“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. Courage is a choice that we can make over fear.”
Nelson Mandela
A year ago almost to the day, I sold all my belongings and got on a plane on my own, leaving my life in Singapore, having given up my corporate career earlier in the year. I moved to Singapore with my job in 2018 and built a life there with a great job, many friends and activities, and a beautiful home created from scratch a couple of years before. But for a long time I had harboured a longing to live a location independent lifestyle. I’ve always been a lover of travel and adventure, I love to live in warm climates, and I believe life is better in flip flops. Although my life in Singapore offered me most of this, I wanted more.
And so began the process of creating the life I truly wanted to live. I don’t exaggerate when I say this was a terrifying process. Although change is an inevitable part of life, us humans love a bit of routine and safety. The unknown is a scary place to head to, and I felt this every day. Having been in a corporate career for almost 25 years, I was used to having a predictable salary every month that more than paid for my (expensive!) life in Singapore. My ‘normal’ job also meant a ‘normal’ routine i.e. I had something to get up for and get to at a similar time every day, and my day was pre-filled with meetings, tasks, to-do lists, team members, and so on. Leaving this meant not only leaving the predictability of money coming in every month, but also meant never-ending time to fill.
The other aspect of making such a big change were the voices of people around me, often mirroring the voices inside my head, or other potential problems that I hadn’t even thought of yet. This is a challenging part of the change process, no matter how much you think the opinions of others don’t matter. Everyone had a question or an opinion, from disbelief that I wasn’t going to get another job as a ‘back-up’, to practical questions like ‘what are you going to do about medical insurance?’. Staying strong in my head when I was feeling more than a little afraid myself, was one of the hardest parts of the change process for me. Of course many friends were also supportive, but often the negative or challenging voices ring louder.
Much more to talk about in later blogs, but for now here are some my tips for getting through the discomfort of change (all from personal experience):
Even if you don’t have total clarity, have some idea of what you are heading towards. As you will know from other posts, I am a big fan of having a life vision, and this can be very simple e.g. ‘I want to live in Bali’ or a more detailed vision board with every area of your life brought to life in pictures or words
Have a plan. Again do this in the way that works for you. It reduces my stress levels to get a detailed plan on paper, that’s just how I work. I am a planner, an organiser, a list maker. But everyone works in different ways. You might want to be more flexible and have key headings on your plan, and be more flexible about how you achieve each of them. But having some kind of plan keeps on track during uncertain times
When you start to feel uncertain or stressed or question what you’re doing, come back to why you’re doing it e.g. your vision or plan, and spend a couple of minutes remembering why you’re doing it
Take it day-by-day and try your very best to live in the present day, today, rather than worrying about everything that could happen, tomorrow, next week, next year. What are the few things you need to do today? That’s all you need to think about right now
Remember that you are different to everyone else, and you need different things. Just because everyone around you seems to think you’re crazy, doesn’t mean that you are! Everyone has their own fears and drivers, and often negative comments will come from this. Come back to your core, know who you are, and what you want
Make sure you have tools and techniques to get you through challenging times. If you don’t know what these are, go through a process to work it out. Try different relaxing activities and sense calming experiences and decide what you do and don’t like. Just get to know the few things that can immediately bring calm to you
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