115) The Trip That Changed My Life: My Digital Nomad Origin Story

Today, I want take you back to where my nomad life all began because I happen to recording this where it all started, Costa Rica. 
 
 And to be honest, being there on this trip has surfaced some emotional stuff for me that I wasn't fully expecting to surface and it’s kind of caught me off guard. I want to share the lessons that are coming up, my story and some things I want to come clean about. 

I've kind of been a little bit l offended when people ask me this question, which is: what are you running away from? And I have always thought,  why do I have to be running away from something? 
 
 I'm not running away from anything. 

But to be honest, I now understand 10 years later that at the time I was running away from something,  that I just wasn't ready to acknowledge. And today I want to talk about that and my story of how I became a digital nomad and now have a life in Bali. 

I also think that with everything that I share I just really hope that it falls upon the right ears, that there is someone out there who needs to hear this story and is gonna resonate with it, not just to help you feel less alone, but also to as a conclusion to this whole podcast to give you permission. Give you permission to follow your dream, whether you are running away from something or not. 
 
 So let me take you back to when my nomadic life began.. 

We will dive into: 

• The travel story of how my digital nomad life actually began
• Why Costa Rica changed everything for me
• What it felt like taking the first steps toward a remote job lifestyle
• The emotional side of returning to the place where your dream started
• The excitement, uncertainty, and discomfort of building a life as a digital nomad
• Why sometimes our biggest life pivots begin with one spontaneous trip

Curious about becoming a digital nomad? 

DM me @christabellatravels the code: APPLY 

🎧 Ready to take action? Watch Christa’s free training “5 Steps to Work From Wherever” — your roadmap to building a remote business: digitalnomadlifeacademy.com/biztraining

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Story Matters

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Hey there and welcome to the Digital Nomad Life Podcast. I'm your host, Krista, also known as Kristabella Travels on social media. I always say my handle at the beginning of every episode because I love hearing from you. I love hearing your comments about the podcast. I love hearing your questions about my nomad life. I hear I love to hear your questions about how you can make your nomad life a possibility. I love to hear what you're confused about, what your hopes and dreams are. Like it really just lights me up so much when you guys do message me. So I can't encourage that enough. And I also want to emphasize my handle specifically is Christabella Travels, right? And um I think a lot of people that stumble upon this podcast, you're probably interested in living a traveling lifestyle, which uh at one point was my number one main priority in life. And um in this episode today, I kind of I want to take you back to where my nomad life all began because I happen to be there physically right now. So crazy. My nomad life began in Costa Rica at the end of 2015, early 2016, it was New Year's. I went there for a New Year's trip. And um, that is again where my full-time nomadism life was born. And um, that was a wild time for me. And I will tell you all about why it was so wild, just like the unknown of it all, the excitement of it all, and the pain of it all, to be honest. Um, something that I experienced while in Costa Rica this time, right? Because now it's like 10 years later. Um, I hadn't been to Costa Rica since that initial moment of beginning my nomad journey to now. And um I have to say, like being there on this trip surfaced some emotional stuff for me that I wasn't fully expecting to surface. Like it kind of caught me off guard. And um, I think that there's a lot of lessons in there and just a story about myself and um about my life that I just feel like I I want to kind of come clean about. Um I think I've like alluded to this in several podcast episodes, and it's been something that I think people have asked me about, and I've kind of been a little bit like offended when people ask me this question, um, which is what are you running away from? And I was always like, why do I have to be running away from something? Why can't I be running towards my dreams? I'm not running away from anything. Um, but to be honest, I now understand, 10 years later, that at the time I was running away from something that I just wasn't ready to acknowledge. And um I want to talk about that because again, this is just my platform. It's a self-expression moment for me to be sharing this story with you. But again, I also think that um everything that I share, I just really hope that it falls upon the right ears, like that there is someone out there who needs to hear this story and is gonna resonate with it, not just to help you feel less alone, but also to um, as a conclusion to this whole podcast, to give you permission to follow your dreams. Whether you're running away from something or not, running towards my dreams of having complete freedom and seeing the world is the best thing that I ever did for myself. And even though on this trip I got a little bit triggered and cried a little bit about what I'm gonna share with you, um I ultimately came to a place of such deep gratitude for the younger version of myself who made the decisions that she made in order to get me to where I am now. Okay, um, that was quite an intro. Uh, so anyway, just to share about like what's to come in this episode, I want to take you back to where my nomad life all began. I want to tell you the story of how I became a digital nomad. Um I do talk about that in my very first episode, but I made that episode years ago, and um I think my perspective is a little bit different now. So I'm gonna tell the story in a slightly different way, I expect. Um, so I want to tell you about how I got started as a digital nomad, um, what I was actually like really experiencing in hindsight, and I want to tell you about the rest of the trip that I've been on because I wasn't just in Costa Rica. I'm actually recording this episode right now in Panama. I'm in a place called Boca Stel Toro. I'm with my mom, um, who her and I have traveled together quite a bit. Before I was in Costa Rica, I was in Tulum, Mexico with my sister. Um, I the reason why I went to Costa Rica was for this festival called Envision, which was so amazing. It was like so cool. I can't wait to tell you all about the festival and the amazing characters that I met while I was there. And um, yeah, by the time you listen to this, I will probably be in Miami to see another friend because I can do that. I can visit my sister for her birthday, I can visit my friend for her