How I Beat my Limiting Beliefs, Left My Hated Job, and Started a Digital Nomad Life on a Tropical Island
Read this if you feel stuck and crave immediate changes.
Long before Jesus was born…
When I was a teenager, the only things on my mind were parties and boys.
When it came time to pick a college (otherwise, my mom would have eaten me alive), I started considering options that barely qualified as educational institutions. But hey, they’d still give me some sort of “higher education” certificate.
I didn’t care what I was going to study. The main factors were easy admission, no math, and minimal mental effort. I was 16, after all.
However, my mom had other plans. One day, after yet another boozy night out with my friends, I came home drunk with smudged lipstick all over my face (don’t ask). That’s when she confronted me and laid down the law:
‘From now on, you’re locked up at home to prep for university. You’re going to be a lawyer! As a lawyer, you’ll always be able to earn a decent living’, she declared.
Oh, I sure would! As well as for medical aid and antidepressants, which are must-haves on the way to becoming a successful lawyer.
I decided not to argue. Persistence has always been my mom’s middle name, and at that moment, she was definitely wiser than me.
Plus, the law program didn’t require any math, so I wouldn’t feel like a total loser in class. All I had to do was master the art of persuasive blah blah talking. Sounded like a no-brainer.
And that’s how I began my journey into a profession I didn’t consciously choose and ended up despising.
Thanks to being grounded and a sudden sense of responsibility, I aced the exams and got into the top law school in my country. And since then, I’ve been free to see boys again. WOOHOO!
Mastering the profession I did not give a single crap about
At the university, I was absolutely uninterested in the field of my studies. My teachers and classmates, being genuinely passionate about law, were absolutely not my people. We literally had zero interest in common.
However, the beauty of studenthood is that it still provides enough free time to do what you want. It keeps you inspired and motivated, even if you study something you don’t enjoy or care about.
Being a student, it’s hard to fully realize where you are destined by default, i.e., to the corporate rat’s life and inevitable burnout of individuality.
Like many other post-Soviet people, I lived with the idea that life is painful. To achieve something, you have to suffer and do the stuff you despise. Like an old post-Soviet saying says: “No time for smiles!”
This is why I didn’t drop out of the university, and I even started pursuing a Ph.D.
All too often, that’s human nature: we go to places where we already know our lives will be doomed. We obsessively submit our CVs and compete in the workforce market, seeking out mundane and unfulfilling jobs that would lead us to personal decay and apathy.
Hey, choose me! Hire me for your dumb-ass job! Just look at how lovely I am!
That was what I did as well.
Crumbling under the office dust
After having a bunch of interviews with one of the leading law firms, I was selected for the position of M&A legal counsel and got offered a good salary. My mom was happy. I was numb, having no sense of any fulfillment or satisfaction. Again I just managed to achieve the goal I didn’t give a real fuck about. I was almost a world champion in that.
Fifteen working hours per day on average (sometimes even more). Stress. Tiredness. Migraines. Stomach issues. Boring and dull colleagues…
My ass gradually started resembling my chair. Deteriorating body, deteriorating spirit… I felt like I was transitioning from cheerful Bambi to a bloated office Vogon from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I was slowly dying inside the walls of a gray office, inhaling the conditioner air and the dust from the shelves and tables.
I literally envied any handymen working outside — they had the privilege to breathe normally! I was envious of waiters since they were always on the go. I was jealous of gym trainers, event organizers, showpeople, and anyone whose jobs implied physical activity and didn’t demand being stuck at the life-denying ghetto — OFFICE.
I’ve become so numb…©
By the seventh anniversary of my legal career, I had reached a point where I was utterly completely stuck and headed to my personality crisis.
I did not wish to grow as an expert in my field. I didn’t want to communicate with anyone from my network. I didn’t want to live in my country with its crappy climate. At the same time, to relocate, I had no idea which of my skills I could sell abroad. My profession and accumulated experience were purely local — I was a Russian Ph.D. lawyer. That could only give me an edge in seeking jobs like cleaner or dishwasher…
I slipped into an anxious mindset, sacrificing my work responsibilities and lashing out on every corner about how much I wanted to be made redundant. I lacked the balls to quit myself.
And finally, Heaven heard my prayers! 🥳🥳🥳
I was made redundant. And since then, I’ve been free! Full of fear and uncertainty, I surprisingly felt the joyous sense of getting back to my true self. My back straightened.
