My Best Career Move Was 3 Months of Nothing (How to Leave Everything and Find a Mission)
In December of 2012, as the Mayan Calendar signaled the end of one age and the beginning of another, this same pattern happened in my individual life. I made the decision to end almost everything about my life at once. This mini-apocalypse was one of the best decisions I ever made.
In December 2012, living in Atlanta, USA, in my early 30s, for the second time in my life I found myself in the exact job that I thought I had wanted, only to realize that I wanted to leave it every day. For the second time, I found myself in a multi-year romantic relationship that wasn’t working. For the third time, I found myself living in a location that no longer fit me, that I was desperate to change.
I really thought I had learned a lot from the first times all those things happened. The first times all happened at once in my mid-20s. A 5-year relationship ended which was not my idea, and this shocked me into re-examining the previous 5 years. I had a huge insight. I had clung to that relationship so desperately but I had never actually been truly happy in it.
So then I looked at other parts of my life. I saw that I was not happy with my “good” job. I was not happy where I lived. In fact, once I got honest, I realized I had been convincing myself I was truly happy for years. I didn’t know any better. Upon examination, it turned out that most big things in my life were almost the exact opposite of my happiness even though they were exactly what my brain had told me to create. WTF.
The conclusion was unavoidable. My brain had no idea how to actually make me happy.
Sure, there were lots of smiles and plenty of fun times. But I’m talking about that underneath happiness, a core of positivity and joy. Underneath, I was sad. I had no idea if lasting internal happiness existed. And if it did, all my thinking and planning never found it. That hurt.
I got super depressed. Both from sadness and because I had no idea what to do next. My whole life I had identified as a great thinker, intelligent, rational, analytical, able to analyze problems and figure things out. That got me plenty of stuff, and yet it got me nowhere in terms of happiness. So now what? How was I going to make decisions? Was it even possible to truly be happy? I cried a lot.
It was during this time that I was given my first self-development book by my aunt, who was a burgeoning spiritual teacher that I never really paid attention to.
The book was “Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway” by Susan Jeffers. Every page of this book spoke directly to something deep inside. I read the whole thing in 2 days. I was inspired to start a regular meditation practice and think more carefully about what this “life” thing really is. I was inspired to start attempting bolder moves.
That led me to quitting my job, moving hundreds of miles to a new city, getting a masters degree in business full time for 2 years, falling in love, moving in with my new partner, and getting a leadership position I coveted at a very successful and fun social enterprise. By the way, I had decided that purpose-driven businesses like my new employer were the panacea for all the ills of the business world. Done!
That was my first rise from the ashes. The ashes had been involuntary. But I sprung forward onto the next thing. I thought I had everything sorted.
A few years into this new life, however, it was December 2012, with the supposed end of the world looming, and I saw that my life was once again mostly all wrong.
Crappy Deja Vu
I had done so much to move my life closer to what I thought I wanted, and yet my life had the same familiar patterns lacking fulfillment, a sense of freedom, and happiness. My “great” job no longer felt good at all. Social enterprise was not the panacea I thought it was. My partner and I were in couples therapy trying to hammer out a working relationship. Stress and exhaustion were creeping in. So was a feeling of being trapped, and heavy, and sad. It was the same story with all the parts of my life, all at the same time, again.
That was one of my first views into the “shape” of life. It’s like an upward spiral. We keep progressing upward and also turning in a circle, re-visiting similar issues in our life with slightly higher levels of awareness until we finally learn how to transform those issues.
This type of transformation has since become something like my specialty. There are ways to amp up our awareness and make big jumps, and I teach clients how to do this. But back then, I just felt completely stuck. My life was like a crappy pop song stuck on repeat. I had moments of enjoying it, but overall, I desperately wanted a new song, a new pattern. But how could I stop the song?
At least I had a job and maybe I could make it better, I told myself. At least I had a relationship and we were really trying. I had an apartment and a lot of people don’t. I was paying my bills. I had a “career.” Maybe if I just keep thinking, if I just push harder, I can fix myself or the problem. Maybe modern life and the compromises and sacrifices just inevitably feel somewhat shitty? Maybe this is all there is.
