Do you want to live an active or reactive life? Would you like to live a life that you planned out yourself based on your own rules or would you prefer it to be planned out for you?

In July 2019 I was working a 9 to 5 job in Belgium after I graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree. Then suddenly the company I was working for decided they didn’t need my services anymore and I found myself without a job. Up until then it can be said I was living a rather reactive life. Meaning, I did what other people, or my environment told me to do, waited until my situation changed before I would do something, and often what I then chose to do was just the most obvious and easy thing to do.

Enter Australia. Traveling was always something that I really enjoyed, and I have dreamed a couple of times about traveling the world up until that point. I was without a job, and I didn’t want to look for the same kind of job again as I knew it wouldn’t make me happy. In fact, being in Belgium didn’t make me happy. So, I started to make a plan for leaving Belgium and traveling the world starting with Australia.

This was definitely a form of escaping reality and running from my problems. In that sense it was a reaction to my situation. What if I would’ve had a good job, they didn’t fire me, and I was also dreaming about traveling the world. Would I still have left? We’ll never know, because this reality didn’t play out. But even if it was a reaction, I was aware that I wanted to take charge over my life and that I could’ve “reacted” in many other, more secure, ways.

Australia

In the blog below I will write about my journey through Australia and the thought processes and growth that went with it.

Sydney

Sydney was the time that I had to explore the most about myself and my environment. A few days prior I was still in Belgium, 17,000 kilometres away, and now I was here. I did have 6 weeks planned out to have some certainty and direction but after that I had no plans, and I had no idea how long I was going to stay here. I had to figure everything out.

Usually travellers, or backpackers, like we, young travellers like to call ourselves, go to a hostel first to experience the social life. That is what I did too. It was the 18th of December 2019, so prior to my arrival I had booked two weeks of hostel, so I definitely had a place to stay during the holidays. I had a good time in Sydney and met lots of nice people, but I did find it hard to make friends and find a good connection.

After two weeks of partying, I went to another hostel in Sydney and started my 4-week bartender course with EBS Sydney. This was the reason I came to Australia in December 2019. I enrolled in the course because it looked really good when I booked it online and I wanted to try something completely different from what I had been doing before and meet the different people that would be there as well. I did feel some regret though during the course. The course was really good and thorough, but it wasn’t for me. I sat it out, but because of some personal issues I didn’t pass the exams at the end.

Lesson number one

Don’t half-ass anything. If you are going to do something, do it right, give it your all. Even if you don’t like it. Make the decision, do, or do not and stick with it. Do not complain along the way, if you feel like complaining tune in with yourself and your values and ask, “do I want to continue or not?”, “is quitting an option?” Formulate a clear answer and make the choice. If you are going to stay do it with a smile, if you are going to go, do it with a smile.

Eckhart Tolle wrote in his book A New Earth that there are “3 keys of happiness” that one can use to do something: Acceptance, Joy and Enthusiasm. Acceptance means that you decided you have to do it to get where you want to be, you might not like it, but it is what it is. So, you accept it and finish it with a smile. Joy means that you actually like doing it. And Passion means that you don’t want to do anything else. Whichever task you do, make sure you are in one of these states of mind. Otherwise, don’t do it.

I’m not saying that I learned these lessons straight after the bartender course, on the contrary it took me a long time after that, and even now I still find myself complaining about a task instead of tuning in with myself and taking action towards what I really want. But I try to remember this lesson as much as possible.