5 Mental Health Tips For Digital Nomads

Taking care of your mental health is a modern-day priority — that much we know. Digital nomads, like any other person, can face troubles with mental health, be it burnout, low mood, or any other thing that affects our everyday life.

Digital Barbaros gathered 5 tips for mental wellness for digital nomads to stay positive, productive, and balanced. Let’s dive in!

Build Up A Routine

Not a strict one that suppresses you — a mild one, a routine that is carefully crafted for you by you.

It’s relatively easy to get caught in a vacation mood trap when traveling around. Staying up later than usual, sacrificing sleep for a night bus trip — these things can be compensated for during vacation, but when you’re on the job, the lack of sleep most probably results in a lack of productivity. Hence, the feeling of overwhelming when you feel a drop in your everyday job.

So start with your sleeping pattern. The digital era makes it much easier with apps that help you analyze your sleep, remind you to get to bed on time and approach sleep with more mindfulness. Here are some of Digital Barbaros’ personal favorite apps for sleep tracking:

SleepScore

Probably, one of the best apps overall, available for iOS and Android and offers a lot of insightful tips and quite extensive analysis even in the free version.

Sleep Cycle

Available on iOS, Android, and Huawei, can identify lots of different sounds you make in sleep (might be really fun and a bit creepy to listen to).

Pillow

Only available for iOS, but has nice personalized insights and works best paired with Apple Watch.

Combine healthy sleep, a mindful approach to day planning, physical activity, and something that brings you joy — and here’s your simple recipe for improved mental health.

Be Physically Active

There’s a healthy mind in a healthy body — sounds like a trivial oversimplification, but makes sense. The research shows, that being active has a positive impact on your self-esteem and helps you achieve goals. Plus, sports produce endorphins that help you cope with stress and pain. It’s plain chemistry!

Physical activity reduces stress levels, increases mood, and improves the quality of sleep. And as we already mentioned above, sleep is an essential part of a healthy mind and personal comfort!

Make any sort of physical activity a part of your daily routine. As a traveling nomad, you might struggle with ordinary solutions like a gym or, say, a dance studio. But any activity will do: from yoga, jogging, and short HIIT training to daily walks with your favorite music blasting in headphones.

• Go for a walk around the new place you’re visiting. Find a nice route, explore the nearby park, visit the seaside.
• If you like yoga, try short practices using one of many apps. Our personal recommendation is Yoga by DownDog.
• Jogging is another compact easy-to-adapt kind of sport. Digital Barbaros recommends Nike Run Club app — it offers lots of guided training for both beginners and experienced runners.

Bring Your Comfort With You

Nomads travel a lot, and their main concern is to adapt the idea of personal comfort to fit in any surroundings. We feel intrigued by a new place but at some point, even the most aspired nomads might feel tired of always being on the go.

Lacking the feeling of belonging to a place or people often results in low mood and overcompensating in terms of work. Personal comfort and bonding with a place start with little things and most importantly, with you being at peace with yourself. So stop and think for a second — what makes you feel in comfort?

When you pack for yet another nomad traveling, put something truly “yours” in your luggage. It can be your favorite book, sketchbook, crocheting kit, or any other hobby-related thing. Maybe you like taking aroma baths, dancing, or hiking. No matter what it is, if it brings you comfort and helps you take a break, don’t sacrifice it in favor of saving space in your suitcase.

Stay Connected

Meeting people require a mental resource, no doubt. And when you’re feeling unwell, this might be just the resource you lack. But there is a certain deadlock in this cycle: locking yourself up in a room until you find resources to meet with people can only postpone said moment.

A sense of belonging helps your mental health a lot. Being a digital nomad, you have tons of possibilities to connect with others. The digital nomad community is vast and very open-minded. Find nomads near you using all sorts of tools:

• Nomad Facebook groups and events
• Websites like Meetup.com, Eventbrite, and other platforms
• Airbnb experiences and local tours
• Or even your own living room, if you stay at a coliving space, such as Barbaros Hut!

Besides new people to meet, remember to stay in touch with your family, friends, or other close people back at home. Zoom calls and Facetime are good options to find some comfort and improve your mental health.

Listen To Yourself

All the tips for mental health are based on listening to yourself and your inner voice. Try to think of what you want and lack at the moment. Do you want to meet new people at a bar or do you want to stay in and watch Netflix? Both are valid comfort options, and it’s up to you to decide what will help you in particular feel better today.

Some people like to meditate to get in touch with themselves and pause the hectic life outside for a second. Others like to add bullet journaling to the routine. As digital nomads, we like to digitalize stuff, so here are several mood tracking apps that you might also like:

Moodfit

This app allows you to track your mood and express gratitude with a simple log. It helps you find correlations between your feelings, your state of mind, and things happening around you. It also includes guided meditation and sleep tracking.

MoodTools

A thought diary is a very useful instrument to track and analyze your mood patterns. Together with MoodTools’ knowledge base and recommended activities, it grows to be a great help in maintaining your mental health top-notch.

Daylio

The app allows you to customize your mood tracking tools and bring them a twist. So if you like personalized journaling, this is as close as it gets in a digital form. Set goals, get reminders for making notes, and build habits with the app.

Self-awareness is a big part of mental health. It helps you on many levels: from pure biology to analytical work. Tracking your mood and listening to yourself allows you to build connections between your feelings, reaction, and events. Awareness also throws you out of autopilot mode which can become a dangerous trap.

To Sum Up

Nowadays, mental health becomes a top priority for so many people, and this is a great tendency. Self-awareness, mindfulness, and work-life balance take over extra hours at the office and crazy pace.

Digital nomadism was born as a lifestyle that offers an alternative to existing settled life and brings vibrancy to everyday routines. It lines up greatly with a healthy mindset, and we hope these nomad mental health tips will only make your journey better!