Leaving the Life I Thought I Wanted

It’s been almost six months since my last blog post. Apparently, the procrastination post is writing itself.

In my last post, I mentioned that those next two years in Dubai would become my final chapter in the corporate world. The funny thing is, if you'd asked me at the time, I would have told you the exact opposite.

What I didn't expect was that I would end up working for a company I had admired for years. It was one of those companies you look at from afar and think, "That would be amazing, but I doubt it'll happen for me." And then somehow it does.

When the opportunity came up, I was thrilled. Not only was it a company I genuinely wanted to work for, but the role itself was different from anything I had done before. There was a steep learning curve, exciting projects, great colleagues, and plenty of challenge. I was thriving.

That's an important part of this story because leaving the corporate world wasn't an escape from something I hated.

I was well paid, respected, challenged, and doing work I excelled at. For two and a half years, I poured myself into that role and genuinely loved it.

Meanwhile, my spiritual life continued quietly in the background. There was no grand business plan, no website, no social media strategy, and certainly no vision board proclaiming "Future Psychic and Energy Healer." There was simply me, occasionally doing Reiki sessions for friends on the couch in my living room. Friends would tell friends, and every now and then someone would ask for help. One woman came to see me because she was struggling to get pregnant. I did a Reiki session for her and never saw her again after that. Years later I heard she had gone on to have two children. Am I claiming responsibility? Absolutely not. But I'd like to think the energy may have helped clear a few obstacles from her path.

Around the same time, I also started hosting a meditation evening at a nearby holistic centre. It was always a small gathering, nothing particularly grand (my very first one only had my good friend Angela present!), but it gave me another opportunity to explore and share the practices that had become meaningful to me. Even then, I never imagined any of this would become a career. It was simply something I enjoyed alongside my “day job”.

Mostly, though, my focus remained on my corporate career. The company I worked for was involved in major sporting events, and after one championship wrapped up, several projects I had been deeply involved in came to their natural conclusion . As I was preparing for a holiday afterwards, a knowing arrived that was so calm and so certain that I couldn't ignore it.

I wasn't coming back.

There was no dramatic epiphany. No message from the heavens. No burnout, resentment, or corporate horror story. In fact, life was still pretty great. Yet the certainty was there all the same. For someone who had spent most of her adult life carefully planning the next move, this was highly suspicious behaviour.

There was no spreadsheet involved, and no pros-and-cons list. I simply knew the chapter was complete.

Looking back now, I think it was one of the clearest intuitive messages I had ever received. The irony is that I didn't recognize it as intuition at the time. I just thought it was a good decision.

So before I even left for that holiday, I resigned, gave up my apartment, put my belongings into storage, and started making plans to leave Dubai altogether. Thailand had been on my bucket list to live in for years. I had visited many times and loved it, so my strategy was remarkably sophisticated: book accommodation for two weeks and see what happened.

I wasn't arriving in Thailand with a detailed plan. Quite the opposite. I had some savings, plenty of curiosity, and a strong feeling that whatever came next would not involve another corporate job. Beyond that, things were remarkably uncertain.

There was a vague idea in the back of my mind that perhaps the healing work, the spiritual studies and all the things I had been exploring for years, might one day become something more. I would have loved for that to be the case. The problem was that I had absolutely no idea how that would happen, what it would look like, or where to even begin. It felt less like a plan and more like a distant possibility floating around in the background.

I have to be honest, it was slightly terrifying. Up until that point, I had always been employed by someone else. There was a clear path, a clear structure, and a fairly predictable outcome. Now, for the first time, I was stepping away from that security and into the unknown. If this energy work was ever going to become something more, I would need to be my own entrepreneur, motivator, CEO, and the person ultimately accountable for making it happen.

At the time, I thought I was simply taking a break and trying something different. I was willing to step into the unknown and trust that the next chapter would unfold when it was ready. What I didn't realize was that Thailand wasn't just another adventure. It would become the place where all those years of studying, healing, learning, and quietly exploring would finally begin to take on a life of their own.

The details were still fuzzy. The path was far from clear. But for the first time, I wasn't trying to force the answers. I was willing to trust that they would arrive when I was ready for them.