Hello travelers! I’m so excited to introduce you to our latest Woman of the Week: Stef! We met through a Facebook travel group and have kept in touch over the months, and after talking to her for a bit I realized I HAD to interview her. Stef is a strong, badass woman working remotely for a remote business that helps empower women – a life coach of sorts – with such an amazing energy. I hope you’ll check out her work at the links below, but I’ll let her share the details of her work, life, and travel story.
Connect with Stef:
BLOG FACEBOOK INSTAGRAM
Tell us about yourself?
I’m Stef, I feel like I’m just this wanderlust soul who has this lust for life and traveling and being able to empower women to live a life of health, wealth, and abundance! And being able to do all this one the road and living and just being a little nomad, that’s me in a jist of a nutshell.
Why do you travel?
I travel because it just fuels my soul and I’m so enamored by different cultures and people and life. I just love hearing other people’s stories, what it’s like, what their life is like, and expanding my own knowledge and creativity of how vast this world it. It’s just such a beautiful place, why wouldn’t I travel!
How do you balance work and travel?
The biggest thing is I used to travel specifically for travel and separated my work and travel, but about a one year – almost my one year mark, my work became remote and became my passion. So, now I work while traveling because now I am just obsessed with what I do. Before it was like an escape, like I need to go and get out! And now its intertwined in my life and now it doesn’t require me to travel but there’s so many conferences around the world, retreats and such. All my travels this year for 2018 – I’m not purposely trying to travel but there’s just different things I want to do for work around the world.
In the past my trips were shorter, but now I’m not just so much traveling place to place. Now I’m just more living as an expat, so it’s almost like I’m living there as opposed to being a tourist traveling. So my travel style is very different. I’m not trying to see everything all at once, so I’m more like living day to day as opposed to being a tourist for a week.
What’s the best lesson you’ve learned from your travels?
I’d say just being open to just life itself and realizing that we cannot control anything in life. I feel like for anyone who travels all the time, they know that a flight is gonna get cancelled, there’s going to be weather things. Even in the airport your luggage get’s lost, you don’t know if there’s a strike, or something is closed. Never expect everything to go the way you planned, but go with the flow because it allows for so many new possibilities to come it. Trust that everything happens for a reason.
Travel allows for me to realize that I’m just another little soul in this giant, giant world. I really love the connection of humans and it’s pretty cool that you don’t need to know anyone or even talk to anyone but you can communicate with people everywhere.
Yeah, I think one of the best lessons is just being open and receptive to all the magic in life. I think we stay stuck in our space, we think everything can be forced and make set plans. But when you travel you learn real fast you have plans but be have to be open to new plans. No plan is the best plan when I travel!
One of them was with my partner and his parents. They came to visit us in China and we went to a tiny ass little country side type village. I just remember it was just such a beautiful day and the four of us just biking through the countryside and there were just local people all around, it was just so blissful and in the moment type of experience. Like we were the the only foreigners around and it was just such an in-the-moment experience!
Go with your gut feeling. That willl never ead you astray. If you want to do something, do something for your own self, whether you’re in a group or not. If you’re solo that’s pretty easy, but if you’re in a group then don’t forget about your own wants and needs and what you want to see.
THANKS FOR READING STEF’S STORY!
Looking for more interviews? Head to our Woman of the Week archives for the full library.
I’ve also created three freebies to help you plan your next adventure:
- 50 Practical Travel Tips from Solo Lady Backpackers (a 6-page PDF)
- 20 Tips for Sustainable Travel (a checklist)
- and 30 Jobs to See the World.
After you join the mailing list up, you’ll have access to all the freebies, AND get the password to the Global Directory! The directory will connect you to my recommended resources for each country and tons of travel topics. All blog posts I recommend are written by traveling ladies. From logistics to inspiration, the Global Directory will help you find the info you need no matter where you’re going.
