Lessons From a Year of Traveling: Money, Relationships, Personal Growth, and Health.

In this episode of "Struggle Berry Crunch", host Teriyana shares her insights and lessons from traveling on the road for a year. She talks about the different aspects of herself that emerged during her travels and how it was both a difficult and rewarding experience. Teriyana  focuses on what she learned about money, relationships, personal growth, and health while traveling.

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Transcript

Welcome to Struggle Berry Crunch with your host, Teriyana. Hey, Struggle Berrys. How are you? This is Teriyana, your host, and you are listening to Struggle Berry Crunch, a great podcast to help you navigate your life and explore the flavor of your struggle. If you're new here, welcome. I am so excited to get on this microphone today and just talk to you about what I learned from my year of traveling. I just want to talk about what I learned about money traveling, relationships, personal growth, and health, and whatever else I come up with in these next minutes talking to you. So basically, last year, March 2022 to March 2023, I was fully on the road because I got a job with an organization that collects archives and documents stories from communities. So I was recording stories from different locations that I was in, living in different Airbnbs in different cities for a full year. I just recently stopped literally three weeks ago. So this is still really fresh for me. And I counted it. I had been to nine different states and 13 different cities in the whole year. But to get to the meat and potatoes of the episode, what did I learn traveling on the road for 12 months? Oh, my goodness. So much. So much traveling brings out different aspects of you, different insecurities of you, different perspectives of you. And it evolves different parts of those areas as well, which I wasn't expecting. It was a very difficult year, but it was also the most rewarding year I could say of my life. It was a really interesting year. Let's start with what I learned about money traveling on the road. The number one thing that I learned was financial discipline is key to healthy abundance. And basically what that sums down to is get a budget and stick to it, please. Because when I was traveling on the road, it felt like I was on vacation every single month. I wanted to try all the new restaurants. I wanted to go to the amusement parks. I would go to I think I've been to like four different zoos. I've been to like seven different Whole Foods in the year in different states. I really like plan those things out. Like I got to do this. I have to do that. But I didn't realize how much money was going into it in the process, even though like for a year, I didn't have to pay rent and had to pay gas. My company provided me with a car and everything that we needed. So I didn't really have to cover a lot of costs except my food. But the extra money that I probably would have used on rent and my necessities, I was using for vacation type things. Like I said, like traveling and trying new places, going to museums, going on road trips. And of course, I did a lot of free things as well, especially through the people that we partnered with. But I realized too late that I wasn't budgeting properly. I wasn't really looking at the long term like because I knew that it was only going to be a year. How can I separate that mindset of I still have to take care of myself and my responsibilities and then also set things aside for when it's time to have fun? I didn't completely just not be responsible. But I know that like I could have had so much more if I was thinking more long term. So I would say if you are traveling and you have money with you, make a plan. Stretch that out for in trimesters, like three months to six months to nine months to a year and like see like what exactly are you planning on doing? How many things can you do for free first and then map out what you can do for food? Just go down the line with that and how much if you don't have a job at the time, see how much you can expand yourself with that money that you're using so you can feel more fulfilled at the end of your experience. Like you really planned it out and were intentional about it. It's all about intention when it comes to money and growing money and being your best with your money. So that's what I would say about that. I wouldn't say about my money at the time. I definitely did a really good job saving, but I could have done so much better. You're always going to have that retrospect to come back to you about what you could have done better. But this is from my experience like to make you aware of so you're doing it right off the bat. The next thing I want to talk about relationships in that year of travel. I have always been a person who has always been very independent, very introverted, which I didn't really know about myself until last year. Very to myself. So this year was really challenging for me in the terms of relationships and traveling. I also lived with my co-workers for the full year on the road. I didn't have any family with me or friends and that was really challenging. Living with people was insanely hard for me because once I got on my own, I wanted to keep it that way. It was on my own. But living with other people, having roommates taught me that everyone is just doing their best in their own way. And all you can do is accept that and work with your best as it's meeting their best. And it was one of the most life-changing things that I learned about myself on the road in regards to relationships, especially like the communication aspect. Don't assume. Always ask. Always be communicating what you need. Asking what the other person needs. Do not assume. It makes things so much easier. And you're learning about yourself by having relationships with others, because of people's own flaws and their habits, good or bad in your eyes. That really helps you understand what you need as well in that regard. In community, I would say the last thing about relationships, how important community is. There was times I was in areas while I was traveling where I couldn't get my hair done. And that's a big part of my culture. And there was times I really got depressed because I couldn't take care of myself. The way that I wanted to take care of myself because I was in an area that wasn't very diverse. So I would say what relationships, community, when you're traveling is so important. It really is. And I hope that you make the time and effort to find it and take the time to define what that means to you with your relationships, especially when you're traveling. The next thing that I want to talk about is personal growth. What I learned when it came to personal growth. I think the hardest part for me when I was working on the road was not making time for myself. And that was the biggest thing that I realized with my growth and what I needed for myself was to make time for myself and my own hobbies and my own interests and separate myself from what I was doing. And I think the biggest reasoning, excuse that I have for myself was that I was so tired. I was ridiculously tired and I can't express to you how many opportunities I missed or things that I could have done that would have been fun because I was tired. I had this. I wanted to sleep because I was working so hard and I wasn't taking that time to make time for myself. I wasn't asking for help. That's another thing when you're in an environment that's unfamiliar to you, asking for help is going to be one of your biggest assets. And that's what I learned how to