You know how they say LA is where dreams are made?
Well, my version of that was Dubai.
Let’s imagine 27-year-old Thalia for a sec. (Which was 6 years ago if you’re keeping track of my age).
She’s working a stressful 9-to-5 job in a toxic environment, counting down the hours to when she can go home and open up a bottle of wine, when suddenly, she gets a text message from a friend living in Dubai, inviting her to come and visit.
Beach, brunch, cocktails?
Say no more. I was on Skyscanner quicker than you could say, “I hate my job.”
Visiting Dubai for the first time was a world away from what I was used to.
A city next to the beach? Groundbreaking.
Hot weather every single day. Um, yes, please.
And don’t even get me started on how easy car rental in Dubai was — I swear, that city makes adulting look glamorous.
Up until this point, I was used to daily rain, a stuffy underground and homeless people doing drugs on the streets in Soho. (But that’s a story for another time.)
My bestie’s work-life balance looked A LOT different to mine.
- Beach after work. Check.
- Cocktails in fancy bars. Check.
- Paddle-boarding at weekends. Check.
She was living the dream. And I’ve gotta admit, I was super jealous of her. I wanted that lifestyle, too.
I wanted freedom. To not be chained to a desk 8 hrs a day and limited to a week’s holiday.
I wanted to live life on my terms.
Long story short, Dubai was the catalyst for me to escape the soul-sucking 9-to-5. As soon as I got back to London, I started plotting that roadmap.
7 months later, I was on a one-way flight to the life of my dreams. (And Sri Lanka was the first stop.)
Here’s a deep dive into the exact 5 things I did to change my life and prioritise my peace in the process. And yes, it does all start with mindset.
Signs you need to change your life
Whatever your current work-life situation is, chances are you’ve dreamed about an alternative life at least once.
Maybe you’re married to Ryan Gosling.
Maybe you’re a successful CEO.
Maybe you’re living a quieter life on a tropical island.
The latter was me.
Every Sunday during my 9-to-5 era, I would hide under the covers watching Sex and The City, wishing away my hangover and fantasising about white sandy beaches with crystal blue waters.
The truth was — I was extremely burnt out. Not just from my job but also from an unhealthy lifestyle.
I was unfulfilled and felt unsatisfied in multiple areas of my life. I assumed this was just adulting in a nutshell. (It’s not by the way; life is for thriving, not surviving.)
Turns out, my gut was trying to tell me that I needed to make a change. I just didn’t know it yet.
I was also struggling with:
- Low moods and always waking up in a funk
- Overwhelm and anxious thoughts
- Clock-watching
- Lack of energy and enthusiasm for the day ahead
- Excessive drinking to escape my current reality
- Having zero purpose or direction
- Low confidence
The first step: Self-awareness
I want to begin by saying that if you’re experiencing one or more of the above issues, just know that you are not alone.
There are a lot of other women out there going through the motions, too. I was one of those women. But I managed to overcome the obstacles that I was facing.
The first step?…
Self-awareness.
I know I mentioned earlier that changing my life all started with my mindset, but if I didn’t have the awareness in the first place, then I wouldn’t have known how unhappy I actually was.
And the tool I turned to to help me gain awareness was journaling.
Journaling is one powerful ritual for emotional release and gaining clarity on how to move forward. It helps you make sense of your thoughts and opens up space so you can think more clearly about the changes you need to make.
These were the prompts I used (and still do) to get me unstuck:
- What’s working?
- What’s not working?
- What’s next for me?
Although simple, these 3 questions open the doors to so much more than meets the eye.
It’s like opening up a can of worms. You write down one thing, and before you know it, the page is filled with deep inner thoughts you’ve been burying for a long time.
So, before you dive into the rest of this blog post, I encourage you to sit with a notebook for a while. Go through each one of these prompts and brain-dump anything that comes to mind.
The 5 things I did to change my life
It goes without saying — I can’t give you the magic formula to change your life.
I know you found your way onto this blog post looking for answers, but the truth is, you need to find them within yourself. (I can still help you with that, though.)