birthday, I can go to a festival, I can see my mom, and um, I still can hold down my business, I can still serve my clients, I can still get shit done, and I am just living my best life the whole time. So I can't wait. I just I'm I'm I'm like so activated and like can't wait to tell you all the things. Um, and just a final conclusion about everything that I am about to say is that I am a truth teller. Okay. Like I'm not just here telling you that life's so amazing when you work for yourself. Like, I'm gonna tell you the raw, honest shit. The shit that was the hard part about my life too, because it has not been all sunshine and roses, okay? So um, yeah, I think why don't we start off with me talking about how I became a digital nomad? Okay, so how I became a digital nomad plus why I originally became a digital med, the real reason why. Okay, my story begins, let's just say, like way, way, way back in my life when I realized that I was obsessed with traveling from a pretty young age. I was really inspired by my grandmother who had gone on all these cool trips and would always bring me back cool trinkets. But specifically, there was this time I was um 13 or 14 years old and I did this cross-country trip with my class. And there was like 40 of us. I was hanging out with all my friends. We went to, I don't know, South Dakota and like all these other cool places in the US. And um, I have this memory of me standing at the edge of a canyon and feeling this overwhelming sense of freedom. I was feeling free because there was no one that I had to be responsible for their emotions for. And this is the thing that maybe I've hinted at in several other podcast episodes. If you guys dig into like what my earlier life and my childhood was like, but I am a person that was born into a super dysfunctional family. And I would say that my dad is a super not safe person, unfortunately. And um, yeah, my childhood just was chaotic, tumultuous time at home was quite chaotic and tumul tumultuous on a daily basis, all the time. So um, yeah, when I felt that sense of freedom when I was younger, that was the thing that got me hooked on travel. I was like, this is the answer to my peace. So um I graduated from college slash university, and I did what I was supposed to do. I did the thing that everybody was supposed to do, probably the thing that you did as well, if you're listening to this, or the thing that you think that you're supposed to do, which is you go get your education and then you go get a big girl job, or you go get a big boy job where you sit behind a desk or you do the thing that impresses other people at a cocktail party when they ask you what you do, and then they can size you up and try to figure out how much money you're making, and you want to try to get a job that people assume that you're making a lot of money, right? So um, that is exactly what I did. I thought, okay, if I have to go get some big girl job, because that's literally the only option that I'm aware of at the time of being 22 years old and freshly graduated, how can I do this? How can I live a life where I can kind of satisfy my travel addiction? Um, but also have the big girl job that I'm supposed to have. So I landed on the perfect idea. The perfect idea in the perfect place, and it was to do travel public relations in New York City. Because I had had a friend that was like, oh, Krista, you would love New York. Like, because you love traveling, New York is so cool because you can, all the neighborhoods are really different. You can like travel in between the neighborhoods, like West Village is so different than the Upper East Side. And I was like, oh, perfect. New York is only a few hours away from Boston. I can still like dip into my family when the guilt starts taking over, and I feel like I really need to see them. Maybe not because I want to, but because I feel like I am supposed to. I don't know if this part is resonating with anyone, but this guilt of like needing to be near your family is something that's a really real reason why a lot of people don't pursue their dreams, why a lot of people don't pursue travel. So I was like, great, I can go home on the weekends, see my family then, and um I can live in a cool place and I can have a cool job. And if I do travel public relations, I can get paid to go on trips. Um, you can Google travel PR. I'm not gonna get into what it is, but well, okay, basically what PR is, if you don't know, is you're trying to get press for your clients. So our clients were like the Department of Tourism for Bermuda, for example. And the Department of Tourism for Bermuda would hire my PR agency, and then we would go try to pitch cool hotels in Bermuda to the New York Times or to travel and leisure. And we would talk to journalists who wrote for these publications and say, hey, like let us buy you a free lunch and we can tell you all about Bermuda and then wink wink, like hopefully you'll write about it for free. That's what PR does. Um, I think actually in another life, I would be excellent at PR if I could do it in my own way, where I really felt like I was in integrity with what I was trying to publicize. But I digress. Um, I was at this PR agency in New York for I was doing marketing in PR for a few years. And this last job that I had, I was struggling so bad with the company culture. Um it was all women at this office, 50 of us. Everybody was between the ages of 22 and basically like 35. So everyone within this, like, I don't know, certain age window. Um, everyone dressed the same, kind of talked the same, had similar college educations. Um, and I just was really feeling like, what the heck is going on? Like, what is this weird space where I'm around all these look-alike characters? And I know I look like them, but I don't feel like them. I feel like such an outsider, which has also been such a theme in my life. And I bet if you're listening to this, you also feel like that. Because people like you and I that have these big wild dreams where we want to do something that's different than everybody else, which being a digital nomad is super different than the way everybody else does things. You're always gonna be like, wow, I kind of wish that I wanted the white picket fence life because those people that have it seem happy, but I just don't want that. Anyway, I had this overwhelming feeling that I was just like energetically, spiritually on a soul level in the wrong place. But still, I had this job. I kept this job until I got fired from that job. I got fired from that job, which like I talk about this in another episode, but I literally remember having like my higher self in the room with me at the time, being like, this is gonna be a good thing. Um, so I got let go, not because I did anything wrong. They just didn't need me at the time. And then I was thrown into this shame spiral where I was like, fuck, what am I gonna do with my life now? I felt so burned by this