5 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Becoming A LIP

Before I share these with you, there’s a bit of housekeeping to go over. I wrote yesterday on my personal blog about what I’m going to be doing over the next couple of months with regards to my businesses and blogs.

What it means for this blog, is that I shall no longer be posting daily here but will reduce posts to twice per week from me (on Mondays & Wednesdays), once from Greg (on Fridays) and possibly some additional guest posts in between.

And now on to 5 things I wish I’d known before becoming a Location Independent Professional:

Finding that one ‘perfect place’ is not going to happen.

At least not for us, not yet…we’ve realised that what we want changes on a frequent basis. Learning as we go, we’ve now realised that our ideal schedule is one that combines spending time in a place abundant with natural beauty & nature (an island or countryside), followed by spending time in a place with a bit more life, buzz & a vibe about it (a city/town). The timings? We have yet to perfect!!

You don’t need to take everything but the kitchen sink with you, “just in case”.

Unless you choose to go to the wildest places on earth (which is unlikely if you need a s table, high speed internet connection), you don’t need to take everything with you. If my husband had his way, he’d have brought a portable printer, a flatbed scanner and perhaps a few dozen of his favourite comic & graphic novel books. Having to carry your things with you means not only ages spent packing & unpacking in every location but also the very real possibility of having to pay for any excess luggage which is not the most cost effective way of travelling.

How to do the simplest things on location.

Things like how it all works in supermarkets work (do you weigh vegetables first? do you tip the bag packers?) or how much to pay for local produce from markets or for taxi rides where there are no meters? Basically, all the little things which don’t matter when you know them but which become a far bigger deal when you don’t…especially if you don’t speak the language yet!

Everything you read beforehand might just be wrong.

That’s right, the guidebooks, the online forums and all other advice you read about a place might not be quite accurate and in some cases, utterly wrong! An example? Us going to Panama not speaking a word of Spanish because everything we’d read said English was widely spoken so we thought we’d be ok to learn it at our own pace once we arrived. Not the case, as I explain in the book!

Your expectations may be way off.

Your worst fears are highly unlikely to come true especially if you’ve done all your preparation and planning. In contrast however, your wildest dreams just might.

And here’s a bonus one…

Any problems or issues in your life will not magically disappear just because you’ve left your country & existing life to become a LIP. There will be hard times, there will be times when you feel down, there will be times when you feel like nothing is right with your life…even if you’re staying in paradise. That’s just life…it’s how you choose to respond to these challenges which is the important thing - whether you’re a LIP or not.

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