Dark times of turbulence
The next part of the story is probably expected to be about how I quickly unleashed my giant within and eventually became crazy rich. However, that did not happen.
The next couple of years were turbulent — full of anxiety, uncertainty, and lack of funds. That was not because “life is pain," or struggle is inevitable for everyone who dares to fuck the system. Looking back then, I can honestly confess that most of that time was unjustifiedly wasted on overthinking and procrastination instead of real efforts, trials, and errors.
I sought advice from folks I knew would never dare to try anything out of their boxes and were always skeptical about everything new. “What if something goes wrong?! What if you mess everything up? What if…what if…?!” they would groan.
Why did I consult with them? Because I didn’t trust and believe in myself. I subconsciously wanted someone to talk me out of my dreams and bring me down to Earth by saying something like, “The joke is over! Time to go back to SERIOUS THINGS.”
Like Julia Cameron mentioned in “The Artist’s Way,” we are reluctant to take seriously the possibility that the universe just might be cooperating with our new and expanded plans. We still feel too much like frauds to handle some success. When it comes, we want to go.
It took me quite a while to make the first step. I was absurdly overthinking and paralyzed by perfectionism. Every little unsuccessful attempt I would take as confirmation of my self-doubts, then go back to my cocoon mode for even more overthinking and hearing from my inner critic something like, “That’s always been clear you can’t do anything right!”
So instead of listening to my own desires, I allowed myself to be guided by fears and poor self-esteem. Obviously, that gave me some secondary advantages: a timid and fearful mouse can’t be expected of much. That was a good reason not to try hard.
I was unaware that in every human brain lives a little lizard (scientifically called the reptilian brain). The lizard’s main job is to keep a close eye out for any changes and prevent us from them, so we don’t strain. My lizard was really plump and did its job excellently.
Recalibrating mindset
The ice was broken when I started to pass therapy. I told my therapist that I didn’t have an extra couple of years to handle all my possible traumas and backstories that had emerged since my embryo stage.
“No parental issues! No childhood shit! Just give me a fast brain hack that would make me focused and unstoppable on the way to my goals”, I told him.
So we started working with my limited beliefs using hypnotherapy practices. And that was where my personal breakthrough happened. Finally, I rapidly managed to get my hesitating ass off the couch and make it act against my reptile brain’s will.
So, what was precisely that magic that my therapist did to me? During our sessions, he used to put me in a hypnotic trance and walk me through what was happening on the back end of my mind about my self-identification, deepest desires, fears, and beliefs.
Until then, I had no idea HOW MUCH garbage was buried in the depths of my subconscious world and how defining it was for my decision-making process. That was a mixture of frustrating remarks I got from some hair-brained adults that seemed wise to me back then since I was a child, of snarky comments I could accidentally hear when I was stressed-out or tired, some cites from love novels created by neurotic writers that I took as describing the REAL life, etc. Ironically, if I had heard any of this shit in a conversation, this would be how my face would look in response:
However, I’d been guided by that nonsense in many aspects of my life and could not live my life according to my own standards.
Here is how to beat your limited beliefs
If you are like me, you may think that your skillset and background do not allow you to have a free digital nomad lifestyle and make a living from your laptop. This is just a limited belief. To prevent it from getting in your way, you’ll have to replace this negative thought with an opposite, positive statement and then find stories of successful people who started from a point similar to yours.
Look for stories everywhere: your inner circle, friends, friends of friends, random strangers on the Internet, wherever. You will find relevant examples to support this new belief and further convince you. WARNING: you don’t want to question these stories or explore their flaws to find out the whole TRUTH, which would make you skeptical.
Remember, our brains don’t care what we believe. The brain only needs relevant examples and confirmations evidencing that such changes are possible so it can collaborate with you on creating positive life changes. Many people choose to ignore the highly effective placebo effect. Choose the beliefs that work for you and use them as effective instruments in achieving the life of your dreams.
Failed to find anything relevant, having shaken the whole Internet? Then let your imagination come in handy. Ask yourself a question: if there were any successful stories of how someone like me would have achieved what I want, what would these stories look like? What could be other possible scenarios of getting there under the same circumstances like mine? Use your creativity to create the settings you choose.
AHA Moment
On my way to the new desirable life, I explored literally everything that seemed like it might help. With a positive mindset that therapy sessions had given me, I eventually managed to see in my useless legal background something that had the potential to transit me to the world of office-free gigs.