I felt like I was missing something incredibly important.
The Decision
Almost in that exact moment, a friend told me about amazing sessions she was having with a local spiritual teacher. My spiritual interests had been steadily growing since my aunt’s beautiful intervention and the start of my meditation practice. I was hungry for more, so I hired this teacher immediately to help me.
I arrived at my her place and begged to get an understanding of how to get unstuck and off of repeat. Our session was over in 30 minutes.
The questions she asked weren’t even that metaphysical, she was simply getting me to list all my options, even the ones I thought were dumb or out of the question. After some time she looked at me incredulously and repeated what she had heard:
“So you are telling me, that exactly in this moment of an unhappy relationship, exactly at this moment of wanting to leave your job, exactly in this moment of being exhausted by your current situation, that your parents just so happened to have an apartment across an ocean just sitting empty right now? And you are telling me that, exactly in this time you want to explore spirituality, this apartment is in a small town within walking distance from a spiritual center and the aunt that helped you years ago? … Do you still believe in coincidences?”
She doubled over in laughter for about 5 minutes straight. When she recovered, she basically said, you know what to do.
But…but…I didn’t. Was I just supposed to leave everything, go across an ocean, and beg my parents to let me stay in their place? And do what? For what? For how long? How will I pay for this? How will I work? I would have to quit my job. I have to quit my relationship. To what end? What would I possibly gain? What about my partner? Maybe we won’t actually break up, maybe we just needed more therapy. I don’t even know anyone in that town except for a few family members. What am I supposed to do there? This can’t be serious. This is not how a successful person keeps going.
As I stumbled to my car my mind was spinning. I just kept thinking, “That session was a waste of money.”
I got in my car and closed the door. It was very quiet. I heard my own heavy breathing. Suddenly I noticed my body was alive, like really alive. Energy was surging through me. When I imagined this UK idea, pure excitement was in my veins. It was freedom. It was rest. It was something else as well that I couldn’t even name yet. My brain was jammed, stuck on the impossibility of doing something so impulsive. But my body knew exactly what to do.
My hands tightened around the steering wheel, and I made my decision.
I decided to leave everything. I would move across the Atlantic Ocean to an empty apartment in a small town in the UK. What would I do there?
Nothing at all came to my mind as an answer. And suddenly it was so obvious. That was exactly it. I would do — Nothing.
I would probably meditate, I might do some yoga, and visit the spiritual center. But I would do no work. I would make no decisions about my future. I would not pursue any outward goal. I would sit. I would give myself 3 months. I would give myself rest. I would give myself understanding. Hopefully, I would find something that could help me figure out how to be happy.
To my utter surprise, committing to this brought a rush of tears. I’m sobbing and clutching the steering wheel and raining on it from my face. My heart wanted this so much. I started to feel real relief from all my stuckness. I knew immediately it was the right decision. Why had it been so difficult to see this before and why had the idea jammed up my brain so hard?
The answer to that is the same reason that all of my decisions were so hard back then, and why most of them didn’t work. It was a maladaptive pattern of thinking and only one I had ever known as an adult. This “answer” is in the section below called…“The Answer.” Duhn duhn duhn.
Within days of that session I left my relationship and moved in with a generous friend until I would leave. Soon after I handed in my 2-week notice at work. Within about a month, at the end of January 2013, I was in the UK.
My friends, by the way, thought this was a terrible idea. “You mean, you don’t have a job lined up?”, is a phrase I heard often. “You’re going to run up your debt.” “That doesn’t sound very productive.” One of my friends asked me how I was going to explain this “gap on my resume.”
Pretty much nobody understood what I was doing, except for my helpful aunt, she thought it was great. My parents, bless them, generously agreed.
Some part of me, however, or maybe the Universe, had actually known all along that I would do this. It was clearing the way. This is happening for all of us but we rarely see it. That’s what cracked up my spiritual teacher.
It was me that was really about to crack.