industry. I was like, I can't, I can't do it again. Like, I don't fit in there, but that's what I thought I wanted to do, and now I don't know what else to do. And that's when I was reminded of the whole reason why I was in New York City in the first place was because I wanted to travel. So I was like, perfect. Why don't I just use this opportunity to go travel? Oh wait, I have no money. Oh wait, I'm living paycheck to paycheck. Oh wait, I still have a lease. Long story short, um I was looking at all the different reasons, all the different ways that I could try to make money while traveling. And I came across the concept of teaching English in Thailand. So um, this is the part of the story where I'm gonna rush through, but basically, I decided to um sell all my furniture. I got the security deposit back from my lease when it ended in a few months. I was just doing like random freelance gigs in the meantime just to stay afloat in New York. And I, with$5,000 to my name, used, I think,$1,200 of that to book a ticket to Thailand, another thousand to pay for my English teaching degree in Thailand. That would take like a month. And then that was$3,000 left for me to survive before I got a job in Thailand, an English teaching job. So yeah, long story short, I moved to Thailand on a one-way ticket thinking that I would be there maybe for six months just to kind of go like scratch my travel itch and get some kind of professional experience and make some money while I was backpacking. That was the plan. It was never meant to be longer than six months. Now here I am, flash forward literally like 13 years later. Um, but once I got to Thailand, I had this familiar feeling of like, oh my gosh, I feel so free here. I don't even have to go home on the weekends. Like, even if I feel guilty that I'm not around, like I have the perfect excuse for me to not come home to visit because I'm on the other side of the planet. And that felt felt really, really liberating, to be honest. Um, plus, when I got to Thailand, I realized that I actually maybe I was insane, but I was around a lot of like-minded people that were maybe they were also insane, but I thought that they were cool. They were other people who came from all over the world that were that had figured out different ways to come live in a tropical paradise, just like me. They were all people who had felt like they didn't quite fit in back home. And here we are now all together having this like deep understanding of one another and just really like all sharing the high vibrations of us living out our dreams. And it was just amazing, have to say, being in Thailand. Oh, I ended up not even teaching English. Like I ended up, I did the TEFL, um, but then I got a job in marketing, a really cool job that I probably never would have been able to get when I was in New York City because the competition is insane in New York. And in Thailand, it's just not like there weren't that many qualified people with a marketing degree that were actually there, available and ready to work, like I was. So yeah, I got long, I got hired at this tech startup in Thailand to do marketing for them. And um I just honestly, my time in Thailand in Bangkok was so magical. Like my life kind of looked the same as it had looked in New York. I still woke up in a in an apartment. I commuted to work on the on public transportation. I went to a gym after work and worked out, and then I would do happy hours with my friends. But then the difference was that on the weekends I was living my best hippie life, dancing barefoot in the rain on a beautiful beach around a lot of other people who just fucking got it. You know, not around all the other people that were always sizing me up, asking, oh, what do you do? aka, how much money do you make? Can't stand that shit. Anyway, I loved living in Bangkok so much. But here's where things went awry. Literally, just four months after me moving to Thailand, my childhood home caught on fire with an electrical outlet spark, and um, the house essentially, I don't want to say it burned down because it was still standing, but it was basically totaled. Um, no one was hurt in the fire. And actually, if you ask pretty much anybody in my family today about that fire, we all say it was like the best thing that ever happened to our family because we were a pretty like fractured family unit. Um, as I as I shared, it was a pretty dysfunctional experience back then when we were all kids, and all there was just so much misunderstanding between everyone. And so this fire, um, yeah, just sort of like initiated so much change in our family dynamic, which ended up unfolding over the next like 10 years, basically. But the fire was like this big catalytic moment. And um, yeah, so that happened while I was away. And then this fire was ultimately the catalyst to my parents' divorce. And when you're living on the other side of the planet and all this shit is going down, it's just painful and hard to be that far away. Remember, I had a normal job at the time. Um, also, very, very, very sad. Two of my aunts passed away while I was there. And um while I was like absolutely loving my life abroad and this super magical experience that I was having, traveling to all these different places, meeting all the right people. Um, ultimately, that guilt, right? That like deep guilt that I'm sure you know what I'm talking about too, as I say this of being away from my family was just setting in deeper and deeper and deeper. And I have to give myself credit. I like held out for a couple of years. Um, I did go home and visit, but uh ultimately after two years in Thailand, I just couldn't take it anymore. I was like, I can't be a 12-hour time difference away, a 24-hour flight away, and um have to use all of my vacation time just to go see my family. Even though I had more vacation time than I had when I was living in the US, it still wasn't enough to be like living my best life and also having any relationship with my family. So after two years in Thailand, I threw in the towel and I was like, I gotta go, I gotta go back. So that's what I did. I booked my one-way ticket back to the United States and um I volunteered to try to support my dad in trying to fix the house, basically, and get him back on his feet. And um, yeah, this was I yeah, oh my god. A little hard to be recording this, but um I'm just gonna say that like that chapter of going back home after I had had a couple years of separation, after having that feeling of freedom for two whole years, it was like suddenly the the dysfunctional relationships of my family were too much to bear and I couldn't take it anymore. It was like I had already felt what it felt like to be free and not have that constant guilt of just doing the right thing and being the good daughter that I couldn't unfeel it. And I had to had to listen, I had to listen to what felt right for me. So um, plus I was interviewing at all these jobs