I’m a big fan of sabbaticals.
Life tends to have a way of happening. We take the steps that show up in front of us, develop a routine, get comfortable and soon the pattern we are in sets our days and our lives.
Then maybe one day we feel it’s not quite enough, it’s good but not great, or actually it’s not even that good. There is an itch that doesn’t go away. Sometimes it’s more dramatic, an incident, a health issue, an accident, that leaves us clear that something is no longer working.
But it’s hard to change, because there are costs, things we don’t want to let go of. Sometimes it is not the right time for change. Other times logic and security and sometimes fear steps in. So, we settle for what is.
But what happens when that quiet insistent voice just won’t go away?
When small things seem to keep escalating, or when we don’t feel quite alive?
When we know in ourselves that something must change?
It is hard to make changes when we can’t see how the future could work and even harder when we don’t know what we want. We want to know the end of the story before we step out. But that can have us waiting forever. Because often, to find what is possible, we need to let go of what we know. Like a trapeze artist who flies to the next handhold. Or an explorer who must sail out of sight of the shore to find new lands. It is the unknown that stops us. And yet it is only in the unknown that we can find what is new. There, new worlds unexpectedly open up for us.
Like the time I went to TAFE as a community worker and mentioned I might be interested in teaching. The head of the department promptly asked if I would like to start with one class or two in the upcoming semester. With no qualifications or experience in teaching, “yes and two” came unexpectedly out of my mouth. I drove away feeling that I had just jumped off a cliff. What was I to do with my existing job? Could I even do this?? It was terrifying. But I took leave without pay and found my vocation - one that has challenged and guided and enriched my life ever since.
Sabbaticals have also opened up pathways that I had not thought possible. Sometimes the decision to take them has been driven by circumstance or perceived failure. Always the results have been lifechanging.
Like leaving secure employment, exhausted by the challenges of management and a particularly difficult employee. Deciding to take some time out even though it meant no income and I had no savings. The week after I left money turned up from legitimate but unexpected sources, and the phone soon began to ring, people asking if I would take on various projects. My consultancy Frameworks for Change came into existence and for over two decades has given me the extraordinary privilege of choosing the work I love to do, in the way that I want to do it.
Ten years later, early-stage breast cancer led me to take six months out to review what was important in life. Amongst other things that reflection led to changes in the business, to becoming an entrepreneur, building a team, studying at Harvard and working with extraordinary people.
And now as I come towards the time that people would typically retire, I ask the big questions again. What is important, what is my work now, how do I best live and contribute? And importantly how do I choose that, not driven by old and outdated habits and beliefs?
That question is about to take me to the Camino, an 800km walk in a country whose language I don’t yet speak, a land I don’t yet know and an experience that I have never had before. I don’t go calmly – mostly I am terrified – but I also know it is the thing to do. And that doing it will change me, giving new perspectives and opening up a world I can’t yet see.
For all of us there are moments in life where, stepping into the unknown, with shaking hands and beating heart, we are led by some inner voice that despite all logic says, “yes this, this is the thing to do”. Listening to that part of ourselves that says life is to be lived fully, that we have potential we haven’t yet seen, and that things are possible that we don’t yet know.
I am a big fan of sabbaticals. So, if there is something calling to you and you don’t know what it is, perhaps a sabbatical will give you the room to hear what it is saying.
Buen Camino and see you on the other side!
What are your thoughts about making big life changes? I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.
– Helen Rees is the Director of Frameworks for Change – a company dedicated to transforming workplace culture.