123: Taghazout Workation Reflections & Embracing my Balanced Nomadic Life with Nienke Nina

We’re finally back from a short workation! In this episode, I'm giving a little life update and sharing personal anecdotes about slow-madding and the concept of workation. This episode is all about the benefits of taking a step back from constant nomading, finding more personal connections with your business, and creating new routines. You'll learn the importance of making genuine connections beyond business needs and discover an exercise that's been a game-changer for maintaining self-esteem.

Join me for an insightful talk about redesigning your lifestyle for more freedom and fulfillment.

🔥 Redesigning your nomadic lifestyle
🔥 Slowing down after 5 years of digital nomad life
🔥 Creating space and time to discover the real YOU & purpose
🔥 Benefits of a dedicated workation for remote entrepreneur🔥🔥🔥 And so much more must-know digital nomad lifestyle tips for (aspiring) digital nomads!



This episode is recorded in Teddy Pirate, an amazing beach front coliving in Taghazout right in town. If you want to explore Taghazout too, check out this beautiful nomad home. 

Transcript

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Hello everyone, welcome to a new episode of the Digital Nomads Daily podcast. I'm so excited to record today's episode. I'm going to talk about workation. So today's just going to be me on the podcast and I want to share a very, very beautiful, amazing life changing experience that I had very recently. Well, actually I'm still in it in my digital nomad journey. So I'm currently in like a super beautiful place and usually we don't even record with a video but this time I was like oh my god I really really want to record with video because this room is freaking awesome. I am in Morocco, I'm in Taghazout and it's one of the the hubs here sorry it's one of the digital nomad hubs which is amazing so that means yes I've been meeting a lot of digital nomads. But it also means that I have hang out with some friends of mine, but this was not just like a random trip. This work -cation was very consciously planned around relaxation, around working on my business, around working on myself, just, you know, like a lot of things to reflect on. And yes, it's end of February and bomb, reflections happen. Um, so yeah, so it was like, I, a few weeks ago, I was really like, okay, I need some time away from the city. I need some time for myself and I need some time away and I love my clients. Some of my clients are actually listening to my podcast. So guys, I really love you all love working with you. Good vibes. But I also needed some time to, yeah, to just, you know, be away from the clients, be away from the day to day. uh, muse of entrepreneurship, of work life, uh, of just life in general. And I just wanted to have a little escape. Now, some of you have been listening to this podcast for a really long time. So if you're listening right now and you're like, huh, but Nina, you, you are fully location independent. You're a nomad. Like, whoa, what are you talking about? Workation? Does that even exist in your life? All right. So let me explain it a little bit. Uh, and then for everyone who is new. Hi, my name is Nina and I have been nomading for a long time. So I've been nomading actually for over five years, which is like really, really long time already. And I started realizing that as well as I'm here because some people, they started like maybe a year ago, two years ago. So big gap, right? And all good, by the way, all good. And by no means I'm better, whatever. Just to give you a bit of perspective, this lifestyle has been... a really big part of my life for the past five years. Before that, I was already living abroad. So in total, I've been living abroad also for like a long time. So what I realized is that from nomading, traveling a lot, constantly changing your environment, your community, where you do grocery, changing your pillow even, it gets a little bit tiring. Add entrepreneurship to that and it's really like a self -development journey. on steroids and it's full on all the time. Now there's nothing wrong with that because I think there's a lot of energy in doing that. But I also figured that as I established myself a bit more in Vienna and find some calmness and rest, I was like, wow, actually just not nomading for a while and have some, yeah, some steadiness in my life and knowing where I'm going to do groceries for the next coming months. is really nice and it just freed up a lot of space and energy and time as well. Plus, financially, it was like a whole different ballgame because when I started nomading, like it was kind of a cheap also way of living, especially if I would live in Thailand or Bali, if those places. But these days, it's not really like that anymore. It's getting a bit pricey as well. So anyways. I realized that it was nice to take a step back from the nomading. So that doesn't mean I'm not a nomad anymore. I still am. But I'm just like reorganizing how I do it and redesigning my lifestyle. And also a really big inspiration were guests on this podcast, Rowena, Chase, other nomads that are more like part -time nomading. And that's because, I don't know, they have a family. Erin also. Maybe they they just really don't enjoy always being on the road So they have a base and then from there they're nomading to other places So there's all these different shapes and forms and I always talk about this like when I'm like meeting people in cafes or whatever But I I don't really I didn't really talk about it much on the podcast So anyway, so I am still this to know map, but I'm doing it a little bit more part -time And like I said, sort of financial component, definitely one thing, but also the time that I spend on like looking for flights, looking for where I want to stay, where do I want to go? Like it turns out location, like it's been really like a lot of, lot of time spent and super awesome. But then at the same time, it's like, yeah, it's really freaking a lot of time spent all