in Boston and New York, and I even got several jobs. Like the experience that I gained when I was in Bangkok was really cool, and a lot of corporations and tech startups were like really interested in working with me after. But I just I remember like putting on a blazer, going to an interview and being like, what the heck am I wearing? Like, this isn't feel like me anymore. This is like such like an older version of me. So long story short, I'm in the US and I'm trying to figure out what the fuck is my next move. And I just don't know. I can't go back to Thailand. Like I left because it was just too far away, and having a job thing in a foreign country that far away, just like I it wasn't the answer anymore. Um, but living in Boston, like just wasn't the answer either. And then working in corporate definitely wasn't the answer either. So when I tell you I was confused about what the hell to do with my life, I was out of solutions. Okay. I had no idea. I was so confused. I was so frustrated. I was so lost. And um, I just didn't know. And I'm like a person that usually has my eye on a prize. Like I'm a very driven person. I can get tunnel vision about things that I want. But when I don't know what I want, that feeling sucks. I hate that, I hate that feeling. And at this time I was really drowning in that feeling. So basically, as I'm trying to figure my shit out, um, one of my girlfriends from New York reaches out and she's like, hey, I have this vacation time. I want to go somewhere for New Year's. Where can we go? And so we look around and we're like, Costa Rica, okay, yeah, that's like pretty close. Yeah, the flights are pretty cheap. We just arbitrarily choose Costa Rica and off we go. So uh Emma, shout out to Emma if you're listening to this. Um, Emma was there with me from the very beginning. And she was there with me when I got my job offer. A job offer with a tech startup that I had applied to several months before, and they had given me some freelance work that I was doing just like on the side. Um, so because I was doing some like light freelance work for this company, I had brought my laptop with me to Costa Rica. She had one week vacation time. I was like, you know what? I can do one extra week of time alone in Costa Rica. Like, I'm not really super comfortable with solo traveling, but I can I can do it for a week. I can do anything for a week. So I go to Costa Rica with my laptop, and that is when this company that I'd been freelancing for offers me a full-time remote job. And I'm like, hey, like I would love to start, but um, you know, I'm in Costa Rica right now and I'm not gonna be back for another couple weeks. And I remember I will never ever forget my boss being like, Krista, the job's remote. Like if you have your laptop, you can just start right now. Like, if you if you don't want to start for two more weeks, you don't have to, but you and I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I can just do the job from here. And he was like, Yeah, if you have Wi-Fi, which you obviously do. And I was like, What? Hold up. It was like my world, it was like this like wormhole, this like portal completely opened up. And I, my, my mind, like, I don't even know how to explain the sensation. Like, it was like gaining a sixth sense, this realization that my life could be completely different starting immediately, like literally right now. And I didn't even know what it meant. I had never even heard of the term digital nomad. I just knew that I didn't want to go back to the snow, that I had just wrapped up a really, really uncomfortable experience at home trying to support my dad, and it wasn't working. Um, and I didn't know what else to do. And I knew that I loved traveling. Traveling was always a thing that I was sure about. I always knew that I loved to travel. That was like the number one thing that I've that I was sure about. So when I got offered this job, I was like, all right, I guess I'm gonna start from Costa Rica. I remember calling my mom being like, Mom, I think I'm not gonna come home for a little while. I think I'm gonna go to Nicaragua instead, because I met all these people in a hostel and they're going. So I left Costa Rica and then off I went to Nicaragua, and then and then I took my laptop and I went from Nicaragua to where did I go? Ecuador. And then I went to Ecuador, and then I went to the and then I went to the Galapagos, and then I went to Brazil, and basically I was on this like six-month going literally wherever the wind blows me chapter of my life. And at the beginning of this episode, when I was like, yes, it was the most exciting, it was so beautiful, it was amazing, and also emotionally it was tough. I was feeling really, really lost at the time. Um, this job like was so great. It was like the most unicorn job ever. This startup that had unlimited funding. I was really free and flexible with the work that I was doing. People were so chill, they didn't care where I was. I was like winning the lottery. Like this kind of job, by the way, doesn't really exist. Like I just got so lucky. I feel like the universe was like, girl, you need this, and you're gonna do big things with this opportunity someday, trust us. Um, I feel like the divine threw threw it to me. Um, so yeah, it was like so magical. And I just was really struggling with who the fuck am I? Like, what matters to me? Where am I gonna go after this? What do I want in my life? Um, like, how am I gonna manage my relationship with my family? Like, I I like love everyone dearly, and also we just like don't get along and it's really hard and it's painful. And like, I just uh yeah. And I and traveling like that, I didn't have any friends. I didn't know anybody who was doing what I was doing. Every single person that I was meeting was a backpacker. No, again, this this was like early 2016. The term digital nomad, I think, was only coined a few years earlier, maybe by Tim Ferris in the book Um The Four-Hour Work Week. Like it just wasn't a thing. Um, fiber optic was barely a thing. Um, it's crazy how things have changed so much in the past decade about like internet and the subculture of digital nomads. But yeah, again, just at the time, I was alone. I was really, really alone. And I couldn't keep up with the speed of the backpackers. Like obviously, there was people that I was connecting with and that I was really enjoying their time and and and making friends with, people that I really liked and had amazing adventures and experiences with, but they were moving on too fast. I needed to work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every Monday through Friday. And um that's just not how most backpackers do it. Backpackers are like constantly doing fun stuff, and then they spend a week in one place and then they move on. I needed to spend minimum two weeks, three weeks, or a month in a place if I wanted to see anything because I was working 40 hours a week, which