If we go out there.

People are social animals. We need other people. Whether we want it or not, we can’t be utterly happy without some kind of human interaction. But how to get this needed contact when you travel the world on your own?

Being on your own, even lonely sometimes, is one of the biggest problems for digital nomads. You change your location frequently, and most of the time you don’t know a single soul at this new, gorgeous place. You find your new home, you set up your workstation, get a new sim card for your phone to let your peers back home know that you are ok. But still, you are alone.

Most people finance this way of life by working online. What that means is, that you are sitting a vast amount of time in front of a screen. The same situation as back home when you work in your home-office, but back home you could call up someone to go to lunch or do something fun after work. But here you are on your own to find food, to watch the sunset, to do your laundry, to go sightseeing.

As a digital nomad your “back-home-friends” are reachable via the internet, but not for “real” activities. And why being at a gorgeous place when all you do is sitting in front of a screen with you peers at home? Not quite what you wanted in the first place.

So what to do to change this? If you are very fortuned, you are one of the few people that naturally just meet people all the time. But the chances are that you are not. So you have to work a little harder. One of the biggest things to remember is the following: you are responsible for stopping your loneliness.

If you are sitting in your room, looking at a screen and wondering why you are alone, you found the reason right there. How could this change? The possibility that someone will magically just knock on your door and keep you company is very, very small. It’s you who feels lonely, so it’s you who has to change this fact.

But how to do so? If you are online already you could start by searching for some meet-ups near by. You could start working in a co-working space you could go to work from a nice coffee place, you could go to lunch or a bar or the beach. Most important part is, that you do something.

Of course, it is scary to leave on your own and sit all by yourself in a restaurant or on the beach. And it is scary as hell to just walk up to someone and say hi. But guess what. This is scary to almost everyone. But you started travelling to see the world, to experience new things, to get way out of your comfort zone. And because it is very lonely out there you have to be brave. Be brave, say hi to someone and see what happens. If you managed to travel half-way around the world, you can manage to go a few more steps to a nice looking person and just say hi.

You do not need anything else. Just smile and say hi. If the individual doesn’t want to talk, so what? There are thousands of other people. Just try another one. In the end, you only have to find one person to talk to. You don’t need hundreds, you only need one. One person who maybe is as lonely as you are right now, sitting in their room and persuade themselves to leave and face the scary world alone. And guess what. They will be so relieved and happy if someone as nice as you just comes over and says hi.

Let’s go out and see where it takes us.