The Nomads of Living Nomad Style have journeyed throughout the United States. That was our primary objective for our journey. We wanted to live in or explore all 50 states. And, as of this writing, we have completed 44.
We learned many things along the way about travel, relationships, solution development, planning and more. It has made our entire family closer together and overall more confident to deal with whatever life may throw at us.
I am pleased to share a guest post by a young man who has traveled to at least 50 countries, not states. He is a well-known author, entrepreneur and international nomad. His insight is a welcome addition to our own as it expands and shares on a global scale.
If you are a traveler or considering being one on a more repetitive basis, I suggest you read this article and pick up a copy of his book called Travel As Transformation. As always, feel free to question and comment as appropriate.
How the Challenges of the Travel Lifestyle Change Your Sense of Identity
Adventurous people have always longed to explore the potentialities of life on their own terms. Until the recent past though, the limits of knowledge and technology made travel a major undertaking. It was difficult, unsafe, and expensive for ships to traverse the oceans, or covered wagons to cross continents. They had to know where to go and exactly what might be waiting for them when they arrived. For the first time in history, global residence is now a viable possibility for almost anyone willing to jump through enough bureaucratic hoops.
What stops people in the modern age is neither distance nor difficulty. The obstacles are now internal. Innate resistance to change, something which has been with us since the earliest days of exploration, prevents us from taking roads that are now easily navigated. Physical space is no longer the barrier. It is psychology alone. We need to feel that a way of being is normal and accepted before we could ever begin to consider it for ourselves. Fortunately for those who wish to travel more comfortably, this is exactly what is starting to happen with the concept of nomadic living.
The internet allows each of us to collaborate with one another in real-time across global borders. The online travel community is evolving rapidly. We are able to reach out to people who share our ideals, no matter where they are from and where they are heading next. Entire sections of the world have taken on specific connotations within the newly formed narrative of the perpetual traveler community. Life as a traveler or nomad does not have to be any specific way at all. You can tailor things to exactly how you want them to be. You may choose to relocate every few days. You may set up mini-homes for months at a time. You may become a semi-permanent expatriate in one country for years on end. It all depends on how well you can adapt to the constant changes of every new place you encounter.
As you expose yourself to novel circumstances abroad, you are going to change in unseen and uncountable ways. You are going to become 
something more than what you were when you started. This happens with simple practicalities things like where to eat or sleep, or how to make money or maintain relationships when location is no longer a determining factor. To travel on a regular basis requires dealing with unexpected situations as they arise, as you cannot possibly prepare for every contingency beforehand.
There are obvious challenges that travel brings – things like language barriers or overall safety in unfamiliar places. If you’re lucky enough to be a native speaker of English, you’ll be glad to know that your language has infiltrated nearly every part of the developed world (and a surprising amount of the undeveloped world). Even if the general populace in a place doesn’t speak English regularly, there’s a good chance they’ve at least heard it and can understand basic words and phrases. Or else, they will be able to connect with someone who studied it at university or uses it in a professional capacity.
As economies globalize, more nations encourage or require students to learn at least basic English in school. Adults take it upon themselves to learn the language because they recognize the new professional opportunities it will bring. American television, music, and movies are popular around the world, and local language translations aren’t always available. As a former ESL teacher, I can tell you that people learn more practical English by binge watching episodes of the American sitcom Friends than they do by reading textbooks.
You’ll also find that it’s not terribly difficult to pick up the basics of English-related languages. Much of the unconscious knowledge you already have on the sounds, vocabulary, and grammar of your native tongue will also apply to Romance languages like Spanish, Italian, and French. The more of any one of these you learn, the easier others will also become. To date, the only other language I speak with conversational fluency is Spanish, but I am often surprised at how easily I am able to follow a conversation between Brazilians speaking their native Portuguese tongue. Languages with no shared root, however, may challenge some of your most basic assumptions about how communication works, such as the order of words or the different sounds the mouth can make.
Travel opens the door to changes in some of the most fundamental parts of life. Your concept of relationships with other people will expand friendly, professional, familial, romantic, or otherwise. All relationships are built upon a shared sense of identity, and non-travelers are unlikely to understand your lifestyle and priorities. That can drive a rift between you (as it did with my former friends and me), or it can have 
a strengthening effect. Indeterminate time apart makes seeing the people you care about in three-dimensional space all the more meaningful. Distance is a terrific litmus test for the strength of a bond. Webcam-based relationships aren’t fun for anyone, but if you’re still excited to see your partner’s face each day through a grainy video feed, it’s probably a pretty good indicator you actually really like this person.
Your concept of friendships and work relationships must also change with your lifestyle as a traveler. I have made probably thousands of acquaintances as I’ve gone around the world. Yet, few of them showed long-term potential or deep compatibility beyond a surface level need for companionship. I’ve worked for and with dozens of companies around the world, and I never cease to be baffled by the diversity in professional standards I witness. For the few years that I was a foreign English language teacher, no two schools were ever alike in their expectations of how I should teach or my role in their hierarchy. Yet, each acted as though the way they did things was the way everyone did them, and that I should have automatically known all this.
Relatively late into my travels, I made the decision to stop working for other people entirely. I was tired of doing unfulfilling work on someone else’s schedule. I had to trust in my ability to convince strangers to give me money every single day of my life in order to support myself. Self-employment began with small copywriting jobs that were neither emotionally nor financially rewarding for me. I’ve now built a modestly successful online business for myself that I can maintain from anywhere in the world, so long as I can get online from time to time. I’ve helped many others do the same along the way.
In all these ways and more, embracing travel as a lifestyle has so much more impact on who you are and how you live than merely seeing a lot of new places. It fundamentally changes how you interact with the world and how see your own identity. There is no other practice on earth that I am aware of with the same massive potential for personal growth than this.
About The Author
Gregory Diehl left California at 18 to explore our world and find himself. He has lived and worked in 50 countries so far, and is building a home in Vilcabamba, Ecuador. Through his book publishing company, Identity Publications, he helps others tailor messages of unique value and promote them in the marketplace. His new book, Travel As Transformation, chronicles the personal evolution worldwide exploration has brought to him and others. Find him at: http://gregorydiehl.net/