I wasn't complaining, but I just the point is like I wasn't able to maintain friendships with my job that way without knowing other digital nomads. And that was sad. So basically, like imagine six months of solo, solo time not knowing where you belong, not knowing what the future holds, not knowing what you even want for the future, just being really confused and lost. And honestly, there was like this deep sadness that was there, I think, all the time. And and also, oh my God, I had so many amazing moments and so many amazing memories that I created, and I met so many cool people, and I saw so many amazing things that made me just cry, tears of gratitude for how privileged I am that I get to see this, that I get to be here at this age. I was 20, I was in my I was in my 20s still when this all started. Like, how did I, how could I be so blessed? Um, and yeah, really just this like very strong contrast between my situation and the way that I felt. And it was uh it was a time, let me tell you, it was a time to be alive. Um while I just shared with you that I had this deep sadness and confusion at the time, I was not acknowledging that. So um, from the outside, I was just all smiles. From the outside, if anybody asked me about my life, it was amazing! Oh my god, it was so great. And it and the thing is, it was like it was so great. And I and this was my dream ever since I was a child. Like, I wasn't just trying to live abroad to be free. I am also someone who's fascinated by the world. I love learning about other cultures. I'm so curious about other people. Um, I love seeing how humanity and society functions at large. That's my double Aquarius. Um I'm actually a triple Aquarius, Sun, Moon, and Mercury. Anyway. Um, yeah, so it was like I was living my dream and I was running away from my problems. I and I was running away from dealing with the painful reality of my dysfunctional family, which at the time we just like didn't really talk to each other very much, and we hadn't we didn't really communicate, and everybody was just kind of off doing their own thing, and it was peaceful that way. Um, but also not so lovely, loving. Anyway, um, that's how I originally became a digital nomad and how I transitioned my life into what it is now, as I shared with you, getting a job like I had. Um, I need you to understand like how truly rare it was. I had really, really unique, interesting experience of like three years in corporate marketing and PR in New York City, plus another two years of um incredible international startup experience in Thailand, where I got to do so many different things. Like I was a highly qualified person for the job that I ended up getting, the remote job. And I think for a lot of people, like they just you you need to be qualified to get a kind of job that I had. And also, this startup that I was working for was self-funded by these billionaires, and like that's just billionaires is an incredibly rare person as well. And just everything about it, it was a diamond in the rough, like true unicorn situation. And I was after a few years of me living out of my suitcase, not having a home base, I was like, I'm never gonna find a job that's better than this. Like it's just it's impossible. Like, what could ever give me this much freedom and flexibility and pay me well and give me this kind of security? Like, it's just not, it's not out there. I know that it's not out there. Um, so when I got to a point where I was really, really bored with the work that I was doing, I was really, really over it. I felt really, really unfulfilled. I felt unfulfilled by my work. And I also started to feel unfulfilled by the traveling because even though I was now starting to meet other digital nomads and I was having more lasting relationships, um, I still was working nine to five. So I didn't fully have freedom over my time. I definitely didn't have creative freedom over the kind of work that I was doing. And um, I could only only sound so spoiled, but I could only be in the Western hemisphere because of the time zone. And after years of traveling in the Western hemisphere, I started to run out of countries. So yeah, um, I just I kind of got to a point where I started feeling really jaded and um I didn't know what to do. So I thought, you know what? There's all these people out there that I can help. I know there's all these other people that I'm meeting while I'm backpacking and traveling that are like, what are you doing on a laptop? Are you a trust fund baby? And I'm like, no, anybody can do this. Like, like there are lots of remote jobs that are out there, but I also have met so many entrepreneurs at this point. And I just really wanted to educate people on the fact that first of all, I wasn't a trust fund baby. I was making money while I was doing this. I wasn't some kind of like spoiled brat, but also I wanted people to know that like it is possible to make money from your laptop. So I started posting about it on Instagram, and now this is like 2018 that I really started. That's when I renamed my handle to Cristabella Travels, and I doubled down on just like sharing all about my lifestyle, and my account grew pretty quickly. People were really interested and curious, go figure, because yeah, just feel like people literally didn't know. They didn't know that the nomad life was possible. So I took it upon myself to educate the masses, and then that invited even more people to be asking me, wait, how did you do this? What are the options? And um, because I had been really intentionally trying to ease my loneliness of uh yeah, of my traveling, I was doing the most to meet other digital nomads. I must have met, like, I don't even know, hundreds, hundreds of people who were working remotely in those years. And I started noticing that I was like, these people that I'm meeting, almost all of them have their own business. That's so interesting. Like they all of them, I kind of thought that you had to be some kind of rocket scientist to have your own business. I thought if to be an entrepreneur, you needed to be super smart or you needed to have a really good business idea. But all these people had businesses that were just like super standard, like super basic. Like they were like copywriters, they were virtual assistants, they were designers, they were software engineers, they were uh like accountants, um, they were just all kinds of like normal stuff. And through meeting all these people, it started to open up my mind to how entrepreneurship must not be that hard if all these people can do it. And it also really gave me a lot of insight as to what was even possible for remote work. So, long story short, um around the end of 2019, I had had I had met so many people that worked remotely. I had I had so many people in my DMs on a daily basis asking me how I was living this lifestyle that I was like, you know what? I think I can start coaching on this. So I started, I opened