I Quit My Life

Photo by averie woodard on Unsplash

I didn’t set out to take a ten month hiatus from my life. 

Circumstances stopped me in my tracks and I was forced to pivot. To be more precise, I floundered for a long time and then realized it was vital that I find a way to pivot.

A family crisis set things in motion. (I share that story here.)

Then my body let me know it had had enough. Enough of the stressful career, the constant anxiety, and the 24/7 survival mode internal status. If you have experienced burnout, you know that if you don’t slow down and rest, your body has a way of making you. In the months following the toppling of the initial domino, my health fell apart. 

There is no severing the mind-body connection. What impacts one, impacts the other. It can’t be denied that stress is a major risk factor in the development of many serious diseases - the body is the servant of the mind.

As I visited specialists and underwent testing, I lived in fear of what my future might hold. 

In the meantime, I worked hard at setting my body on a healing trajectory, and eventually my health issues started to resolve. It took the better part of a year for me to sort myself out and learn how to really live again.

Over the course of those months, I arrived at an epiphany. Or rather, a string of epiphanies. 

1. Stress will kill me if I let it.

2. Without my health, my life is severely limited.

3. Life is heckin short.

4. I have always wanted to be a writer.

5. If not now, when?

6. Not everyone will agree with my decisions but I am the only one who lives my life.

7. Try life on. Experiment. Stop taking myself so seriously. 

8. I have to take a real stab at writing, or I will die with that regret.

9. Seize the day.

Some of these epiphanies may seem blatantly obvious. It’s easy to pay lip service to platitudes like “seize the day” - but are we deeply living in alignment with what we say we most want in this life? And are we pursuing those things with a sense of urgency? Our actions need to be congruent with our desires.

Quitting my life enabled me to have the time and space to facilitate an inner transformation and led me to design a different way of living. 

Thanks to that wake up call, I now notice and appreciate the small things: I treasure every conversation with my loved ones, I experience gratitude when I notice improvements in my health, I celebrate every difficult writing task I complete. 

What can seem like a bleak finality is often just the new beginning we didn’t know we needed. For me, a hard reset allowed me to contemplate where I am and where I want to go.

We must live authentic lives and do what’s right for us. I hope you don’t have to endure a family crisis or health scare in order to introspect, and arrive at your own illuminating insights.

Here are a few questions to help you embark on the right path (if you haven’t already).

1. Do I like what I do for work? Do I like my workplace?

2. If I don’t like what I do for work, do I need retraining or simply a career shift to move in a direction that suits me?

3. Am I living the lifestyle I want?

4. How is my health, are there changes I need to make to my habits?

5. Do I have a financial buffer in order to be able to take risks and make changes in my life?

6. How are my relationships? Are there changes that need to be implemented, like boundaries?

The ability to choose to shift gears and steer in a new direction is always there, waiting.

Life has a way of schooling us, and lessons will be repeated until learned. We must internalize what we’re meant to know so we can move forward. 

If you are enduring a stressful job, or other situation that puts you in a state of intense anxiety, please don’t wait until your body causes your life to grind to a halt. Take the time to soul-search and set yourself on the path you long for. 

You might think you have time to pursue that passion later, or you will start eating properly and exercising at some point in the future, or you will quit the job you dread when you just save a little more money. That time may never come. 

Don’t wait. Don’t wait to shift careers, pursue your passion, tell someone you love them, make time for the people you love, make time for your health. Do it now.