How To Call In The Biggest Change Of Your Life
The night the solution to inner turmoil came and what I've learned about how to trust instinct.
Most of us are gifted raw moments where an answer to our biggest problem arrives organically, from within us, whole and obvious. However, due to our social conditioning, we are very good at talking ourselves out of the solution by breakfast. Normally because the decision feels scary.
I’m writing this newsletter from Frome, the town in Somerset we left a year ago. My ancestral home (read that story here). Over a year ago my wife and I sold our house In Frome. We sold almost all our possessions. We took the children out of school and went travelling the world with one backpack each.
Being back on these Frome streets to visit friends is nostalgic and wonderful, and it has me thinking about the night the big change came knocking.
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October 2024. For months I’d had a heaviness in my chest that wouldn’t shift. I had it checked at hospital thinking I might have heart problems. It wasn’t. I know now that the stone of anxiety in my chest was the cost of being pulled two directions.
Back then I was running a drone display business in financial trouble that I’d lovingly built over years, and I was fully committed and responsible for its survival and wellbeing. At the same time I’d trained as a Soul Midwife and was volunteering to sit with dying people at hospital in whatever hours I could find.
It was slowly dawning on me that exploring mortality was the work I was being called to do. Two futures pulling in opposite directions. I was walking into the office each day feeling physically and mentally sick. I knew that if I did nothing, my body would make the decision for me. I was sure I would develop a chronic physical illness, like cancer.
At the same time, my wife Linnea had spent several months applying for jobs that deep down felt compromised. There was a general feeling between us of misalignment with our careers, but we remained grateful for the life we had.
Then one night I was lying awake, restless, as I had been for months. BOOM. I was shown something surprising. A vision. Clear as day. Like watching a movie. I saw us selling the beloved house we had renovated. I saw us stepping away from our mortgage and debts. I saw myself stepping away from my business after a successful handover.
This decision would solve Linnea’s interview loop. We could travel the world as a family, the dream my wife and I had talked about for years and always filed under ‘someday’. This would be an investment into ourselves as a family. And the big one - after almost 25 years of hard work, we could have a well-earned pause.
One move that answered several problems at once.
I lay there until dawn turning the idea over, hunting for the flaws. But I couldn’t find them. The first challenge was to tell my wife, and there was no guarantee Linnea would like this radical concept.
On many levels we had a privileged lives. We loved Frome. The children were happy. We had friends we adored, an income, a home.
What if Linnea thought I was mad? Perhaps this was mad? It might end the relationship?
These were the fears moving through me.
A vision at three in the morning proves nothing on its own. Plenty of exhausted people fantasise about running away and it’s just avoidance in better clothes. So how do you tell the difference? Looking back, several factors marked it out.
It came after an invitation for change. For months I’d been designing a meditation where I could see myself at the end of my life, sitting with the feeling of a life fully lived, complete and without regret. I call this the Ultimate Meditation, and it is the foundation exercise of the Aliveness Practice (available to all subscribers in Tools). Back then the meditation was something I was doing to stay sane.
What I know now is that when you spend time at the end of life looking back, the present rearranges itself. The clarity didn’t come out of nowhere. I’d been laying the ground for change.
The vision of leaving Frome solved more than it dodged. A fantasy removes you from one problem. This solution potentially answered our misalignment and a dream we’d deferred for years, all at once.
Psychologist Carl Jung mapped this territory better than anyone. He wrote about the second half of life demanding something different from the first.
“We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” (Carl Jung, ‘Collected Works’, volume eight. )
The morning after the vision came, I woke Linnea and told her I had something important to share.
We sat in bed while I laid it out. I painted the losses as vividly as the gains. What we’d feel from following our dream, but what we would also be giving up. How much leaving our home would hurt. But what an amazing adventure, full of opportunity, we could have.
We then remembered the feeling that called us to Frome in the first place. Following our instinct to move to a town where we knew no one had been a giant leap into the unknown. But that call ended up being the best decision and we both recognised that the energy of this moment, this moment of instinct, contained the same DNA.
So, despite the feeling of loss, Linnea heard the truth in the idea, and in her usual courageous manner, agreed that going travelling was what we needed to do. We don’t have unlimited days. It was now or never. Leave while the chips were up.
Somewhere in the middle of that chat we were both crying, grieving a life we hadn’t left yet but already knew we would.
We agreed to sit with with the idea for a month. To see whether we changed our minds. Over the coming weeks we both wobbled at times, but the idea held.
After the idea had passed our test, we needed our children to buy in. Not an announcement, an invitation to co-create. We wrote the kids a letter explaining the concept of travelling as a family, outlining the pros and cons. They read the letter aloud in a family meeting. It was a unanimous ‘yes’.
The sense of relief of a shared decision was powerful. And then came a feeling I hadn’t had in many years: revitalisation… as renewed energy poured into us.
These moments of clarity come to everyone if we remember to invite them in. And the solution to life’s biggest problems can at first seem frightening, or ‘impractical’. But fear isn’t evidence the decision is wrong. Usually it’s evidence that something matters.
Every time my wife and I have been brave enough to act when instinct calls, we’ve been rewarded in ways we could never have planned for. This is something we have come to expect.
Are you feeling misaligned, sick and stuck in life right now? If you know deep down that a big change is needed, here is some advice summarised as best I can:
Invite clarity. These moments favour minds that have been asking. Try the Ultimate Meditation (free with all subscriptions). Spend time at the end of your life looking back, to gain radical clarity on your life direction.
Notice when a big idea appears. Then test the idea for relief. Excitement is unreliable. Relief is a better signal. Notice which one you feel.
Give the idea time. Don’t act the same day, and don’t dismiss it the same day either. A big decision survives at least a month of doubt. A fantasy usually doesn’t.
Say the losses out loud. When you tell the person it affects most, describe what you’d be giving up as vividly as what you’d gain. Grieve it together before you decide. That conversation is where you find out whether it’s real.
Bring people in, don’t announce. Anyone whose life this changes deserves to be part of the decision, not informed of it. See it as a co-creation.
One for your diaries: Live coaching session for paid subscribers. If you want a simple 2 minute daily practice to help you step into your fullest life, I will be hosting this live session on Sunday August 2nd. Zoom link click here.
I want to conclude by expressing deepest gratitude to my wife and kids for being brave and intrepid travel companions on this adventure we have had. It’s been a powerful experience.
Thank you for being here. Make the most of the time you have.
Live happy,
Hoppy
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I am a former CEO, acclaimed creative, soul midwife and druidic bard. I have a dream that Aliveness becomes as impactful as Mindfulness. A daily practice that builds braver lives, fewer regrets and a more present and generous world.