up a calendarly link and started offering just hourly calls for people to pay me so that they could pick my brain and talk to me about digital nomadism. And um, I'm super proud to say that uh just like three of those really early, I only had a handful of them. Um, but yeah, like some of the people that booked those early, early calls with me were able to ultimately change their lives and become digital nomads too, because of our conversation. I was like, wow, people just literally don't know what I know. Like this is insane. Um, and then ultimately I hired a business coach right before the pandemic. And during the pandemic, that was when I started really promoting my digital nomad coaching business. And essentially the rest is history. I replaced my income at my job within just a few months of launching my business. And um, I moved to Bali, which is where I had always wanted to be, but couldn't with my time zone issue with the job. And um, yeah, I've been living in Bali ever since for the past six years. And what's crazy is like I think the day that this podcast comes out is literally my six-year anniversary in Thailand. I mean, sorry, in Bali. So yeah, um, that's the story of how I became a digital nomad, but like the raw story and the motivation behind it. And um, just to kind of like clear things up and and wrap things up, basically the way that my family is now, um, essentially my dad is just estranged from everyone. And all the rest of us are really happy and like supporting each other and loving one another and visiting one another and having good, healthy relationships with good, healthy boundaries, and we're like building new traditions. And um, it's just like my dream come true to have to have a happy family, and I'm so grateful for that. It's like the thing that I always wanted. Maybe I wanted it even more than traveling. But traveling was the thing that like that deep desire that I had for traveling, even if it came from a place of just like desperately wanting that feeling of freedom. If I were to have this conversation with the younger version of myself, with earlier Krista, who didn't have that level of self-awareness and didn't know, was just kind of like in denial, just sort of going through the motions, um, using traveling as a coping mechanism, as escapism. Maybe I would bring some awareness to her, but I also would be like, but girl, go fuck, go fucking get it. Like go out there and chase your dreams. Like it is okay to want to not be around the thing that's causing you pain. It is okay. It is okay. And when you choose joy, which is what you feel when you are in these magnificent places, when you are gawking at a waterfall, when you're standing on the edge of the Sahara Desert watching the sun dip below the horizon, when you're putting your hand through crystal clear glass waters in the Galapagos and watching sea turtles swim below them and and sea lions torpedoing away like little puppies of the sea. And when you see the pyramids of the Mayans and of the Egyptians all in the same year, like when you see this stuff and you feel so much joy and inspiration, this is what life is about. And whatever your motivation is for going out there and seeing the world, fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. Go out there, girl, and get it, see it, choose yourself because when you choose yourself, look, look, listener. My business helps people live better lives. My business helps people see the world and fulfill their dreams, it helps them spend more time with the people that they care about, it helps them make more money, it helps them do more meaningful work, it helps them tune into their authenticity, it helps them live their actual best life, whatever their best life is for them. And the only reason why I'm able to create this business and share this business and share my gift, share this gift with people, the only reason why I'm making this episode, why you're listening to it, is because of her, is because of the younger version of myself who needed to just take care of her, who needed to stop allowing guilt trips to keep her small, who needed to not be in an environment where she felt like a freaking alien, where she felt like, why does everybody else feel like this lifestyle is okay of this like corporate grind? And I don't like why like she does she didn't need to be suffering in that way any more than than she ended up doing. Ultimately, I'm kind of glad that I suffered for those years because really it like gives me a lot of content for for my business now. Like I feel like I'm still harping on my on my job and how much I hated it. Um, and so uh in the end, I'm glad. And you know what? I'm grateful for my I'm grateful for my dad. I'm grateful for my dysfunctional family. I'm grateful for all the fucking childhood drama because it gave me a fire to pursue my dreams. I really hope that this episode is reaching the right person. I I pray. I pray that it is reaching you and whoever you are out there, whatever you've been struggling with, whoever in your life has been causing you grief, please say hi. Like, can we just talk about it? Like, I would love to hear from you. Um, again, my handle is Christabella Travels on Instagram. Um, and just tell me that you've come from the podcast. You know, like the thing about the work that I do and the message that I have, where I'm like shouting out to the world, like, guys, live your best life. Like you can build a business so that you can live a life of freedom and and uh sure travel if you want to, but like just like be where you want to, make the money that you want to, exist how you want to, wake up when you want to, just do what you fucking want to, do what makes you feel good. That message um just unfortunately, it needs to be heard by so many people. I promised you guys that I was gonna share with you about my trip to Costa Rica. So I was just there, right? And um, I was at this festival called Envision, which uh how do I describe Envision? I'll tell you about it in a sec. But anyway, it's there's all these really interesting people that are there, and they're all kind of this like black sheep type personality like me, right? They're all people that are living life a little bit off kilter, you could say. And um, I had this really interesting conversation with a girl there. I was telling her about what I do, and she was like, wow, that must be so fulfilling. And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, I could just, I can just see your clients now. Like, there's so many people that end up in jobs that they just can't stand. Like, for example, a lawyer, like I obviously there are some people out there that love their, that love their work as a lawyer, but it's really like it's a job where you kind of have to fuel anger a lot. And why do people do it? Because it makes a lot of money. And why do they want to make a lot of money? Because their parents told them that they