Pause to Purpose: A Year After the Sabbatical

Valladolid, Mexico 2024

A year ago, I walked away from work for a six month sabbatical. It’s still the best thing I’ve ever done.

Back then I I feared the CV gap—now it’s nothing given the state of the job market for the past year. What I really feared was the unknown.

One year later, I have an unshakeable belief in myself and my future direction because I’ve come to appreciate that I don’t need the whole plan, I just need the next step towards my future vision.

Here’s why I leapt and what stuck.

I’ll never forget the Friday afternoon we were told that everyone in the company was losing their jobs without pay, and the company I’d poured my heart and four years of my life into would be placed into administration. It’s a sad, but familiar, scenario to many in the tech sector and beyond these days.

If that wasn’t enough, Dad called to let me know that he’d been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia—terminal, non reversible—but I had no time to process it. When the universe take its swing, it rarely misses.

Sitting with a notepad and coffee on Saturday morning, I wrote a list of possibilities on my newly blank canvas as a way of contemplating what might be ahead at this pivotal juncture. New job, hustle as a consultant, sell/move, sell/leave, take a break. I chose peace over panic. Dad’s situation reminded me viscerally that we only get one shot at this adventure called life. I chose the break I never expected without a second thought or a single doubt—doubts crept in post-fact. My life was about to be re-aligned in ways I could never have imagined.

If you’ve read my previous article, you’ll know that there were three phases to my sabbatical:

• A serendipitous opportunity to meet family on their vacation in Thailand where we could talk about what’s ahead, make precious memories and just be in each other’s company in a beautiful location.

• Complete unwind and rest in some of the best that Mexico has to offer while the work identity slowly slipped away.

• Self discovery and creating lasting friendships through a month walking the Camino’s 1,000 kms.

The road taught me a lot more than I anticipated, and this wisdom continues to reverberate in my life.

After those three adventures, I thought I’d slide back into some semblance of my old life, but it felt like a shell, now hollowed out of the things that had previously given it so much meaning. The work that had sustained me for more than two decades was more elusive than ever before in an economy and job market that faced tectonic shifts with the exponential growth of the robots.

The resilience I learned on those dusty roads prepared me for the grind of unanswered job applications (some of them to suppliers of employment services to the UK Government no less, among a string of others who can’t seem to push buttons on an ATS), long hours alone with my thoughts, and how to manage when fears about the future started to take hold.

Having access to the support of friends (and the people I met on The Way) meant I had a support network who held me up when discomfort turned to pain. We’d seen each other in the best and possibly the worst of times, and I felt no shame, embarrassment or guilt in asking for help—it was freely given in both directions.

My sabbatical showed me that strength is forged in discomfort, enabling me to pivot away from the noise and forge a path towards the most authentic version of me in my work—coaching people through change, helping leaders create more authentic relationships with their teams, teaching people to breathe better as a way to dial down stress and step into their confidence, and writing for the sheer joy of sharing my medicine with the world.

I saw, perhaps for the first time, that I’m so much more than my CV, my LinkedIn profile and all the labels I’ve accumulated over the years. The experience itself stripped me bare, built me back up again and revealed that I’ve always been a maverick masquerading as a meek ‘suit’—doing the wild and unexpected that no-one expected while covering for it with a composed veneer of ‘professionalism’—whatever that means these days.

A year on, I know that I could not have survived the past eight months if I had not got the gifts of the first six months that went before. The job market has improved in some sectors recently, and work is still thin for many. For me, I now recognise what truly matters, fearlessly aligning my actions with the clarity of my intention—even when I know it’s costing me next month’s pay-cheque.

From this new vantage point, I see that the initial six month sabbatical has created a seismic realignment in my priorities, helped me to truly understand my own value, and forced me to ‘walk the path’ where I have found a sense of deep clarity in my purpose. None of this has been comfortable, easy or linear. It has required grit, perseverance and trust.

Far from having it all worked out, I only have the very next step. Like my time in Mexico and on the camino, I’m curious and excited for what’s just around the corner.

I’m not the same guy who left all those months ago.

I’ve stepped into my edge—you could too.

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If you’d like to learn more about the perspective shifts that arise when you create some deliberate distance, check out my deep dive article here.

If you’re contemplating your own short adventure, check out the Complete Reset on the Camino de Santiago—it could be the break you never thought you needed.