do on the road as well is ask for help and what I need and people were willing to do it. And I think healthy people, they are going to wait for you to come to them because they are managing their own lives and their own stuff going on, their own struggles. So it's your responsibility to be real with yourself about what you need and know that there's people there to support you and help you. Whether that be professional people, whether that be people that you work with, maybe that could be like family members. It doesn't matter. There's people there to support you in some type of way. You just have to find what way works best for you and what makes sense for you in this time of your life. And I think that's what I learned the most in regards to my personal growth is that I don't have to be alone. I don't have to do it alone, but I do matter. My happiness matters. My success matters. And I'm going to make it matter. I'm going to put it first regardless. I'm part of the priority list. Put that on your list. I am part of the priority list. You matter. So that is why I learned in traveling is that I have to take make time for myself. I have to get away. I have to check in with myself as many times as I need to to get to a good place or get back to myself. Find balance again. And that was one of the that was another rewarding lesson that I learned because now I'm taking that into my daily normal life being back home with my family about what do I need? How can I reciprocate that if I'm able to for other people? And that's what I'm taking with me for the rest of my life. The last thing that I want to talk about from what traveling has taught me is about health. So when it comes to your health routine is everything routine for your mental state routine for physical state routine for emotional routines are so important to keep you grounded and healthy. I say this because when I was traveling on the road like I was telling you like with it was hard for me to find certain communities to help me take care of myself. But also when you're removing yourself from an environment into an unknown environment constantly over and over again, you're resetting your brain. You're resetting your lifestyle. You're resetting a bunch of different things. And one of those things is like working out like where are you going to work your new workout routine? You're in a different house. You're in a different hostel Airbnb, whatever may have you. You're in a different place where you have to figure it out all over again. And that could be a lot for your mental state and tire you out even more. So I would write out like what is something that you consider part of your routine. For example, for me, I like to eat breakfast at six in the morning. Then I like to exercise an hour and 30 minutes later. Then I like to journal after that. Then I like to practice on my guitar. Then I prepare myself for getting ready for work. And then I start looking at what I want to do for work that day. I have that little small list to take with me every single place I went so I wouldn't get lost in the mud of my life when I was traveling. Routine is so important for your mental health, spiritual health, physical health. Having something to bring you back to self. I can't tell you how important that is to come back to yourself. Yourself is who you are with every single day, every single hour, every single moment. And that's why it's so important to have a deep, fulfilling relationship with yourself. Because you can lose yourself so quickly. You can find yourself doing things you never thought you would do in not a good way if you're not keeping a firm balance on who you are. And moving every day. Finding ways to stay connected to the world around you. Nature. Meditating. Connecting to what makes you feel you again. And I found that I had to be prepared for the landscaping. I had to be prepared for what was presented to me in my environment. For example, when I was on the West Coast in Boise and Washington, all those different places. Utah. There was lots of mountains. And it's like, okay, can I climb the mountains? Is that where I'm doing my workout? Where, how am I going to find my grounding again? Or was I going to a rural area where I was like, dang, there's not a lot for me to do. How can I get creative about my routine and making myself stick to it? So that was what I learned about that when it came to my health. And I also want to state one more thing about personal growth. Whether you're traveling for the first time or you're just visiting a place for a longer period of time, like three weeks, or you're leaving somewhere for the first time, I want you even like if you have a few minutes to take time to write out an intention about what you want to learn from this experience or what you're planning on getting out of this experience and being okay with that changing. But just having a solid foundation of what you want when you're walking into something, even if that is I want to be curious about the unknown, like if you don't know, having something to hold on to and bring yourself peace and clarity about why you're doing this and how it relates to you is going to be so imperative and it's going to be so helpful. Because I don't think that I had that when I first started that journey of what I truly wanted to get out of it. It thought it was wasn't very specific and I just knew I just wanted to travel, but I didn't know what I wanted to gain out of the travel. I feel like that year enough gave me what I needed and showed me what the intention was. Like I learned everything at the end, but I feel like it would have been a lot more powerful if I would have wrote things out at the beginning and let it slowly unfold. So I would have felt like I had more grounding, not necessarily control because of the situations I was in. I did not have any control and that was hard enough for me. But the grounding and understanding would have alleviated a lot of the confusion and hurt in the long run, I feel. But that's in retrospect again. I don't know that. I really don't. So that's what I would say to you about travel and discovering yourself, self-discovery, struggling to find, you know, your place. And I don't know your reasoning for travel. I don't know why you want to, but I know that it's encouraged me to slow down and speed up at the same time. I'm so excited to do it again when I'm ready. But for now, I feel like the everlasting impact of exploring what's out there is indescribable. And I feel like the best way that I probably can describe it in this moment is the flavor of my struggle with my traveling experience from work last year. Living in nine different states, 13 different cities was like a savory steak. There was a lot of tough pieces, but the buttery smooth pieces made those tough pieces worth chewing through. I would not take back what I learned, who I met, how I evolved, who I am because of that year I spent traveling. It has forever changed me in the best way possible. And I hope that you find that as well for yourself. I want you to ask yourself, what do I want to do in the next year that I've never done before? What do I want to learn about myself? What do I want to achieve either mentally, spiritually, emotionally, or physically? How am I going to embrace all of my insecurities, all of my fears, and all of my past setbacks to take this leap of faith? Thank you for listening to me, struggleberries. It feels so good to talk about these experiences that I've had and share them with you. I want to encourage you to keep exploring the flavor of your struggle. Until we meet again, struggleberries, have a good week. Bye.