that time spent. is important because it's a resource, right? Time is a resource and it's not forever because we all have 24 hours in the day. So even your big heroes online or big heroes, your movie stars or whoever your heroes are, they also have 24 hours in a day. Like they're not any different. So what I started to realize, especially in combination with entrepreneurship, it's like, I want more time for myself. And also I want more time specifically to work on my personal connection with my business and how do I translate that into a business that actually sets me free? I have experienced the part of entrepreneurship for a really long time, especially when I was literally trading time for money, that I was always feel like I was falling behind. I was always like running around, doing more, doing more, actually feeling I was not doing enough because I... didn't do all the things I wanted to do. My to -do lists were always large, lots of things on there. And it really messed up a little bit my self -esteem. Like I had these narratives and I still have this. And I'm sure that if you're working on your own business, maybe you have a passion project or something like that, you might recognize this is that you often say to yourself like, oh. I didn't do this today. Oh, I wish I did this. Oh my God. Where did all my hours go? Like where I didn't do this. Oh yeah. Oh, I really wanted to do this, but again, I didn't get to it. And all of these narratives in your head are actually very negative because you're constantly telling yourself that you're not good enough, that you're not doing enough, that you're falling behind and that you are behind and that you as a person are behind. That's intense. Whoa. So I'm... All of that together, I figured, and yeah, full on honestly, talking to my nomad friends, therapist, having a lot of low moods in the past months, really reflecting on this and going up a painful journey. I'm reflecting on it in a way. It's like, okay, yeah, I would love to have some more time in my day. How can I do that? There's many different ways. I think productivity is a big word. It's a scary word because, you know, like productivity doesn't mean to do more. Although some companies really still believe that. But for me, being freeing up space was really also about not just free up the space, but also understand what do I want to do with that freed up space? Like, how do I want to feel and what are the things that I want to do? So for example, I have around six to eight hours in the week that I am hanging out at the gym, doing workouts. I'm meeting up with my gym buddy. Uh, sometimes I go to the spa there, like to the whirlpool. It's like, it's important for me to have screen free time and to move my body a bit more. I mean, I'm turning 34 this year. I'm also not getting any younger, but in general, like to move my body a bit more and to take care of me and self -love and. And have that as a block in my calendar and just be there, just do that. Also taking weekends off. I started dating someone that is not an entrepreneur. Actually, he's not even a nomad. So he has weekends. Now I have to say it also works quite a bit. So we don't have all the weekends together, but I realized by not being sharing my life with another entrepreneur so closely, I realized how amazing it is to actually have weekends off and to, you know, to just. Just do things for yourself, to do fun things. And I think as digital nomads, digital nomad entrepreneurs more specifically, we sometimes forget that. We have lots of like hustle hard, do more, be more, grow more, blah, blah, blah, lots of that in the space. And I love it. I really, really love this energy. But if you're constantly in this energy, you're not allowing yourself to slow down and just to, yeah, just to be in a space where you can just... sit and have nothing and stillness and think about stuff and that process things. Okay. So very important, but I'm also, you know, so I, uh, I experienced that I wanted to have more time to learn new things. I've been in marketing for 10 years. It's really long time guys. And I love it, but at one point I felt like I'm missing some sort of like connection with my purpose. And I went to the Minoma Festival in November. It's a really, really amazing experience. I have a few episodes on that as well. It's about, it's about mindfulness and there's a lot of our mind entrepreneurs in the mindfulness space. They come to this festival. So there was a lot of, you know, like different practices that you can do to come back to your, to yourself. And one of the things that I learned was about my human design. Now my human design is by Jenna Zoe and that's like her. her expression of how human design works. I love it. And I really started reading into it. But after Minoa Festival, I was so interested, I wanted to read more into it and stuff. I didn't have the time. And that was a huge thing. To be honest, it took me a little while to understand that. Like, whoa, okay, there's this thing that really caught my attention. I'm so interested in it. But I don't have the time to dive deep into like, wow. to really, really go for it. So I figured... That I wanted to, uh, well, there is, uh, a connection issue. Okay, we're good. Jean, please take that part out. All right. So I figured that I need more time to for myself also to learn because when you're learning, that's really good for for also for your self esteem, right? So it was hard to plan this and I wasn't able to really do this. So part of me being on this vacation, I want to say work -ation, nomad -cation. I don't know, like we need to find a better word for this. But part of doing this was also to spend some time on learning and taking time to dive into this. Wow. Yeah. While tanning and hanging out at the beach and have my morning coffee. And this is why not having clients around me in my inbox and my notifications everywhere was so freaking important because I realized that I can not do this when I constantly have the pings and dings from the clients. And again, I love clients. I love