Eva zu Beck: I used to think success was a luxury penthouse in London
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
The travel and adventure filmmaker, author and presenter on how a life online and years of travel reshaped everything she thought she knew about success.
I never set out to be like an influencer. I hate that word. Even saying it feels dirty. I try not to use it, ever. But I always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to write books.
It feels like this path I’ve been on – creating content online, being a public person – has actually brought me very close to that dream. And I think the stories I’m now writing, and hopefully the books to come, are the stories I deeply want to share with people around the world far more than any Instagram story or reel ever could.
But I haven’t always been like this. I feel like I’ve evolved. I think we all grow and evolve inevitably, but for people like me who share their lives on the internet, that growth happens in public. People who followed me eight or nine years ago, when I started out, would have seen a very different version of me.
When I first started travelling, I was in my twenties. It was my first time doing long-term solo travel, and my first time vlogging and sharing my experiences with the world. I used to have quite strong people-pleasing tendencies. The way I shared the world was through rose-tinted glasses. I didn’t talk about anything political. I tried to stay away from anything that might be criticised. I was afraid of negative criticism and of people saying bad things about me online.
To my own detriment, I was quite vanilla in how I talked about the world back then. A bit naive. And that in itself drew criticism anyway. But the more of the world I saw, the more I grew. I developed more courage and stopped caring as much about preserving a perfect image of myself. I started being more honest, saying what I really thought, and standing up for my own beliefs.
That rawness people now associate with me came from maturing into a version of myself that cared less about pleasing everyone and more about being truthful. That has been a journey, and there is still a long way to go.
It takes courage to live life on your own terms.
I often wonder whether that growth was always inside me or whether it was the environment I placed myself in that allowed it to emerge. I do not like to generalise, and I cannot say that everyone is brave on the inside. But I do think that, at the very least, there is a baseline of courage in people that allows them to stand up for themselves and carve out a life that feels authentic. That takes courage. It takes courage to live life on your own terms.
Not everyone has the opportunity to bring that out. Not everyone is placed in situations where it gets to surface. For me, the internet eventually pushed me in that direction. Travel did as well.
Some of the journeys I have been on have completely shifted my perspective. Afghanistan is a very extreme example, but it changed things profoundly. After visiting a place like that as a woman, it becomes clear how important it is to stand up for your own beliefs, to use the freedoms you have, not take them for granted, and to live in alignment with what you believe.
Travel gives you perspective – if you allow it to. It can make you see the world in relative terms and your own life in relative terms. It becomes clear how privileged life is in Europe, having a European passport, being a white woman with a strong education and multiple fallback options. That awareness raises a question: why not speak up, and why not try to live in a way that is authentic?
When I was in Afghanistan, I met a team of Afghan skiers. Most of them were men, but there were a couple of women as well. One of the girls was 17 or 18. She loved sport; running and skiing. We went for a run together around her village in Bamiyan province.
We were dressed appropriately, with long trousers, long sleeves, and head coverings. As we ran along the road, people stared. The men especially, not with curiosity but with judgement. She told me she would feel uncomfortable going out running by herself and that she was glad I was there with her.
I remember thinking how something as simple as a three-mile run can completely shift perspective on what is taken for granted. Back home, I would not think twice about going out for a run alone during the day (of course it is different at night and women can be very vulnerable when running). But when I think about courage, I think about people like her. It is very easy for people like me, relatively speaking, to follow our dreams.
Progress looks completely different depending on where you are.
I also think a lot about what progress really means. A woman being able to run freely on the street in her own country would be enormous progress in some places, while here it is taken entirely for granted. Progress looks completely different depending on where you are.
The more I travel, the more I realise I do not have many answers. The more I see, the more I realise I could be wrong about most things. That humility feels important. The world would be better if we acknowledged more often that we might all be wrong. There is not one way to live life. There are countless ways to live a good life.
What I see often, especially online, is people projecting their own way of living onto others and judging it. If someone lives alone, they must be lonely. If someone does not want children, they must be unhappy or selfish or will regret it. If someone lives differently, there is always judgement attached. But these are projections. If we stepped back and accepted that there are many ways to live a good life, the world would be better for it. There is something beautiful in that diversity.
Saying “I could be wrong” feels like a strength rather than a weakness. It opens things up. It allows movement through the world with curiosity rather than certainty. Travel has taught me that. It has taught me to question assumptions and to go and find out rather than assume. Meeting people living completely different lives makes it clear that one version of normal is just that; one version.
I have seen people living very close to nature, with very little electricity and no running water, yet deeply connected to themselves and their environment, and still fulfilled. I spent time with an Iranian nomadic family in the Zagros Mountains. The Bakhtiari nomads migrate through the mountains with their animals during the summer, covering vast distances to reach pastures. It is a physically demanding life, but there is something grounded about it.
I also met a woman in Montana who lives alone in the woods with her goats in a small tent, with no power and no running water. She could have lived anywhere. She chose that life because it feels right for her.
It is not helpful to romanticise poverty or to say “poor but happy”. That is not the point. But it is worth recognising how many different ways there are to feel fulfilled.
For me, living in a remote place in the Carpathians feels more real than living in a city apartment with constant electricity and internet. That feels true for me.
Ten years ago, I thought success was a luxury penthouse in London and weekends spent in the fanciest cocktail bars. That was what it meant to me then. But as I saw more of the world and how people live, I grew into myself and realised that success can look completely different. It can be very unconventional.
What I hope for when people see my content is not for people to overhaul their lives, but to make small shifts. To gain a different way of thinking about how they are living. It doesn't have to be radical, for many people it should not be. But to live a life that is slightly more authentic to their true selves.
The most important thing I have learned through all of it is that there is not just one way to live. Life is about continuing to learn, change, and search. And that is enough.
This conversation took place in April 2026 and has been edited and condensed for clarity and flow.
Eva’s new book, The Wilder Way: The Inspiring Travel Memoir of Adventure, Freedom and an Uncharted Life, is available now.