Yes, the below steps worked for me. But they might not necessarily work for you.
I share my story in the hope that it will inspire and help you in some way. Whether that is to give you support, encourage you to make a change or make you feel less alone.
Regardless, I 100% recommend bookmarking this page so you can refer back to it whenever you need to. There are a bunch of golden nuggets in here that might lead you to a few breakthroughs.
1 | Inner mindset work
We’ll call gaining self-awareness Step 1A. Step 1B was doing the inner mindset work.
In a nutshell, this looked like getting comfortable with breaking away from the norm and following my own path.
For context, before I decided to completely turn my life upside down, I was a model booker working in the fashion industry in London. I’d been at my job for close to 7 years and was a few months shy of my 27th birthday. (It’s not a coincidence that this was around the same time as my Saturn Return.)
I lived in a house-share in Clapham with 3 other people and was 100% single.
Sure, to an outsider, my life was glamorous, my job well-paid, and my social life was booming. (Ironically, this is someone’s dream life, and it was mine for a while too, but I slowly began to outgrow it.)
But on the inside, I was battling low moods, anxiety and a lack of confidence in myself.
I was also up against societal expectations. You know, the ones that tell you to get on the property ladder in your twenties, get married in your thirties and have babies so they can also follow in your footsteps.
When I voiced my desire to go travelling to a colleague, the responses I got were of confusion and judgment.
“Stop complaining, no one likes their job.”
“You’re too old to be doing something like that, you need to think about settling down.”
“Your job won’t be here when you get back, you know.”
“You’ll regret it.”
To say that this time in my life was lonely and tough would be an understatement.
I had no one to talk to. But deep down inside, I still knew that I had to make a change. Not just because I wanted to but because my well-being depended on it.
So, I started the inner work.
I believe mindset is the foundation for optimising your entire life. Without the support of a resilient and positive mindset, you will simply crumble under the pressure of life’s challenges and obstacles. Or the comments made by those around you.
Your mindset is what pushes you out of your comfort zone and influences every step you take towards becoming your best self.
“Change your thoughts, change your life.”
Wayne W. Dyer
2 | Quit the 9 to 5 and bought a one-way ticket
Up until that trip to Dubai, I had never really thought about my future.
I just assumed I’d do what everyone else around me was doing. Stay in my job for another 10+ years, get married, buy a house and have children.
Reframing my beliefs around success and diving deep into my real values (the mindset work) showed me that that life wasn’t my dream. And achieving those things wouldn’t make me happy.
But travelling the world and following my own path would.
It was at that moment when I realised my dream life did not align with the 9-to-5. I wanted more out of life — joy, adventure, freedom.
The next step — handing in my notice and planning my dream trip.
I had no clue about solo travelling or travel in general, but I knew one thing. I wanted to get as far away from London as possible. So on the 13th of May 2017, I walked into my local travel agent, sat down at the nearest desk and told the guy working there, “I want to travel.”
“Ok, was his reply. Where do you want to go?”
An hour later, I had my dream route planned. (It was Sri Lanka, Singapore, Borneo, The Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal, ending with the trek of all treks — Everest Base Camp.
I booked a one-way flight and a few group tours to ease me in, paid the deposit so I couldn’t back out and started to plan my next steps.
If you’re also considering a major life change like moving abroad for work, platforms like Jooble can now help you find jobs that offer visa sponsorship to make that transition smoother, so you’re not figuring it out on your own.
Hot take:
No matter how tempting it is to suddenly quit your 9-to-5 and travel the world, you need to do the inner mindset work first. Because let me tell you, going against the norm is not as easy as it looks.
You need to have the clarity and confidence it takes to stop questioning whether you’re on the right path or not. You need to have the courage and resilience it takes to tackle any obstacles or setbacks that come your way. You need to have belief in yourself to make it happen.
So do not skip step number one. There’s a reason why it’s first.
3 | Sold everything
Ok, not everything, but I sold a BIG chunk of all the material possessions I’d accumulated over the past 6 years of living in London.
