Actually, this should read, “One way of how to change your life” because there are of course so many ways to change your life and in this article, I am only sharing where my path took me after leaving the corporate world and diving head first into the unknown.
In fact, let me backtrack – as mentioned in my last article I already had the wish to change and be independent many years back and then started writing a business plan for a Surf-Yoga house (which I am glad I didn’t continue following). Since then a lot has changed. I have understood that starting your own business – while I am sure it is amazing in a whole different way – brings with it even more work than working for a company. And what I wanted was to live more and work less and work smarter. Over the years I had gone down the spiritual path continuously and learned to see work and money in a different way. I guess this could be a topic for a whole separate article, but basically, I learned how to detach from a lot of things and live more in the moment and also live more simply. I can confidently say that in the last 2 years I achieved exactly what I had wanted. Less work, more free time, more balance, and more time to live and have adventures. But let me tell you how it all happened for me.
As already mentioned in the first part of the story “How to change your life”, after I quit my corporate job which did not feel right for me anymore and traveled the world for 11 months I returned to South Africa a mere 2 weeks before the “hard lockdown” in March 2020 with no money left and no job.
While I was still on my travels around the world I was hoping that something would come up or emerge, something I could do, maybe even my calling, my soul purpose, but nothing happened. Nothing came up. And it started to make me really nervous and stress me out. Never before in my life had I not had a plan, never before had I not had some secured form of income. And by the way, I think this exact reason stops a lot of other people from leaving their jobs or changing their lives drastically.
Since no calling or soul purpose presented itself to me, I felt like I had to do something, so my first step – which I started during my travels – was to create a mind map. In the center I wrote “New me” and around it, in a circle I wrote down every idea, however small and insignificant it might have seemed. There were things like “Finding online freelance work” to “Offer Airbnb experiences” or “Teach Online-Yoga” and a whole bunch of other small things and ideas. It didn’t sound so bad in the end and I thought for a start it might be a bit of a plan (even though I still felt quite stressed out that I hadn’t discovered my calling or soul purpose).
Just after I returned home to South Africa eager to get going on making some of the ideas happen, about 80% of them became impossible due to the lockdown and general world situation. I remember a moment when I was literally breaking down in tears, not being able to comprehend what had just happened and simply thinking “this is not fair, I had it all lined up to work, and now what?”
After this moment of desperation had passed, I looked on the bright side and worked with the 20% of things I still could do. I started setting up online Yin Yoga classes (I had already done yoga teacher trainings back in India in 2017 and 2018 and now had more time to focus on teaching).
In case you wonder how I was able to support myself and my living costs since I returned without any money from my travels – I was lucky to have been able to stay for free with a friend for the first two months, which helped a lot. Afterward, I rented a room from a friend in a shared flat for 6 weeks and again got lucky to only pay 50% of the rent and then made a move away from Cape Town to a farm in George on the Gardenroute which made rent and life a lot more affordable and living more peaceful during early Corona times.
Changing my life certainly came with making sacrifices and in some cases like mine letting go of certain comforts and luxuries that I used to be able to afford, but living more simply is actually pretty amazing and there is no looking back.
Yoga was of course not the only thing I did, in fact it still is just a small side income and mostly passion work for me.
Back in India (before I came back to South Africa) I met a German girl, who was teaching German online. She was not a teacher and had studied something entirely different but then fell in love with her Indian yoga teacher during her teacher training and decided to stay in India and not pursue a career in the field she had studied in. She was teaching full-time online and making a very good amount of money. She encouraged me back then and said “Why don’t you teach as well?” My first reaction was “Me? No, I am not a teacher and I don’t think I could do it!”
It actually took me a few months and a certain degree of desperation to actually take a shot at it. In school, I had always hated German, especially grammar. I signed up on the platform for teaching and after maybe 2 or 3 weeks I had my first student. The first few lessons were rather close to disastrous, to be honest… but luckily the students knew I was not a studied teacher and also you are officially a tutor and not a teacher on the platform.
I had to do a lot of research and self-teaching in the beginning but I enjoyed the challenge and especially enjoyed meeting so many people, even during lockdown, and hearing their life stories and challenges in different countries. Now, more than 2 years later, I have taught over 1000 lessons and still love it.
Besides this, I ended up doing a couple of freelance jobs here and there mainly through FIVERR and offering Airbnb experiences here and there.
Teaching gave me the lifestyle I was looking for (for now at least) and I never thought it could be so much fun. My story certainly taught me that sometimes you just have to surrender to life and things will always work out, even though it might not be the way you imagined.
As long as you are clear about what is most important to you, I believe things will always happen for you. But you need to be completely honest with yourself as to how you want things to be and what it is that you really want.
If you feel like looking into teaching as well, have a look at www.preply.com. You can teach many different languages but also other subjects from Mathematics to Biology, SEO, and Business.
Some key learnings on my journey of changing my life:
- JUMP! As much as you prepare mentally and otherwise, eventually you just have to jump, do it, quit the job, and change the path. And this takes a lot of courage. But it is a risk worth taking! I always say that you can always go back to where you came from, back to your comfort zone. But to grow or change, you need to take some risks!
- EVENTS OUTSIDE YOUR CONTROL – There will likely be things happening that you could not plan for on your new path, but it will be ok and as you go, you will learn and adjust and make it work!
- LIVING CIRCUMSTANCES: Depending on what you will do and if or if not you have saved up a lot of money before you take the big step, you might need to adjust your living circumstances (e.g. find a cheaper place to stay, live more simply…)
- DON’T BE TOO SET ON WHAT TO DO NEXT: While you might have a clear picture of what you want to do next, don´t miss opportunities that might actually lead you in the right direction. Be clear on what you want (e.g. more free time, connect with people, help people change their lives) but let go of the HOW. In my case, I got to do all these things through teaching German, which I would have never imagined before!
THE NAKED TRUTH
My way of changing my life was jumping off the cliff without any parachute, meaning I first spent 11 months traveling around the world and spending all my savings before I changed my life. This way could certainly cause you some anxiety and sleepless nights, but mostly a need to drastically simplify your life and be flexible and focus on what really matters! And in the end, I learned that things will always work out!
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