What I’ve Given Up to Get What I Want

by | Oct 12, 2018 | Deep Thoughts, Insights, Self Discovery

(On a boat in Halong Bay, Vietnam.) In my last post I mentioned that I am now an official nomad! Moving out of my apartment was one of the biggest things I’ve done yet. That got me thinking about a recent conversation with a friend, about all the things I’ve given up in the past year. I’ve been thinking about taking this journey for a while. (Click here if you want to read all the reasons why.) Truth be told, the hardest part was deciding to go instead of caving in to all the worries in my head and the concerns of people I’m very close to. Once that decision was made, I had to give up a lot to make it happen.

A former mentor of mine, Larry Winget, presented an exercise to me some time ago that helped me on my way. He had us write down, on one side of a piece of paper, what we wanted. On the other side, he told us to write down everything that stood in the way of having what we wanted. That side represented all the things we had to give up to get what we wanted. It was scary, and it seemed impossible, but it got me thinking.

What I didn’t realize, until I gave up my apartment, which seems like the final piece of stability I was holding on to, is that once you have nothing, you have everything. Now that I’ve given up so much, I can more fully invest in the creative process of re-designing my life, my home, and everything that goes along with that.

Here are a few of the things I’ve given up to get where I am now:

  • Routine. This one didn’t actually bother me! But, I had to give up the reliable structure of “normal” life, work, knowing what day and time it is!
  • Steady, reliable, income and stability. In order to make the time I need for myself, I let go of steady work. That means I don’t have consistent income for a while. Thank goodness I’ve been planning this for long enough that I both saved up and have the knowledge to plan out per diem budgets that allow me to afford to travel longer.
  • A home. I love having a place to call my own, but when it becomes just an expensive storage unit, I felt I was better off actually getting a storage unit and saving tons of money.
  • Close contact with friends and family. I took this one a bit for granted. Even in first world countries the WiFi just has not been that great and using services like WhatsApp have been fairly frustrating when I wanted to have a video chat or just a long chat with loved ones.
  • Access to all my stuff. I’m traveling as light as I can which means I don’t have all my stuff in front of me, and I can’t get to it. I’ve had to scale down and choose what’s most important to travel with and trust that I will be able to get whatever I need wherever I go.
  • A “normal” relationship. Being on the road as a single person, knowing I will move on, means it’s impossible to have a day-in day-out connection with someone. That will come, but for now, I have to let go of a traditional connection.
  • Anxiety and control. A very odd thing I noticed, just writing this post, is that when I was doing traditional work and stuck in a more traditional life, I felt constantly anxious, had long to-do lists that didn’t always get done, and I felt the need to control each day as best I could. Now I just let the days unfold, do less advanced planning, and have a lot less stress and anxiety.
  • Self doubt. It took a long battle with many, many doubts and fears to get here. They were very logical but they were in my way. Now that I’ve made this leap, there is no room for self doubt. I have to believe in myself every day and keep going!

Here is one colossal lesson I’ve just realized from all this giving stuff up….

When you have nothing, you have everything. 

I didn’t realize this until I gave up my apartment – the last piece of stability and normalcy in my life. I now have no ties, no formal responsibilities, nothing I can use as an excuse. All I have are possibilities and the power to choose what I want. Pretty nifty.

Addendum: I realized after publishing this post that my current life reminds me of the time I hired an organizer for my apartment. One of the things I wanted then was a closet filled only with clothes I loved. In order to have that closet, I had to get rid of all the clothes I didn’t like and all the ones that no longer fit. I feel like I’m now doing that with my life to fill it with things I love.