Embracing Change
Earlier this week I wrote a post for ‘LinkedIn’ a social media business platform. It describes briefly our journey to reach here, which I wanted to write to help inspire other people who may be thinking of doing something similar. It’s had nearly 2000 views, and 50 reactions, and I’ve received some very positive feedback- so I thought I would share it via my blog more as a recap, I hope you enjoy the read.
I know change can be scary, but it can also be exciting, it can motivate and invigorate. I believe there are times in our lives when change is important, when maybe we are flagging and need an injection of difference, but I honestly didn’t realise how important the changes that we had planned to make in our lives were going to be for us.
Our old lives were super busy, mostly taken up with work, and travel to and from it. In the spare time we had left we shoe-horned in the gym, meals out, expensive holidays and the all-too-frequent bouts of retail therapy. Then there were my pampering days and regular hair appointments, it all seemed so important to me at the time.
In 2020 we decided to sell our house in the UK and move to France, leaving our corporate roles, and our old lives, behind. My aim had always been to retire by the age of 55 and do something different, but what I didn’t realise was that ‘doing something different’ was such an important part of our plan, and truly aided our retirement. After all, we were leaving work, and that meant no more money coming in, some things were going to have to change.
So, with the long hours of work a thing of the past, we were free to investigate a different way. Our gym became the house and the garden. There’s so much to do, and doing it keeps us so much fitter than our infrequent gym visits ever did. Our surrounding countryside allows us to do wonderful walks straight from our door, and we also find time now to do a daily stretching routine, with a series of videos we found on YouTube. The regular visits to my hair colourist have gone, and I’ve embraced my natural hair colour, which I love. The shopping trips have moved aside for something far more exciting, we now visit antique markets (brocantes) and flea markets (Marché des puces) where we find things that give us far more pleasure than we could imagine. The search for a little treasure is wonderful, and brings such joy. I’m also finally able to embrace my cooking properly, with all the care that time now allows me.
Now I’m not saying that we have stopped doing all the things we did before, we just do them when we want to, not all the time. But to embrace our new pace of life we needed to approach our lives differently. We didn’t overthink this at the time, but now we can see how change has worked for us. In truth, entirely changing our lives allowed us to reset our expectations, and also our needs. It’s been a truly freeing experience, that’s allowed us to achieve retirement in a way we only ever imagined. Nothing can prepare you for such massive changes, but what we had was a purpose, to find a new pace of life, new experiences, and a positive environment for improving our health and well-being.
Our changes could have been really scary without a strong plan in place. At times we’ve had to flex our approach, dealing with the little challenges that change brings, but it keeps it exciting and our aim invigorates us to carry on.