On A Sitting Sabbatical
My days in the UK were very similar. Wake up, meditate, prepare food, read a spiritual book while I ate. Maybe do a writing exercise. Draw a picture. Go outside. Workout. Eat more food. Play some video games. Watch a movie. Occasionally visit or even volunteer at the spiritual center. Have a drink with my aunt. The occasional social event once I managed to smile at few people who became friends. Repeat.
During that time, the pull of the regular world and my old patterns of thinking were so strong. Even though I had no work, it took me about 5 weeks just to stop thinking about work and what my next job needed to be. I realized how measly of a refresh all my previous vacations had been. And how deep our patterns run.
After about 7 weeks I was starting to feel different. Every few days, I was having new thoughts and ideas that felt important. My meditations were stronger and I started meditating twice a day on some days. I started writing lots of notes to myself. I was reading at a voracious rate and testing out virtually every type of class at the spiritual center. Inside it felt great and free.
But I was no closer to understanding what I really wanted to know, how to be happy. I had picked up lots of clues on this adventure, like give yourself a break, get more rest, give yourself time to think, meditation actually feels great, and there’s something weird going on with life and these spiritual folks might be onto it.
But my mind kept reminding me that I would soon run out of money and have to go back. What if this was a big mistake? What if I never understand myself or my happiness? What if I return to the US and have to beg for my job back? What if I have to beg a friend to let me stay with them? What if this is all horrible and I end up a total loser, poor and alone, with no one loving me?
Many days ended in swirling worry. But fortunately, I had untethered myself from habitual patterns long enough to hear another voice as well. It started to infiltrate my meditations. It was tiny and soft, and I could barely hear it. At first, I completely discounted it and worried that I had somehow given myself a psychotic break.
But this voice kept talking. It won me over by being very stable and loving and never pushing me. It said things that helped me get perspective and manage my emotions. Many spiritual teachers talk about the “inner voice,” or “intuition”, or a “connection” with their “higher self”. But this wasn’t me, I told myself. I don’t have a mystical connection. Or a higher self. I don’t get cosmic signals. I don’t have any spiritual intuition.
Yet the message was very consistent and very clear. Trust the decision your heart wanted so much. Don’t rush into the next thing. Keep sitting.
The Answer
It took two and half months. On a day that seemed completely the same as all the others, I sat down for my morning meditation.
I was feeling a familiar nervousness because I had one of my calls with my ex later that day, discussing if I would come back and if we would get back together. This feeling was totally normal for me. At yet that morning there was something different.
For the first time, I wasn’t so caught up in my nervousness, I was observing it. I had taken a step back from it inside. My meditation practice seemed to have switched to a new state. Instead of “me” that was nervous, nervousness was an energy that was happening in me. It wasn’t just nervousness, it was like a big knotted bundle of anxiety. I was seeing it in my body. I watched it tighten and turn my stomach. I also saw it in my brain, like a huge cloudy scribble. I watched the anxiety create thoughts in my mind trying to figure out exactly what would happen on this call with my ex, wondering nervously what she would say, trying to pick the right things to say back so she would have “good reactions”.
All of a sudden, from this mundane example, a shocking truth emerged. I realized this anxiety had been with me my whole life, underneath the surface, spitting up thoughts into my brain constantly trying to get me to avoid “trouble” and “solve problems” and get “good results”. It was a huge well of incredible anxiety that saw life as a series of threats to be managed, a series of people that could be furious with you or think you were an idiot. If you don’t avoid all that, welcome to rejection-no-love-loser-town: population, you. I had listened to these ideas my whole life.
In that moment I cracked open.
I saw with incredible clarity that almost every big decision I had ever made was motivated by a deep fear. The degrees I got, the jobs I chose, the relationships I got into, what I pursued in my hobbies or didn’t. Underneath them all was the feeling of being scared. Fear of not doing the right thing. Fear of failing, fear of succeeding. Fear of being vulnerable, fear of not making money. And the biggest of all, fear of disapproval and rejection. Fear of being unlovable. So much fear.
