Lessons from a novice digital nomad - How courage and comfort can co-exist

Ruth explores how leaders can embrace both courage and comfort by blending purpose with wellbeing, challenging the idea that bravery requires sacrifice and reflecting on how her experience of working while travelling reshaped her relationship with change, leadership, and self-care.

I attended DSC’s Women in Leadership conference earlier this autumn. In one session an incredibly inspirational CEO shared her experience of leading her organisation through a series of challenges and changes. She was open and insightful and honest that, despite everything she had already overcome, things were still far from easy.

When asked how she found the strength to keep going, she paraphrased Brene Brown, saying that she regularly reminds herself that leaders have to choose between courage and comfort. In contrast to her personal story, which resonated with me, the quote jarred. I have been reflecting on why since the session.

Of course, I agree that doing the right thing is not always the same as doing the easy thing. All too often these hard decisions come to us as leaders and holding true to our integrity and values is essential. But I still profoundly disagree. As leaders, I believe we can – and must – have both courage and comfort. These are not opposites, they are companions.

Blending pleasure and purpose

I have not always found it easy to balance comfort and courage, partly because I have seen them as opposites.

For decades, I have held full-time leadership roles, all of which required me to be in the office (or at the very least in the country) from 9 – 5, Monday to Friday week in, week out. Whilst in these roles, I took comfort in my holidays. I was fiercely protective of this downtime, appointing an Acting CEO, briefing my Chair and clearing my inbox. I would do everything I could to ensure I could feel as far away from work as possible while on holiday. I needed the space and time of my holidays to recharge.

This protection of leisure time is still something I recommend. But this summer I tried something different. I packed my laptop alongside my sunscreen and built an extended road trip itinerary around important meetings and deadlines.

It was my first experience of digital nomading. My top practical tip if you want to try it for yourself is to pick a time zone where jet lag makes getting up for 6am zoom meetings a breeze and clearing your meetings by 10am still leaves you a full day to explore.

Getting comfortable with change

In early September, my social feeds began to fill with the annual ‘back to school’ photographs of friends’ children and my inbox filled with emails and invitations as people returned to their desks. I was still on the road and the disconnect I felt was profound.

One evening, pondering what it meant to be so out of synch with my normal life, I joined a star gazing trip. Over the course of three hours, lying on my back in a clearing in the forest, I watched the sky reveal itself as the darkness deepened.

‘The stars are always moving’, our naturalist explained, ‘and the night sky is not the same from one hour to the next.’

The continual, if invisible, movement of the sky reminded me that everything is in motion – the forests, the seasons, even the stars. Being out of synch gave me time to notice the constant motion all around me, and realise I was part of it. It left me profoundly grateful to clients and colleagues who happily scheduled afternoon meetings so I could join and graciously asked ‘where are you now?’ every time I dialled in from a different hotel room. It also left me feeling very differently about change.

As I said at the top of the blog, so often it is the hard changes that fall to leaders.

Throughout my road trip, whilst walking through meadows and scaling granite peaks, I thought back to some of the hardest changes I had led; restructures that placed talented people at risk of losing roles they loved, working to unravel and eradicate the lasting impacts of toxic cultures and closing down valuable programmes to balance budgets. Perhaps it was not surprising that I had come to see all change as a challenge, needing courage to be tackled and from which the only comfort was taking a complete break.

Lying on my back watching the night sky, I was able to remember how change can so often be positive. Change can be an adventure, or a chance for new opportunities to emerge. Change can be growth.

Making space for comfort in the every day

Coming home I felt re-energised. My first experience of blending work and leisure helped me see that I could combine the courage values-led work takes with comfort (as well as adventure). It gave me the opportunity to stop seeing protecting my own wellbeing as being at odds with what is right, and it helped me see change differently and positively.

Making time to attend a conference and hear another leader share her own journey helped me realise how deeply I need to embed this new approach into my day to day life, not just my future travel plans.

As leaders, it is OK not to be courageous all the time. It is OK to ask for help and acknowledge our vulnerability. It is not just OK, it is essential, to make time and space for our own wellbeing if we are going to have the energy to continue to lead.

I come back to my ‘normal life’ desk making a conscious decision to choose both courage and comfort, purpose and enjoyment, vulnerability and hope. That means changing my rhythms and routines to try to keep the headspace I gained while away. I am incorporating regular walks at the start of or during my working day (even if they are across concrete rather than granite), holding one evening a week to see friends who will help me entirely switch off from work and making more time to attend conferences and networking events where I can find inspiration.

As I said at the top of the blog, this is new territory for me so any tips others have for combining wellbeing and purpose are most welcome.