Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow! :) This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 3 Hello and welcome to Day 2 Freedom Plan Blog Challenge. If you’re just reading this and wondering what’s going on, please check out the intro of Day 1.
Day 2 Challenge is to write down a reason for why you want to live the freedom lifestyle. Bonus points if you can figure out how to make a positive impact in the world by living this lifestyle. So why I want to live the freedom lifestyle is well, for the freedom it allows. I want to have an active hand in the course of my life. To me, the ability to follow my passions and interests is one of the most freeing ways I have found to live. The way I hope to make a positive impact on the world through this lifestyle is through the power of the written word, or story telling if you will. I hope to break down stereotypes, fears, misconceptions, and the self-defeating belief that you can’t follow your dreams and be what you strive to be. If you want to hear an excellent TED talk on this, click here. When I need motivation I put this on in the background and listen to this over and over again because through sharing our stories, we have the power to change the way people think about the world. I also feel that travel and tourism, done in a meaningful way, can be one of the best ripples of positive influence in the world. Travel can change people’s lives. It changed mine. If you haven’t read about how I moved out to Wyoming to live on the floor next to a washer and dryer, you can check out How it All Began. Some people say to me, “Oh I could never travel like you do.” To which I’m like, “I hope not-“ because travel is different for every person. What energizes us is different for each person, life is about finding what energies you. And whether you can achieve that by flying across an ocean, walking across town or reading and traveling vicariously through a well written story, it has the power to affect you. I want to always feel a spring to my step when I get out of bed in the morning because I’m so excited for the work, ie my passion, which lays ahead of me for the day. I want to push myself to develop my talents to hopefully encourage, inspire and give practical resources so that others can do the same. This life is too short to not find the things that motivate you. That is why I work every day on this blog, my writing and my travel life style. Ok and that is day 2. Thanks for reading and this blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 2. Hey there everyone – I am participating in a 10 Day Blogging Challenge. This is something I am voluntarily doing to challenge myself. Natalie over at the Suit Case Entrepreneur is running this challenge and I hope to better myself by participating in this challenge. For the next 10 days I will be posting in response to the challenge Natalie gives. If you are not interested in reading these, please feel free to simply bypass these posts. I am choosing to go with my knee jerk reactions in responding to each day’s challenge. By that I mean I am just giving it my most candid answers and responses with minimal editing. Why I am doing this? Two answers: I don’t know and to take action. I don’t know if I will get anything out of this or not. But I do know I want to be a better blogger, writer and business minded person. There is little risk to taking this challenge. So why not do it? I won’t know how it will affect me if I participate in this challenge. But it’s a guarantee that if I don’t participate, I will get nothing out of it. My goal is to be a better blogger and see if I can do this full time. I’ve never done this before so I’m entering new territory. Whenever I do things like this I look for people who are at the top of their game and learn from them. This action challenge presented an opportunity for me to try and incorporate some new things. So why not try it? When I am trying to accomplish new goals, especially when there is a learning curve involved, I often think of the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results. There are of course things I want and will be consistent on, but I want to throw new challenges into my mix. If I don’t try different things, how can I ever expect a different result? And with that…blogging challenge Day 1 and the question was... 3 Challenges I am currently facing:
As always, thanks so much for following along and soon (I am doing a slightly altered challenge because I don't have wifi every day currently) there will be another challenge post. This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 1 |