The bluntness of her response hit me hard. I looked out the window which opened up to Lisbon’s skyline and muttered something to myself about the power of saying no.

I had just resigned from a job that had sponsored my relocation from Australia to Portugal. It occurred to me that I had unintentionally arrived at a place in my career, which, on the surface seemed ideal, but on the inside, was completely unfulfilling. Up until that point, my career in design had been my primary focus. I played my career like a chess game, only to realise I didn’t want to play the game at all.

I looked back at the empty dots on the poster and asked myself, “What do I do now?”

This was an opportunity to create something beautiful for myself, but it was also a moment filled with an immense amount of uncertainty. Who was I without the obligation to show up for a 9-5 job? What do I want to create for myself?

What followed in the next four years, was a process of unbecoming everything I thought I was supposed to be. The choices that I’d made in the past had got me to where I was. If I wanted a different outcome, I was going to have to make different choices. Despite the fear of leaving behind the support structure of my career, I decided to take a year-long sabbatical.

I didn’t have a plan, but I knew I needed space, new experiences and fresh perspectives. I retrained as an English teacher, as a means to an end. It was a way to support myself with minimal responsibility and maximum flexibility. Little did I know, I would actually enjoy my experience of teaching and building relationships with students.

At the time, yoga was increasingly becoming an influential part of my life. The practice gave me quiet respite and I enjoyed the freedom of moving my body in interesting and novel ways. I began taking my yoga practice seriously, eventually enrolling for a yoga teacher training course.

Knowing that I was about to travel, I unburdened myself of all the extraneous material possessions I’d accumulated since I’d moved to Portugal. I donated and sold as much of my belongings as possible. I didn’t want the burden of being tied to one place.

With time, my yoga practice deepened and I experienced the incredibly healing power of somatic movement practices. The yoga teacher training brought me to Costa Rica, where I had initially intended to stay for a month. One month turned into two, then three and I found myself travelling through Guatemala and Mexico as well. I began learning Spanish in Guatemala as a way of connecting to my Ecuadorian roots, whilst immersing myself in this new world of yoga, meditation and movement. I met people on the road who showed me that there were richer ways of being.

I returned to Portugal and lined up a yoga teaching gig at a retreat venue. This job was the furtherest that I could get from my job in tech. I taught yoga twice per day, and in between sessions, I learned to surf. There was no screen time, no meetings, no office and it was physically taxing on my body. I absolutely loved being outdoors for most of the day, connecting with our guests and feeling myself grow as a person.

City-life had run it’s course and I no longer felt connected to the people or the place I had been living. Surfing had ignited something in me, so after my yoga teaching gig ended, I moved to a small coastal surf town called Ericeira. Like most people who come to Ericeira, I immediately fell in love with the young and carefree vibe of the place. I continued teaching yoga there and improved my surfing. It would become my home for the next 2 years and it was here that I met my partner.

As my year-long sabbatical came to an end, I turned my attention towards creating financial stability. I established myself as an independent design consultant and won clients in Australia, the US and the Netherlands. I created a lifestyle of flexibility for myself, working when I needed to and travelling in the low-seasons. Though I enjoyed the flexibility, after two years of freelancing, I started to get an itch to explore other possibilities. What could I do for work that was meaningful to me?

With the wisdom of hindsight, I now see that this period of my life was a series of experiments. It gave me all the necessary data to make conscious decisions about what I wanted amplify and reduce in my life. It’s led me down a completely different path, because I made different decisions for myself.

I don’t think I would have arrived at the place I am now without all those twists, turns and side quests. I’ve learned so much about myself and my preferences. It’s through this process of engaging with the world, that we actually gain clarity on what it is we want our contribution to be, and how we want to design our work around our life.