should. And their parents were like, here are the three things that you can do to make a lot of money. You can be a doctor, you can be a lawyer, you can be an engineer. Um, and those are kind of the options for people that feel a lot of pressure from their parents, from their society. And I just, I just think, I just know, and she knows, this is why we were having this conversation, that the number of people that are out there that are working in in careers that they just can't stand simply because another person that they trust told them that they quote should do it, is insane. Like there's some crazy statistic that 80% of people, at least in the US, don't like their jobs. That is so sad. That's so much time that we spend working. It's not fair. And it's it's messed up that it's normalized that people don't like what they do. Meanwhile, I'm out here being like, guess what? You can love what you do, you can feel really good about your income, and and you also can be wherever the hell you want. You can go wherever the hell you want, you can travel wherever you want, you can live a life that makes you feel inspired and authentic. And still, people just like they hear these messages and then they get caught up in fear. They're like, oh, but what would so-and-so think, or what will I do with my parents because maybe they need me, or they're, or they're just gonna make me feel guilty about leaving. Here's the thing about that, okay? I just told you, I'm literally in Panama with my mom right now. And I was in Costa Rica after this festival. I loved the festival. For me, being in Costa Rica really brought me back to all these feelings that I had when I first started my nomad journey, which I just told you about. I was feeling really lonely, really confused, really directionless, stressed, guilty. Um, and I think just like being there in the energy of that country, I kind of like digressed to this version of myself and I was more emotional. And I just um I was like, you know what? Like, I'm I'm so glad that I was here to surface all this. I had a good little cry about acknowledging that I really was like a runaway. Um and I love crying. Now I I I never used to cry. I literally like love crying so much. Now every time I cry, I'm like, yes, I like surface to I surface a little demon and now it's out of my system because now it is out of my system. Now I can just say this phrase like I was running away without any emotional charge because I already released it from my system. So anyway, but the point is I did have a good little cry about it in Costa Rica. And I was like, you know what? I have a whole week or so before I need to be in Miami for my friend's birthday. And I would just love to see my mom. And luckily, my mom is spontaneous. Hi, mom. I know my mom listens to every episode. She's so cute. I was like, mom, I am not feeling Costa Rica. I want to go somewhere that I feel inspired by. I want to like tune into the energy of being in love with life again and like excited about the world. And there's this place in Panama, Boca del Toro, that I've heard so much about, but I I've never been there. Um but I only have like 10 days before now between now and Miami. And we were like, okay, cool, we'll just meet there. And five days later, we were hanging out in Panama City, boarding a flight to go to Boca del Toro. And now this is where we are. And we've just spent the last week getting so much quality time in, and it's been so beautiful. Like, I can really recommend Boca del Toro as a destination. It's this archipelago of islands off of Panama on the Caribbean side. So it's so freaking beautiful. Oh my god, the nature here is like you're like drowning in the heavens of the tropics. Like it's there's sloths in the trees, there's parrots, so many hummingbirds. Um, just it's it's amazing. It's amazing here. And you take you have to take little boat taxis to get everywhere. Um there are like these like crazy tin can type boats that are just like plowing through the waves. Um, but it's a fun adventure. And then once you get to the island that you're going to, it's just again like insanely beautiful and so undeveloped, which is what I love. I actually like I haven't explored much of the Caribbean at all because I just can't stand big box hotels. It feels so like matrix-y, capitalistic, and like icky. I just I don't want anything to do with it. I want to, I want to be in the earth and see what God made. Like, I want to be like, oh, this is how this would have looked a hundred years ago, 200 years ago, maybe a thousand years ago, and I get to experience that and like see the creation, yeah, the creation of God. And that's something that I just love about traveling. And here, being here in Boxel Toro, it's just all like really cute mom and pop boutique places and tiny little shops and local-owned restaurants, and again, just these insanely, insanely beautiful, untouched beaches. Ugh, it's just been so great. Um, and yeah, I'm so grateful to be here with my mom. And you know what? Before I was in Costa Rica before the festival, I was in Toulom visiting my sister. And you know what? Next week, after Miami, I'm gonna go back to Bali and spend time with my brother who's in Bali. And maybe my sister will come visit us there too. Um, and like I'm just really happy to report that this is what my family is like now, where you know, we're we're kind of uncon we're kind of like an unconventional family unit. But for me, I just wouldn't have it any other way. Like, I don't want to have a family unit where we just like all live a normal life. Fuck normal. Normal has never brought me anything fun, exciting, or interesting or passionate. Like, I don't know. I just, I just love my life now. And I love that when I see my mom, when I see my sister, when I see my brother, it's this real, real quality time. And we have long calls every month. We like all do a Zoom call that ends up being sometimes three or four hours, and it's just a different way of having a family unit. But um, I think it's wonderful and I'm really happy for all of us. Yeah, I'm happy for all of us, and I am mostly happy for me because I now feel like I don't need to be traveling to be running away from my problems. In fact, like it's almost like a burden for me to be away from a home, which now is Bali, um, for a whole month because I just really love my home. I love the the nest that I have created where I feel so comfy and safe, and I have amazing friends where I live. I I love having a dog and a routine. And again, like I have connection to my immediate family, and I get to go home. I do go home every summer and I see my whole extended family, and we spend real quality time together. So, again, it's just like a different way of doing life, but I love it and I feel really nourished by my life. I feel really nourished by my relationships and by my schedule and by my routine and by my home life. And uh yeah, I'm just so proud to say