My Many Attempts And Failures At Taking A Sabbatical, Until Now!
I have been sitting looking at this view for the last couple of hours and reflecting on the journey that I had to undertake to get here. I am not talking about the travel journey, I am talking about the emotional journey. Be prepared, this is a longer post than normal, there is a lot I feel necessary to share with you and I am confident it will be of value.
I have just started a sabbatical and am currently learning how to surf in Nicaragua. I’ve always been a big advocate of sabbaticals and I have attempted a number of them in the past. Unfortunately, I have come up against myself each time and not executed them as well as I would have liked.
My first sabbatical attempt was when I was 23 years old and had just retired from being an Officer in the Australian Army. At that time I was so unhappy being in the military and feeling extremely trapped that my main focus was getting out. Once I got out I was quite lost. For the first time since becoming an adult I found myself in a situation where I could do whatever I wanted without consequences. This was a fun period with a lot of partying and travelling. At the same time it was confusing, I didn’t know what was next in my life and I felt like I had failed the first path of my adult life by choosing something that caused me so much unhappiness. I didn’t allow myself to properly have a break as I felt insecure doing nothing, so I got into day trading, earned multiple university qualifications and explored new careers.
My second sabbatical attempt was when I was 31. The idea was born in the first year of my entrepreneurial journey when I was 25. My girlfriend at the time and I had planned to go on a long adventure trip through South America. At the same time we came up with a business idea and felt this was an opportunity that we needed to capitalize on so we decided to start our first business instead of taking that trip. We made a compromise, but also a commitment to ourselves. We created a vision to build a company and then have it either run by itself or be sold within 5 - 6 years and then we would go take that long adventure journey.
Fast forward six years and it would seem like we had crushed this vision. We were now married, we had built and sold two multi million dollar companies, we were living in a luxury ski resort in Colorado and skiing 100+ days a year, we were living our dream!!! Unfortunately this wasn’t the case as there were some other factors that were dramatically affecting our sabbatical.
We weren’t on a sabbatical at all because although we had sold two companies, we had started three more. Running one company is hard enough so you can imagine the multiplier effect that took place
We compounded the complexity of having multiple companies by moving to the other side of the World and having a team stretched across every time zone you can imagine. I love having global remote teams, however I have learned that I don’t like running teams across multiple time zones as it feels like you are ‘on’ 24hrs a day; it's an ongoing struggle to get everyone on the same page at the same time.
We were also in two large legal battles. One with my deceased father-in-law’s business partners over his estate and one with some very unethical people who acquired one of our businesses and never had any intent to pay us a considerable amount of money that was owed to us.
On top of all of this, we had decided to raise money from investors for one of our companies. We had just completed a large seed round and now had this extra responsibility.
At that point in time I remember feeling suffocated, I was in a position that on paper looked great but I wasn’t enjoying it. I had loaded on unnecessary responsibilities and also had gone against what we had committed to doing. I suddenly experienced what could be labeled as “burn out” and I felt like I couldn’t do even the tiniest task. It was all too much and I wanted to run from it all. This led to me shutting one company down overnight. We made a decision to repay every investor’s dollar out of our own pockets because integrity is very important to me. These investors had trusted me and I wasn’t able to deliver on my promises due to my mental wellness at the time. I am very proud of this decision today, but it was a painful process at the time.
Ultimately, I ended up with a forced break. It wasn’t an enjoyable break as I was riddled with so much shame. I also witnessed myself transition into a scarcity state as the gravity of how much money we had lost in a short period of time consumed me. Even though we still had more money than we had just two years previously and plenty to not have to worry about, I couldn’t see this because I was measuring myself only by my networth, not my netwealth. (click for access to the Intentionality tool designed to measure your net WEALTH)
In hindsight, all of these were signs that we were heading down the wrong path and this could have been a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with ourselves, with each other and the vision for our lives. Unfortunately we didn’t feel like we had a choice, we had a story that our primary responsibilities were to our companies and our employees and our clients. We knew that we were stuck, but we thought we could navigate what was happening ourselves, that we didn’t need therapy or coaching and that it would all turn out fine.
Fast forward 18 months and suddenly that story was exposed for what it really was: A story. Suddenly our marriage had broken down and I was devastated. This was the next opportunity I had for an intentional sabbatical. Did I do it? Come on, you know the story by now. I had the opportunity in our separation agreement when I could have departed with cash and investments and not a single business responsibility.
Instead, I took on the responsibility of our company Wealth Enhancers (WE). WE was an incredible company and had great success. WE had a positive impact on the lives of thousands of people and influenced great positive changes in the Australian financial industry that I will forever be proud of. I knew my heart was no longer in it, but I felt a responsibility to carry it on as it was something that we had created out of love for one another. We didn’t have children yet I felt obligated to it like I would if we had had a child together. I imagine this is what might happen when divorced parents interact with their children. Every time I did something with the business it reminded me of our marriage dismantling and this brought continuous feelings of shame up for me. For anyone who knows me well, they know that I wear my heart on my sleeve and I am an ‘all-in’ type of person. This is a great strength, but like anything in life this comes with a corresponding weakness. People feel it greatly when I am not ‘all-in’ with something. Suddenly the magic of the company evaporated and it led to a breakdown in culture and a decline in business performance.
