The Power Of Lifestyle Design

Reignite what inspires you ✨

This past weekend, I sat in a cafe in Ipanema, the sun hitting my skin at just the right angle, journaling deep in flow from heart to paper.

These are some of my favorite moments, the ones when time seems to pause, when I'm deeply present and connected to a sense of deep alignment.

For the South American winter this year, I’ve chosen to take an intentional season away. To leave Buenos Aires for a few months, embrace the warmer weather in Rio de Janeiro, and pursue my love of Brazilian Zouk, a dance style that's popular in Rio. I’ve become more and more deeply inspired by Zouk ever since I lived in Rio for a few months, three years back. It was a trip full of immersion in the beauty of this city, Brazilian culture, and falling in love with dancing Zouk.

This is the power of remote work. It gifts you the freedom and flexibility to design your life around what serves you best in whatever season of life you find yourself navigating.

After more than a year of grounding and reestablishing roots in Buenos Aires, I almost felt like I’d forgotten that adventurous, explorer Kristin who spent four years of her life slow traveling through South America. Coming back to Rio, and feeling that spark of curiosity, adventure and exploration return… it reminded me that she is still here. She has never left. She just needed to relight the spark. To allow those pieces of herself to reemerge.

So, I brought back all of my favorite travel hacks. Packed up my bags, arrived early and worked from the airport, bought and activated my Brazil eSIM as I waited to board my flight, exchanged cash upon arrival, negotiated my taxi in the airport while fielding the obvious scams… and thought to myself, ok, I’ve still got it!

I arrived in Rio last week, almost 3 years to the day of my last visit, and I’ve noticed so many glimmers of this since I got back. Magical little moments that've sparked deep gratitude for the version of me who was brave enough to travel solo and embrace this lifestyle.

I’ve also found myself reflecting on the irony, that the same person who took years to work up the courage to leave her home state 8 years ago, is now calmly settling back into living in what is often labeled as one of South America’s most dangerous cities (even though, technically that’s not true).

This is the beauty of finding comfort in discomfort.✨

Change is scary, and embracing this lifestyle can feel daunting at first. But once you move through the fear and develop the skills to navigate it, it becomes second nature. Like a passionate photographer whose hands instinctively know which settings will capture the shot just how they like it, even after the camera's been stored away for years.

Feeling that spark relight as I walked through Rio’s streets served as a reminder: this is why I created this lifestyle. The beauty of remote work and a flexible lifestyle is the ability to choose and design your life around how you thrive. To satisfy your seasons. To nurture your passions. To honor your intuition. To nourish your core needs.

While in one season of my life, slow traveling South America was the central theme, and that served me well for fulfilling a big life dream. In another season, grounding back in Buenos Aires was my chosen and needed design.

And this season is calling for a new intentional design: to spark new inspiration, to nurture my curiosity and learning, and to deepen my relationship with a dance I love, while escaping Winter in Buenos Aires, my least favorite season.

Sometimes our current life design simply stops serving us, and that's okay. Sometimes we need to just slightly tweak the design or change it up for the season, and other times we need a more drastic redesign for a whole new version of ourselves to emerge.

If you feel any sense of stuckness, if you're craving something new, or are looking to relight your spark, know that you always have the power to shift and redesign your lifestyle.

The first step is creating the space to understand what’s calling you next.

It's beautiful when moments like that café session land: the sunshine on my skin, journaling in flow, deep presence, and recognizing that I chose to create this for myself. I am here back in Brazil, full of gratitude for this lifestyle practice and the path that led me here.

And you can create this for yourself, too.

Stay tuned because in the next edition of my Substack I'll be diving deeper into this topic with dedicated tips and guidance.💌