that I'm not running away. And and life is more abundant now than ever. Because when my sister is like, yo, it would be really meaningful to me if you could be there for my birthday, I'm like, say no more. Okay, I will fly to the other side of the world because I can afford it. I can afford it with my time, I can afford it with my money, I can afford it with my energy, I can afford it with my unlimited vacation time that I give myself because I can bring my laptop and work from Tulum. So this is really the point that I care a lot about driving home now. Like you guys probably heard in the intro that I obviously still travel a lot. Travel will always be my first love, and and it still is something that I that I love. Um, I just have a different relationship with it now because I'm not traveling because I need to. I'm traveling because I've just integrated it in my life and I am now an international citizen. I am a global citizen. So, yes, I do hop on a plane to go to a birthday party, to go to two birthday parties. And because I'm in the Western hemisphere, I'm like, sure, yeah. Well, why wouldn't I go to this festival? I've been wanting to go to it for a while. It's can it's convenient. That's crazy that it was literally convenient for me to go to a festival in Costa Rica. Like, who am I? Like, what is this? So random, but I love it. I feel like it's so magical and whimsical. And I just wouldn't wish anything more for myself or for you, whoever you are listening to this. Um, yeah, whoever you are listening to this, I want to transmit this message to you that I am not special, right? Like I mean, I the universe threw me a couple bones for sure. Um, but I was given the opportunities that I was given because I put myself into situations where I was scared and insecure and lonely. Um, I just felt uncomfortable and I still did the thing anyway. I just sat with my painful experiences and I decided to choose my dreams anyway. That is literally the only reason why I'm here, having this magical life and also feeling healed and at peace and and nourished by love and relationships. So um, yeah, what I want to say to you is you're I really believe in I guess it's the law of attraction. I don't know. I just believe that there are no coincidences. I think that you're listening to this for a reason. Um, I think that whatever message I have, whatever energy I have, you were supposed to hear it. And maybe it'll be a message that like three years from now, um, you'll understand why you heard this, or maybe it's something that you're gonna actually be motivated to take action on soon. And I just want you to know that if you are interested in liberating your life, if you want to have more freedom, if you wanna do work that feels more authentic to you, if you want to make more money, have uncapped earning potential, unlimited vacation time, if you want to be able to say yes to trips on a whim, yes to quality time with your family whenever it works out, yes to a festival in Costa Rica because it you are able to go and it's convenient because you're kind of around it anyway. Like, if you want to, you don't need to have a business idea in order to work with me. You actually don't need to have any clarity. It is my gift to the world is to support people with the clarity part that is really like where I shine. Um, and I also know my shit about business um and marketing. But yeah, like basically, if you want to have this life, you don't need to have any idea or any knowledge. I take you from literal zero. So you could be fresh out of high school, you could be um a mom who's been a stay-at-home mom for the past 10 years, you could be a nurse, you could be a construction worker, you could be anybody. Um, or you could be someone with a professional background that just doesn't know what else you could do other than your profession. You don't need to have a business idea. All you need to do is slide into my DMs at Christabella Travels, slide into my DMs with the word apply, and that will ask you a series of questions that will basically help me learn about you a bit more. And then um once you answer the questions, then we can talk about is the Digital Nomad Life Academy, which is my business, right for you? And can I actually help you? And um if you want to tell me what's been keeping you stuck or why you feel like you can't land on a business idea, or maybe you're scared of entrepreneurship just like I used to be. Um, whoever you are, like I really hope that you understand that my story, I didn't have all of this stuff that enabled me to liberate my life. Like I built it over time. And if I could go back and talk to my 22-year-old self, you know what? I'd again, like I would still make her suffer through the New York City experience. And I would still make her move to Thailand thinking that she'd be an English teacher, and I would still make her feel scared, shitless. But what I wouldn't do is make her sit through years of a remote job that she doesn't love just because she thinks it's not gonna get any better than that. I would be like, girl, you can do more than this. You don't have to be restricted literally at all. Like that job was great, but I did have a capped salary and I was way too scared to ask for a promotion because I was like, I'm scared. I just I was too scared to ask for a promotion. I was insecure about I just was insecure and I was worried that I was gonna lose it. I was in scarcity. So I had I basically made the same amount of money for like four years, and I did have a lot of time, I had a lot of location freedom, but I didn't have time freedom. And today, like literally one of my favorite parts about my life is my fitness routine. And I like the fact that I can go to the gym at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday and then at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday, and whenever I want on any other day of the week, I can. Like, I love that. I also love being able to wake up without an alarm clock, and I love being able to hop on a flight on a whim. I love that for me. I love it. And I want that for you. And I again, I feel like if you're listening to this, you deserve to have this life too. And I know that you can do it. You just need a little bit of guidance and a little bit of clarity, and that, my friend, is what I can support you with. So slide into my DMs at Christabella Travels on Instagram with the keyword apply. And let's just have a conversation. You don't need to commit to changing your life forever right now. But I'm telling you, if I could have had a conversation with an earlier version of myself, I would have made a lot more money a lot faster. All right. Okay, I think that's everything I wanted to share in today's episode. I really appreciate you listening. Thanks for letting me indulge in my story. I hope that you got something out of it. And I hope that I see you in the next episode. Thank you so much. Love you. Bye.