I gave a closer look at what it took to be a lawyer and boiled down all the crucial skills. Those were strong analytical skills, logical and structured thinking, powerful negotiation skills, and … passionate and persuasive WRITING!
Suddenly, I realized that during all these unhappy years of being a lawyer, I’ve been doing writing that successfully led me to the results I was after.
Yes, I hated writing legal documents. However, I was entirely in love with the writing process itself. Finally, I turned my focus to pursuing a career as a copywriter and content marketer, and since then, I have no longer felt the need to be in an office. And I have not been limited, either, by the prospect of international expansion.
Today you might know me as someone who lives in Bali, parenting the sweetest Shih Tzu dog and working from their laptop — doing work that has nothing to do with law. Now, I’m feeling fulfilled, happy, inspired, and grateful every second of my life.
A secret weapon
With me so far? Great.
Now let me finally share some of my favorite new life attitudes that have helped me a lot on my journey. They can come in handy for you, too, if you are currently going through times of turbulence and mentally beating yourself up with anxiety and self-doubt.
I worded these principles in such a way that would sound the most compelling to my ears. You can rephrase them in whatever manner you want, using the vocabulary that suits you best.
So here is my mental arsenal:
1) It’s better to shit yourself during a storm than during a weather forecast
To win any game, you must begin playing it. Get into it, and then learn as you go. All too often, people reflect too long before taking the first step, talking themselves out, and doing nothing at the end. Here’s my primary advice to you:
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can see the whole picture and all the potential outcomes from your actions. No, you can’t. You are not smarter than the universe, and you cannot see the future from every possible angle. It’s arrogant to think that way.
As my math teacher used to say: “Keep doing. Clarity will come with time.”
He was wise and knew the drill.
2) A successful person differs from a loser by the number of shots and reactions to a miss
A successful individual does not take a miss personally. Successful people do not allow themselves to dwell on failure and start questioning themselves. Instead, they analyze failures to learn from them while staying emotionally disengaged.
Reduce the significance and relevance of failures in your life.
As an old saying says,
The arrow flies toward its target without seeing obstacles.
So too, shall you be able to overcome any setback with perseverance and not let it get between your goals and success!
3) If you don’t like me, I’ll cross you off
People and events in life must deserve the special right to be the subject of our attention and focus. Otherwise, we risk scattering our focus like porridge across a platter by paying attention carelessly to every random event, odd behavior, or opinion of others. Guess what could be the consequences?.. Wasted energy and zero results.
It’s too expensive to allow ourselves the luxury of paying attention to every random nonsense. Our focus has limited capacity, and we have to carefully filter our circle and the feedback we receive from it for our minds to be at peace.
Is this a meaningful person for you to listen to? Is interacting with him a source of inspiration and encouragement for you? If not, you already know what to do.
4) Ask yourself in old age
It’s always been hard for me to observe older adults having to work just out of necessity (rather than choice)) and the struggles they face in trying not to get fired because of their age. As the years pass, our enthusiasm and energy wane, while the possibility of being fired grows as it’s getting hard to compete against the younger workforce.
Ask yourself: how would you prefer to age? In anxiety about the future and the sense of impending disaster due to resource depletion? Or a well-deserved relaxation and appreciation for accomplishing everything correctly at the proper time?
5) Turn Your Dreams Into Urgent Tasks
You are unlikely to live for 500 years.
Unless reincarnation is your backup plan, it’s time to root yourself in the present.
Draft a concrete plan.
Set clear deadlines.
Act NOW before time runs out.
Today, many of us grapple with the ‘curse of knowledge.’
The smarter and more educated we become, the more we visualize the potential risks of failure.
Engulfed in overthinking and opting for safety, we stagnate and descend into depression.
We find ourselves ruminating:
I’m smarter than Einstein. So why aren’t my results impressive?! Doesn’t that seem unfair?!
I don’t mean to sound negative here, but… It’s fair. SOZ.
And it’ll stay that way until you stop letting your fears govern you and dare to claim what you rightfully deserve.
I know you’re scared. That’s totally fine.
Stay scared, but act.
Despite a headache or a shitty mood, you still go to your regular job or cook for your kids, don’t you?
Because these are your non-negotiables.
So why aren’t your dreams treated as non-negotiables?!
Promote them to top priority. Don’t let your smart-ass brain freeze you into inaction.
“When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in the worlds of time.” THE WORK OF THE CHARIOT.
Take your steps and get ready for synchronicity. Fortune favors the bold.