So what did I do at that moment? Because I was in such a scarcity mindset, I did something that I had never really had to do before. I thought the answer was to work harder. I took the route of what Dr. Joe Dispenza says about operating in the 3D world, “I was in the illusion of matter trying to change matter.” So how did this go for me? Terrible! For the first time in my life I was working harder than ever and I couldn’t get the results that normally came easy for me. No matter what I did, I couldn’t catch a break. This just fueled my shame spiral and the feelings that I was stuck and had no choice. Now if one of my coaching clients was in this exact situation I would easily see what their blindspot was and coach them through what needed to be done. But that’s the thing about blind spots...they are easy for everyone else to see but you.
Thankfully my girlfriend had the courage to share with me the negative impact she was seeing it have on myself and what it could potentially do to our relationship if I didn’t make some changes. This kicked me into action. One of the benefits of having a first marriage end in divorce is that you learn a lot that can help you be a better partner and you are also very aware of the consequences of not being true to yourself.
At this point an opportunity arose to undertake a week long meditation retreat with Dr. Joe Dispenza last November and I seized it. During this week I said to myself that I didn’t want to bring in any of the negative business energy I was dealing with and that I wouldn’t allow myself to think about it. This was until I got some very strong signs that I needed to.
On my Intentional Path (an Intentionality product designed to map out your vision for your life) I had a slide dedicated to WE and the emotions that I wanted to feel which were - relieved, free, proud, celebration. So when Dr. Joe shared that we were going to do a ‘Changing the Box’ mediation, I knew what I needed to focus on. This is a meditation to use when you feel stuck and no matter what you do or how hard you try, you just can’t find a way out. He talked us through the process and said that you need to connect to the emotions of how you would feel if you were outside this box and if you were no longer in this situation. Then he said, “for example you may want to feel - relieved, free, proud and celebration!” It felt like he was speaking directly to me and I knew this was my moment.
I went into that mediation with such intention, knowing that this would be an impactful hour. I then [with the help of my coach] set a date that I would be out of the company no matter what and put this in my calendar. I then trusted the process and stopped trying so hard. Fast forward six months - I had just participated in another Dr. Joe retreat and had a business sale contract in front of me. I went to my calendar to check what date it was, and guess what...there was a little note in my calendar saying that today is my out date no matter what! I had completely forgotten about this date and couldn’t believe it (but really I could) that the Universe gave me exactly what I asked for.
This gets even better. For over a year, I had been working on an incredible partnership with an awesome financial institution in Australia to roll out the Financially Happy program to their members. This was an amazing opportunity, but it just kept getting delayed. I remember even asking my girlfriend when she thought it would get approved and I said I have a funny feeling it won’t until I cut cords with WE and move on. So the closing date of the sale came up, I was in Florida and it was set to happen at four in the morning. I woke up for a sunrise walking meditation and normally I never check my technology in the morning, but I checked my email to see if the close had happened. It did, and guess what else was there under an hour after the close... an email from my contact at the financial institution who I hadn’t heard from for two months saying that the partnership has been approved and it was moving ahead!!! This partnership has the ability to impact over a million people, a much greater reach than I ever could have had with the previous company.
I share this story with you because it is yet another example in my life I could have never anticipated what was just around the corner.
I had so much fear impacting my decision making ability and this ultimately led me to being out of alignment with my soul and only brought unhappiness.
As soon as I had the courage to cut the cord and honor my soul's true calling the Universe rewarded me greatly. As Gabby Bernstein says: “The Universe has your back!”
Now I wish that was the end of the story, but unfortunately I found myself repeating the same old sabbatical story. After the last lost chance of a sabbatical I told myself whenever I sold another company I would fully commit to taking a sabbatical to recharge and connect to my True Nature. So it caught me by surprise that here I was in this position again, and I had already started a new company, Intentionality, Inc. I had built a team and was focused on scaling. This time I had convinced myself that I needed to because this was my soul’s life work and that people needed it and it was great timing. All of these things are true but so was the commitment I had made to myself. Luckily this time I had enough self awareness and great people around me to identify the pattern and nip it in the bud quickly. I stopped the rapid growth plans, simplified the team and made a plan for myself to be able to take my long awaited sabbatical with full Intentionality this time!
In all of my previous sabbatical opportunities I still got part of the way there...in the first one, I traveled to America, but hurt my neck and ended up having to come home. In the second one we did end up moving to America, and in the third one I walked the Camino Del Santiago Pilgrimage. All of these were exciting and felt like the right move at the moment, it was just that I was never able to be fully in the present because I had so many other things (and stories) going on. That’s why this time I know I need to break this pattern.
I am coming up against myself in a number of different ways. I have observed subconscious programs that are operating within me that no longer serve me. There is a strong feeling that I always need to be progressing or that if I am not adding impact to the world that I am not enough. I am using a lot of modalities such as breath, meditation, emotional clearing and leaning on my community to help me through my difficult emotions and old patterns.
I have defined this sabbatical as not one where I can’t do anything. It is a sabbatical from the responsibility for others, feeling the need to be making impact in grandiose ways and striving to achieve more.
I can still create if I am called to do it and that is why I am sharing this story with you now... and perhaps as I get more in my creative flow (from my hammock!) more will come as well.
My intention for this sabbatical can be summed up perfectly by two great teachers of mine:
When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. - Lao Tzu
As you start to walk on the way, the way appears. - Rumi
Surfs Up!
Finnian