working with them. It's amazing. I love my work. But even though if there's so much love, sometimes you need time for yourself. It's like a relationship, right? So it makes total sense. But you know, if you're always like in your normal space, even if you're traveling a lot, it's good to take yourself out of the equation and to be like, Whoa, okay, I have time. So that's what I did very consciously. Now I got to say it was super difficult to write those emails and be like, Hey guys, I'm not here. Let's have a few calls before just to make sure that everyone is aligned. Yeah, it's been really tough. It's been really tough. So I also learned better how to do this. I'm still like figuring this out also for myself. And I want to share this here as well, because it may even seem like, oh, she got it also all figured out. Well, kid, you're not. I don't. Like, I'm also still learning. But that was important moment because I realized that, whoa, this is a boundary setting. realized at the Mino Ma Festival, the boundary setting is a very, very sensitive thing for me still. And I haven't really practiced that because no one really taught me very well in life. Oh, this is how you set boundaries. Or this is even how you know yourself so well, right? It's just like, whoa. So this workation brought up so many other things that are happening that I wasn't aware of. And that's why I think these dedicated moments where you're not doing anything. Other than working on yourself, maybe working on your business or no clients, but just thinking, Hey, what am I offering? Am I still happy with that? How can I make, how can I find more alignment? How can I serve more people? Hey, I had these clients experience last year, this year, this month. I don't know. I actually really didn't enjoy it. Why was that? Or I got really triggered by certain people. What, what really happened there? We sometimes just simply don't have time and space and, and a good conscious space to do that safe space. So that's why this for me was super, super important. Now, the other thing that I really loved about the workation was that I went to a place where are digital nomads. I'm currently staying in a place where there are not so many digital nomads, although I have a few nomad friends, they're super exciting. But being in a space where there are also other nomadic entrepreneurs, mostly people that I am, it's like a LinkedIn algorithm that I'm somewhat connected to. So my main connector in this point is Marius from Minoma. So I went to the Minoma Festival. I'm actually working with Minoma. So it's just amazing. And we also had to, you know, like do some, uh, some brainstorming because Minoma and I are partnering up, which is super exciting. That's actually more, not so much digital known as daily, but more with my agency, Start Digital, where we, uh, develop marketing strategies for nomadic brands and companies and people in a mindfulness space. So, uh, anyway, so I'm. I'm hosting, I'm going to do an experience with her, but we know I was amazing. Oh my God, a whole new episode. But anyways, so, you know, we wanted to talk about this now, virtual doing all these co -sharing things is amazing, but there's something about being in person, especially because this is a lot about mindfulness, entrepreneurship, uh, connecting your business more with your purpose, um, connecting your offers more with your purpose, like all of these things. So we wanted to be in the same space. She's in Morocco and Tagazout and I was like, I need some sun. Oh, this pom pom pom. Everything is aligning, which is amazing. So long story short, I came here also to connect with her. Now this connection is important because from this connection, I also met up with Frank again, who does breath work. He lives here in Tagazout. So I went to a breath work session. There was a girl at the Minoma Festival, Inya, who I actually... I mean, there were like 60, 70, 80 people there. So you don't meet everyone or talk to everyone. So we didn't really connect it there. Then here it was like, oh, you were also there. And then we connected and then we started chatting and pump pump pump pump fireworks, amazing conversations. And it's interesting because she and I were are part of the same community. But then we were in the same location already, but then the connection didn't happen. Now it happened very consciously and strongly, and that was beautiful. And I had this also with Anya. There's Anya, Anya, Anya, there's so many of these. But this is, she will also come on the podcast to talk about Tantra, which is really amazing. I also met her at Minoma Festival, but then I didn't connect with her either at the festival, but then I saw her later in Seville for another event. It was amazing. We... magic. So these workations or sort of shorter trips where you're more focused on yourself are also very interesting because then when you're connecting, you're connecting more with your soul rather than with your business or your ego or like, you know, all of that. Being in not a business mode and not like client mode, not like sales mode, not, not strategy mode, like just Ninkenina mode, Mii mode, really helped me to form other types of connections. And this is also something that I really appreciate that I really love. So, whoa, I'm talking already for a little while about this workcation. And so it's been really amazing because of, of all of these things. The other thing that I realized, and this is more, it's an open invitation, but a really, really strong encouragement to all my digital nomad, entrepreneur, side hustle, freelancer friends. take some time to relax. Sometimes it's so nice to just go for a walk, listen to some music, sit on the beach, listen to some music. I don't know, have a poke bowl or fruit salad with a nice view, but just do nothing. Just relax or just be with people and have fun, but don't even mention your work. I know that there is a lot of power in making connections, in building relationships. I love it too, but... In the nomad space, there's such a strong component on