I Quit My Life and Started a New One. Follow these 5 Steps To Make the Leap Into a New Life.
It’s no easy process but totally worth it.
A few years ago I was miserable.
My mental health was on a knife edge. Between bouts of anxiety and depression, I was unable to improve my situation.
I needed change but I didn’t know what change I needed.
I’d strived for a long time to get to where I had. For years I’d freelanced and followed my own path. Freelancing suited me. I could be creative and spontaneous and lean into my free-spirited side.
Over time I’d built up lots of experience. By my mid-thirties I thought full-time employment would prove my expertise. I got the job of my dreams.
From the outside, I looked like a success. I had the house and the cool job. I was comfortable.
Too comfortable.
I missed being creative, spontaneous, and free-spirited. I feared I’d lost these core parts of myself. I felt trapped.
I was striving for success in the eyes of society. I was seeking validation from others. This was not my own version of success.
It took me a long time and some soul searching to figure out what to do next with my life. I had to figure out what success looked like to me and how to make it happen.
Through perseverance and a mantra of ‘one step at a time’, I made significant changes.
I’m a much happier person for it.
Here are the 5 steps I took to figure it all out:
Life Audit
Figuring out what makes you happy and unhappy is key to understanding where your life is off track.
I took a long hard look at what I valued in life.
I value having autonomy. I like delivering work in my own timeframe to a set deadline. I didn’t value delivering work in a specific way to someone else’s timeframe. This told me I like time freedom and that I’d work well with clients rather than having a boss.
The job’s location meant I was far away from family and lifelong friends. When you’ve got a full-time job you can no longer travel at the drop of a hat and do remote work. Not being able to do this made me feel disconnected. I realized I valued being close to a community of people who knew me well. I valued time and location freedom. I needed to be able to travel.
I took a long hard look at how I spent my time and energy. I wrote down everything I did for a week and how it made me feel. Turns out I spent an obscene amount of time worrying about what people thought of me. I got energy from writing and helping people. Back-to-back meetings 8 hours a day destroyed my energy.
Your time and energy are your most precious limited resources. When you know how you spend them you can make wiser choices about how to use them.
- What do you value about work and life?
- What activities bring you energy?
- What takes your energy away?
- What do these things tell you about what you like and don’t like?
Skills Assessment
If you’re unhappy at work and it is affecting your well-being then get a different job. It could be a similar role in a different organization that matches your values or a new career.
Either way, knowing your skills will tell you what job you might want to do.
To figure it out, write down all your previous jobs, volunteering roles, and major life events. List out what skills you used for each one.
Ask your friends and colleagues what skills they think you have. What have they seen you doing that they thought you excelled at?
When you’ve got your list of existing skills, consider what’s missing. What skills do you want to develop? Separate the ones you want from the ones you don’t want to use anymore.
Try It Out for Size
With your list of values, skills, and activities that bring you energy, think about what role, career, and lifestyle they fit into. Research some options.
My options included becoming a psychotherapist. I am inspired by being able to help people and get energy from doing it. I’d also benefited from therapy in the past. I took the plunge and started to train.
Partway through my course, I discovered coaching. It was a role that would allow for time and location freedom. Writing alongside coaching enabled my creative expression.
I’ve never looked back.
When you have a list of roles, life, or career options you can start trying them out. Think about it as trying them on to see if they fit. Test them out by volunteering, interning, shadowing, or training. Visit places to live and try out new activities.
Do you have contacts with someone who does a role on your list? Ask them what a day in the life of their role looks like. If it will fit your values and skills then give it a try.
Trying it out requires no commitment. Do it in small chunks of time alongside an existing job.
Use your weekends and evenings to figure out what direction you want to take your life.
Enjoy the process. You’ll know when you do and don’t like something. You’ll know what you want to pursue further and what you want to cross off your options list.
Financial Backup
Before I made the leap to a new life I spent 2 years building my side hustle. During that time I saved as much cash as I could.
I was desperate to jump ship from my job and life but I persevered until I had enough of a security blanket.
The life you want to create will dictate how much money you will need in the bank. People talk about having 3 months of savings. I needed more to change my entire situation.
Savings will prop you up whilst you make the change. They’ll ease the stress of taking the leap.
Let Go of the Past
The process of creating a new life is not easy.
It requires you to let go of things that should remain in your past.
You’ll need to work through uncomfortable emotions. But, it will never be as uncomfortable as staying in your unhappy situation.
The place I lived, my job, and my career were all things I needed to change. I had to work through self-doubt, let go of things I cared about and say goodbye to people I loved.
It was tough. But, it was worth it to create a life worth living.
Let go of the things keeping you in the status quo. The things that no longer serve you. New things and better opportunities will replace them.
Final Thoughts
Acknowledging your need for change is the first step.
There are a lot of steps after then.
It can be frustrating, but stay conscious of the process and try to enjoy it. Big change and a new life worth living will be waiting for you at the other end.
Start by understanding why you do things. Figure out your version of success. Then follow the process:
- Life Audit
- Skills Assessment
- Try it out for size
- Financial backup
- Let go of the past
Four months ago I quit my job. A month ago I sold all my furniture and moved out of my house. Last week I got a one-way ticket to the other side of the world.
None of this seemed possible a couple of years ago. Perseverance and incremental steps made it doable.
Looking back I regret staying in my unhappy situation for so long. But, these things take as long as they need to take.
The important thing is to keep moving in the right direction. One step at a time.
Each step will bring you closer to your new life.
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