This included A LOT of clothes. Half of which still had the labels on.
I had a toxic obsession with clothes. Expensive ones. Twenty-something-year-old Thalia was trapped in a cycle of believing that her self-worth came from external validation. (I’m getting really good at this 2nd person thing.)
To break free from this cycle, I needed to declutter and reset my entire wardrobe.
Enter my eBay era.
Girl math says I made money to fund my travels.
Boy Math says I was lucky to make anything back from the thousands of pounds I spent living in London. But hey, we live, and we learn. And my lesson was the realisation that fulfilment doesn’t come from having stuff.
It comes from adventure, being authentic, making memories and having a sense of purpose.
To this day, I still implement minimalism. As a digital nomad who travels full-time, it makes sense for me to only have one big backpack for clothes and one small backpack for valuables.
It does at times get a little frustrating knowing I don’t have a wardrobe full of clothes to choose from, but it makes my life easier.
Freedom doesn’t always mean being location-independent. It can also mean being material-independent. To not be tied down to pointless things or have an emotional attachment to possessions.
It also means being free of external validation.
Your sense of self-worth can only ever come from you. So don’t look to others to give that to you.
“We were never meant to live life accumulating stuff. We were meant to live simply enjoying the experiences of life, the people of life, and the journey of life – not the things of life.”
Joshua Becker
4 | Adopted healthy habits
Throughout my twenties, I followed an unhealthy lifestyle. This looked like drinking a bottle of wine every night, partying at the weekends and eating fast food whenever I felt like it.
I had zero boundaries, found it hard to say “no” and stayed up into the early hours binge-watching Netflix.
Turns out that lifestyle didn’t do anything for my self-esteem or overall well-being.
Sure, I exercised. I did spin and pilates 1-2 times a week and went running to blow off steam. But exercise alone wasn’t going to fix me or prepare me for a better life.
I needed to build a routine of simple habits that supported my wellness.
Just so we’re all on the same page, a healthy habit is anything you repeatedly do that positively contributes to your mental and physical health and continues to benefit you long-term.
Yes, scrolling on your phone might give you short-term gratification, but how is it contributing to your health in the long term?
For me, this meant ditching the doom scroll, cutting out junk food and building a morning routine to ease me into the day.
It also meant adopting a slower pace to life. To be patient, more present, appreciate the simple things and spend time in nature.
This hasn’t changed much in the past 6 years, but I now also swear by these habits:
- Reading every morning
- Writing down 3 things I’m grateful for
- Moving my body through yoga or swimming
- Watching the sunset every evening
- Muting all my notifications
5 | Learnt to love myself (for the first time)
Since this blog began, I’ve been a huge advocate for self-care. To prioritise your own needs and happiness over what is expected of you.
But before self-care, there was self-love.
Self-love is the love you have for yourself, no matter what. It’s learning to not judge yourself and to love yourself unconditionally despite your flaws, imperfections or failures.
And that’s what solo travel did for me.
- I learnt to appreciate my own company
- I got super comfortable eating by myself
- I gained a greater sense of who I was as a person
- I rediscovered my passions and hobbies
- I became my own best friend
Out of all the steps I took to change my life, learning to love myself was by far my greatest ever achievement.
“Loving and accepting ourselves are the ultimate acts of courage. In a society that says, “put yourself last,” self-love and self-acceptance are almost revolutionary.”
Brené Brown
Final thoughts
Since that mind-changing trip to Dubai in April 2017, I’ve designed a life that allows me to wake up to my wildest dreams. Every. Single. Day.
If you’d told me all those years ago that I’d now be living between Greece, Thailand, Vietnam and Bali, I probably would have laughed in your face. But here we are.
Freedom to me looks like working and living anywhere. And that’s exactly the life I’ve built for myself.
So if I can do it, you can 100% do it too.
Remember, you are the creator of your own reality and, ultimately, inner peace.
Don’t just let life happen to you.
Take control today and design a life that sets your soul on fire.
You’ve got this,
Thalia xx