No wonder. No wonder I was never truly happy! Most of my choices did not come from my happiness, they actually came from my fear. How I could I possibly be happy by following my fear?
I had never seen this pattern in my thinking before because this fear disguised itself as “practical” and “rational” and “being realistic”, “doing what I should do” or “the right thing” and “figuring things out.” It gave me so many good-sounding reasons to listen to it over many many years. “Be careful” over here. “Watch out” over there. “Prevent this” but “do that because people will like that.” It was my natural mode of thinking. I thought this was a good way to think. I thought this is how you get things done. And it was completely and utterly opposed to my happiness.
This was the answer to why my life was on repeat. My fear had led me into one “safe”, “right”, and “realistic” cage after another.
Then I saw that this pattern wasn’t just in me. It was embedded in our society, it was embedded in our businesses! No wonder I tired of every job I ever had — because almost the whole business world runs on fear. Scarcity, urgency, evaluations, competition, “people will steal your ideas”, “people will take advantage of you”, “you can’t show weakness”, “we need more, more, more”, “we have to win, win, win or we’re going to lose, lose, lose.”
Who can possibly feel consistently good in an environment dripping with fear?
I saw it. It was everywhere. I couldn’t go back to a “normal” job. I couldn’t go back to a normal anything. It made me sick thinking about it.
Accepting My Mission
In the next moment, I made a decision that changed the direction of my life. I decided to live my life from the opposite of fear. And to bring this opposite with me everywhere I went. This was the change I had been yearning for in my life. This was the change I was yearning for in work. This was the change I felt all people were really yearning for.
And what was this opposite? It was the true subject of my 3-month self-study. It is the fundamental essence of all spiritual teachings. It’s the most important word in my life: Love.
In that moment, I saw clearly that there was a mission being presented to me. This mission was to learn how to live and work from Love and bring this to others. This resonated with every cell in my being. It was like a fire inside from my gut to my neck. I accepted this mission with my whole heart.
[Side note: It was a mission. Not the mission. There is no one physical mission. You don’t have one physical purpose. Your soul is infinitely expressable. We come into our lives to explore certain themes, but exactly how we do that is flexible and up to us.]
In that moment I made another decision (decisions seemed easier than ever before). I decided I was going to start coaching and consulting based on love. Woah! I was going to bring love into the business world. Boom! That was it, that was my next step. I got a rush of excitement even though I had no idea how to do what I had just decided.
I also simultaneously realized that businesses were unlikely to buy “love.” Hmm. Crap. I literally said out loud, “Wait, I went to business school, what do businesses like?…Yeah, they like profit!” #Solved.
Honestly, just like that, in the Spring of 2013, my first business was conceptually born: Love and Profit. I haven’t been an employee since.
Don’t get me wrong, it was not smooth sailing after that. At all. Working for yourself stretches you in ways you never imagined. I joined a friend’s venture and took contract projects for several months before I “launched” my work. I was constantly confused, and very often stuck, but I kept moving forward as best I could. I had no clue what I was doing for years. I spent many days with my head in my hands, having no idea where my next payment was coming from, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into, thinking it would be so much easier if I just had a normal friggin job.
But then that little voice would pipe up again and ask if I remembered the mission. The one that burned so brightly inside me. The one that I discovered when I let everything go and looked into my Self as deeply as I could at the time. Love. And then I could feel it in my body again, and I knew I there was more to do. There was a bigger force at work, and I was part of it. I had a role to play in this crazy game. I realized I had never been happier in my adult life.
It was all thanks to 3 months of nothing. The best choice I ever made.
Your Turn?
From where I sit now writing this, 5 years into following my inner wisdom, with many “successes”, a wake of people I’ve helped, and projects with organizations around the world, I still feel like a total beginner. I’m still learning what it means to choose Love, to live and work from that place. I still have no clue at times. I still sometimes struggle to answer, “So what do you do?” Trust me, I am making this up as I go.
This is still scary. I don’t ignore the fear, I don’t push it away, or convince myself it doesn’t exist. I feel the fear, and I do it anyway.
