
I’m somewhere in the photo above doing Warrior One during my Yoga Teacher Training earlier this year in Ubud, Bali, one of my favourite places in the world. I’ve spent most of this year living as a digital nomad, working my way around South East Asia and doing things that I have wanted to do for many years but not had the money / time / too busy with work / fill in the gap with all the usual excuses that we give when we don’t have the courage to do what we actually want to do.
Since the beginning of this year, I completed my Yoga Teacher Training in Bali, I became a diver and completed both my PADI and Advanced Open Water on Koh Tao, I spent 6 weeks training with Muay Thai fighters in Chiang Mai, I salsa danced my way around Koh Samui, and I’ve been running two businesses virtually along the way in between sun worshipping. I’m now back in London being where I need to be due to family illness, and at the same time appreciating the awesomeness of all that this beautiful city has to offer.
I’ve been intrigued by location independent / digital nomad living since the first time I went to Bali 5 years ago and saw people working on a laptop in beautiful cafes in the middle of rice paddies. I wanted to do it one day, and step by step, I made it happen. I talk about small changes every day leading to big change long-term, and I really believe in it, mainly because I’ve experienced it myself. Days of feeling scared but pressing on anyway to give up my 23- year corporate career, leave my beautiful home, sell all my belongings and leave my friends and comfort zone in Singapore. Days of hearing people ask me are you sure you want to do that, why don’t you get a backup job, what are you going to do if it doesn’t work out, and what about whatever it was they were worried about, even though it’s not them doing it. And listening to them because they were my friends, but pressing on into the unknown myself anyway.
Of course, it hasn’t all been plain sailing and rosy, nothing ever is. Travelling on your own or living on your own in a new place is sometimes daunting and tiring, and sometimes you just want to be in your old home with your feet up and a cup of tea in your hand, and everything easy and ‘normal’. But this year the more I pushed myself into new places and new experiences, met new people, and tried new things, and the further I went out of my comfort zone, the more confident I got. I’ve discovered what the optimal life is for me and I’ve done that through trial and error and embracing all that I’ve been able to experience from life this year.
Everyone has a different idea of what courageous living means to them, but most of us could probably get out of our comfort zone a little more often. And that doesn’t need to be doing a 30m deep dive in the open sea. It could be doing that dance class or taking up that hobby that you’ve been thinking about doing for years, or going to the gym regularly so that you feel fit and healthy, or making yourself more of a priority amongst the expectations that others have on you, or having that awkward conversation with your partner which you know needs to be had, or asking for that pay rise at work that you know you deserve. So many aspects of life that can be improved by being courageous, and often one small step can be the start of big change long term.
So often, we wait for the right time to do something but often it’s just an excuse not to do it. And there never will be a right time. It’s the right time when you do it, so just do it. And once you do one thing that is hard, it’s easier to do the next hard thing. Life snowballs either way. If you don’t do what you want to do, you fall more into your comfort zone and become less likely to do anything different. Sometimes you’ve literally got to force yourself to do something hard and then you realise it’s not that hard, and you do more of it. There’s a big wide world out there and it has so much to offer, just a little bit of pushing yourself to live courageously can change your whole life. It’s worked for me.
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