This is a modified excerpt from my ebook, Destination: Nomadtopia.

Life will be a lot more enjoyable, and a particular lifestyle more sustainable, if it really matches up well with your values.

Logically enough, the first step in creating a lifestyle that aligns with your values is identifying what your values are!

Once you know what’s important to you, you can find a way to incorporate it into your Nomadtopia.

Here’s a short list of some of the things that might be important to you (based completely unscientifically on my own values and those of many Nomadtopia readers I know).

Rate the following items on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being very important:

• Freedom and adventure
• Challenge/trying new things
• Comforts of home
• Giving back
• Community
• Environmental sustainability
• Minimalism

Your values might be totally different, which is perfectly fine, of course!

If you have identified things that are important to you that aren’t on this list, write them down and also give each one a score from 1 to 10.

Then, take a look at the values that received the highest ratings.

How might you incorporate those things into your lifestyle, both now and in the future?

Here are just a few ideas for each of the categories above.

If freedom and adventure are of utmost importance to you, find ways to get as much of them as possible: sell your house and most of your belongings, hit the road in an RV, or move to a new country every couple months.

If you enjoy being challenged and always doing something new, continuous travel and/or visiting exotic places might be for you.

If comfort and a home base are important to you, home exchange or renting/buying a home abroad might be good options.

If giving back is important, find places you can volunteer as part of your Nomadtopia. I often find the volunteer experience is richer if you ask around about local opportunities once you arrive in a destination. Many of the experiences that can be arranged in advance, from abroad, require a significant financial investment, which often isn’t the case if you arrange it locally.

If community is key, you can have it—and freedom and flexibility, if you want—by returning to the same place(s) year after year. Couchsurfing and volunteering are also great ways to meet local people and learn about their culture.

If environmental sustainability is a priority, choose modes of travel that have less of an environmental impact (perhaps cycling, or even walking!).

If you want to live a more minimalist lifestyle, pare your belongings down to the true essentials and travel with just what you can carry with you or what fits in your tiny house or RV.

If you wrote in some of your own values, how can you make them part of your ideal lifestyle?

Whether you’re working toward Nomadtopia or already living it, did you uncover any ways in which your current lifestyle is not in alignment with your values?

How do you go about being sure your lifestyle is in alignment with your values?