And that’s incredibly exciting and enlivening at the core of my being. I feel like I am just getting started. I learn something new every day. It’s a constant source of beautiful energy. My work keeps growing and getting more impactful. The transformations I help create now weren’t even in my imagination when I started. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.
This is not because I’m something better than anyone else.
More happiness is a natural consequence for anyone when they align themselves with the piece of their bigness, their spirit, that lives in their heart.
That’s what Gandhi was really talking about when he said:
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
From your head, through your heart, to your hands — all in harmony. That’s what happiness is. Alignment at a deeper level. Most of us skip or explain away that middle part, the heart part, or ignore it entirely. And we wonder why we aren’t happy.
Now people ask me how they can find a mission and act on it to feel more happy. Do they need to do exactly what I did? No. Absolutely not. But the mechanics are the same. There are two parts:
- Find ways to connect more deeply with yourself than ever before because the answer is already inside of you. Both what is stopping you and what you really want. It’s in your body.
- Once you feel what really resonates with your deep core, your Soul, as felt in your body and heart, simply decide to follow it with very small, simple action and see how it plays out. Even if you don’t know where it is going or how it will work. Not knowing, trusting, and experimenting as best we can in alignment with our heart is all part of the game we came here to play.
That’s all I did. I’ve never had any special skills or knowledge. And I had so much help along the way. That same help is available in your life. I simply used that help, dug out my heart’s wisdom and decided to try following it for the first time in my life. I just tried it. That’s it. And it worked! Even when it looked like it wasn’t. Everything unfolded from there.
Question: what do you think those positive internal body feelings, like excitement, freedom, peace, and contentment, are for? Just for kicks in the human experience? They are your soul sending you messages. They are data for what your Soul really wants. They are your soul giving you breadcrumbs for your next best move in the grand game of life. Something inside you is so ready to commit to the actions that match those feelings.
I just gave those feelings a chance to lead my life. To my continuing surprise, it keeps working well enough that I can keep going. In fact, it just keeps getting better. I still hit walls all the time, and I move through them more easily with each one.
I am nowhere near done. There are other things buried in my heart that I’m just starting to unearth. It’s an endless well of creative expression.
There’s a sentence that I love: the price of the new life you want is your current life. If you know who said that, please tell me.
This is still so relevant for me. I need to constantly remind myself that thoughts about who I am, what I’m doing, what success is, and even my plans need to die, so that I can live as an even truer and greater version of myself. It hurts and first but then it feels like more freedom than I’ve ever felt before.
Joseph Campbell said it pretty well, too, I’m sure you’ve seen it:
You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.
This time don’t just see the quote. See your life, look around and notice what you will have to let die if you want to live the life you truly want. You will have to let something fall to ash. My recommendation is not to wait until this eventually happens, do it voluntarily.
This process is hard. Because it involves your identity. My morning routine, my meditation practice, my journaling practice, being coached, and being part of a group of people doing the same in their lives holds the space of this process for me. These practices are a life-saver, because this process is very often a total bitch. And then comes the sweet, sweet reward of stepping into your truth.
So how about you?
How do you hold space for parts of you to die, so that the new can be born? Daily habits? Like me, a morning routine? Something bigger? What have you found that works for you? I’d love you to share so we can all learn.
If you don’t have these practices, develop them. When you feel stuck, your head down trying to survive, you might not even notice what the Universe is trying to hand you on a platter.
People want to help you. Circumstances conspire to push you forward. The next best book you could read is already on your shelf. Everything you need to commit to your inner Self is already in your life. Choose to commit however you can, with what you have, from where ever you are right now. No more than that is required.
I know something about you. I know that your story is going to be different than my story, and only you can live it. You don’t need to be as dramatic as me. You only need the commitment to yourself to go deeper than you are right now.
So take small steps or go for a big one. If you want a mini-apolocalypse, leave everything at the same time for 3 months and go get your own cockamamy idea. It could be the best thing you ever do.
Xo, David
To read more from David and see his current projects please go to his personal website, davidpapa.live.
