The Happy Nomad Tour – My Best Failure Ever

The Happy Nomad Tour - Best Failure Ever

The Happy Nomad Tour – Best Failure Ever

The Happy Nomad Tour is over. When I started on August 10, 2011 I envisioned a one-year journey. I never would have believed it if someone told me it would last 2.5 years.

And that kind of sums everything up. Everything about my journey far exceeded my expectations except for one thing… money. I learned how to travel on the slimmest of budgets, spending less than $900 in 918 days of travel on accommodation, for example. But my theory hasn’t held up very well.. going into this trip I had a firm belief that if you pursue your passions the money will follow.

As much as I don’t care about money, it’s a sad fact of life. Money is the primary reason I ended The Happy Nomad Tour. It was getting low and I had to withdraw to the comforts of home to reload. Perhaps the money will follow in some way, so maybe I was partially right. But on the whole, I failed miserably at earning money on this trip. I earned a total of $900 on the road. I guess that covered my accommodation costs on the road, but it was far from sustainable.

Life is all about trade-offs. I could have worked those 2.5 years and earned lots of money at the reputable company I was working for before undertaking this journey. Instead, I pursued my dream and learned more about myself and humanity than I ever could have imagined – perhaps more than I would have learned in a lifetime otherwise. I found doors I never knew existed, opened them, and found more and more unknown doors to walk through. I changed the software in my head and I’ll never approach life the same way again.

I think this journey helped solidify in my mind that failure is not something bad. Failure is part of life. If you’re going to fail, fail awesomely. Fail upward. Fail so that you learn something and/or experience something you wouldn’t have otherwise. Fail so spectacularly that what you learn more than makes up for the negative aspect of failing. Most of all, don’t be afraid to fail. You never know, that failure may take you to over 40 countries in 2.5 years and facilitate friendships literally all over the world. Failure can be the best thing to ever happen to you.

8 replies
  1. Lina @ Divergent Travelers
    Lina @ Divergent Travelers says:

    This is so true. Setting off on a journey like that just leaves your life wide open and that is the beauty of it. We are currently traveling and when we first started planning we thought 1 year would be good. Coming up on 10 months and have a solid year of stuff planned still!! In the end though, you are right, money will be the only thing that sends us home.

    Reply
  2. Josh and Beverly
    Josh and Beverly says:

    I agree with your statement that “failure is a part of life.” Those who find the most success in life also have the most failure. If we are too scared to fail, we will never get ahead.

    I am glad that you learned so much from your Nomad Tour. Great blog by the way.

    Reply

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  1. […] people have asked me what my next step is after The Happy Nomad Tour came to an end. It hasn’t been easy. Although I didn’t find a way to become financially sustainable on […]

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