making connections, maybe because for your business and all of these things that sometimes we forget to just connect, just connect heart to heart connections. So this is really an open invitation again, very strong encouragement. I didn't give myself much time to do this, especially more so when I was surrounded by a lot of nomadic entrepreneurs. And I think that. subconsciously, it put a lot of pressure again to what I talked about in the beginning. Are you doing enough? Did you do everything that you wanted to do? Did you hit all your goals? Oh my God, like this person is doing that. I should have been starting that project already. Yeah, it's been on my list. Like all this entrepreneurial talk, but it's so amazing, but it. It's sometimes too much. So if you can find a moment in the upcoming days, have a look at your schedule. And have a look at the type of conversations you have with people in the interactions. And maybe you're already doing it. And if that's the case, oh my God, let me know. That's amazing. That's an inspiration. But if you don't really find time in your, so when you analyze your time, right. And if you don't really find a lot of time where you're just for yourself, just be with yourself. If that, if you don't really see those moments when you're tracking back everything, then I think that could be a really, really strong sign. That this is something that you might want to do. I'm not saying you have to go on a full workation. You can do this at home or at when you're nomading, but put some time in your calendar just to be with yourself and to just give yourself some love and grace. Like I think that we forget this sometimes. I've been going on this journey where I definitely forgot that a lot. Not so great, but also I'm not beating myself up for it because I think the strongest thing is when you. recognize something and you can sort of analyze it. You can talk about it with your friends, with a therapist. I don't know, reflect on it in whatever way works for you, maybe journaling. And then change the routine, change the habit, change the way you're doing things and find some consistency in that. So it doesn't even have to be big changes. Like I actually said to you guys, oh, six to eight hours in the gym, that's been a build up. I didn't start with that. I started two hours in the gym a week because I didn't like to work out before. So I was just like, whoa, this is too much. So take it slow and create new routines and habits and how you spend all your time. I think that would be really good. Now, just from personal experience, what I find is for me, what works in the middle of the day when I have to shift my energy, whether it's going from doing sales stuff to being super creative or going from creative to strategy or whatever it is. That's when in that break point, I create a transition time, which is usually the gym. If it's not the gym, it will be a walk or something like that. And it really helps for me to change my scenery. So I have different sort of offices in the day, usually two, not more than two or three, but usually it's two. And the other thing that really, really helps is... to find a moment in the day, whether it's in the morning, in the middle of the day, in the afternoon, where you just like, I don't know, even if just five minutes, just sit with yourself and don't like, try to reflect on the things that you're super duper proud of. Like super duper proud. Doesn't even have to be the big stuff. Maybe it's like, today I'm proud because I went for a walk. Today I'm proud because... I did X, even though I wasn't feeling it, the vibe wasn't there, but I still did it and I felt X, Y, and Z afterwards. I have been doing this exercise for almost a month now. Oh wait, this, yeah, no, it's a month now, so a month. And it's been a game changer. I used to reflect on the day like, oh, this was hard, this, this, this, this, this happened. And I'm not saying it's wrong because there's different ways on how to reflect. but really, really just writing down the stuff that I'm proud of. Wow. Oh my God. So much self love. Now I have my moment in the day that I do this, but if something happens, for example, I had a difficult conversation or I don't know, I went for this walk and I actually didn't want to do it or just, just stuff like that. Or I sent out an email and I had a bit, you know, like sensations, anxiety. That's when I write this down. I have a very little notebook and I just, it's super, it fits in my tiny purse and I just bring it everywhere. And that's what I do. I just write all the stuff down. I'm proud of, because you know, if we cannot wait for other people to give us the shoulder tics and the love ourselves, we really need to give ourselves our love, right? So that was an open invitation. I hope when you guys are planning your workcation, you're also going to a magical place. Now, if you need help with this or if you feel like, okay, this sounds really interesting, but I don't really know where to get started. Feel free to just slide a DM like, or slide in my DM. Because I'm not offering anything here by the way, but I just like, for me, it was so nice. And I would love to have conversations also more with people that are also thinking about doing workations. So if you have done it and you're like, oh my God, I so resonate with this. It would be really cool to have a chat. to get some more inspiration out there and to inspire other people as well. And some of these folks will be nomadic and some of these people are working from home in a flexible environment. But yeah, they can, you know, they can work remotely a few weeks out of the year. And even then I would say, go for it. All right, guys, this was it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And yeah, until the next episode. And if you love, love, love, love, loved it. Leave a review that would be really amazing a star or heart all the things that you can do and let me know that you listen to it because that would be really cool to connect with you. Alright Have an amazing Nomad life. Happy Nomadding!