The Quiet Bravery of Starting Over
In 2015, I left my life in Munich and moved to Barcelona with just two suitcases. I didn’t have a grand plan or a bold career vision. I had one clear intention: to heal.
At the time, my Body and mind were giving me unmistakable signals. A toxic work environment, paired with my own relentless drive for high achievement and external validation, had led me to burnout. I recognized the early signs of depression—the same ones I had experienced years before. When my contract was terminated, what initially felt like loss became an unexpected opening. I realized I had nothing tying me to the life I was living—and everything to gain by choosing differently.
I wanted sun and sea, two forces that restore my nervous system and bring me back into my Body. I chose not to work until my physical pain softened and my intrinsic motivation returned. What I sought wasn’t productivity, but regulation. Calm. Space. Breath. So I moved to Barcelona—with fear, relief, excitement, and uncertainty all traveling alongside me.
What allowed me to take that step wasn’t courage in the heroic sense. It was something quieter and more embodied:
I listened to the deep intelligence of my body, which told me this path was right.
I learned to feel fear without letting it lead.
I trusted that life—call it the Universe, Source, or simply complexity itself—had more solutions than my anxious mind could compute.
From an AI lens, I see this now as a system reset. When an algorithm keeps optimizing for the wrong objective, performance degrades. My life had been optimizing for status and security, not vitality and truth. Healing required changing the objective function entirely.
Through movement, dance, and somatic awareness, I relearned how to listen inwardly. Through stillness, I rebuilt resilience. Over time, clarity returned—not forced, but emergent. I wrote about these personal transformation stories on closing my life in Munich and setting up a new life in Barcelona during a sabbatical, and what came after in my book Letters to the Ones I Never Met.
Eleven years later, my life looks nothing like it did then. I am healthy, fulfilled, and free—financially, emotionally, and creatively. I work in meaningful roles without being defined by them. I live lightly both emotionally and materially. I dance, coach, and write. I serve others from a place of presence rather than proving. Most importantly, I learned to love myself unconditionally, without performance or achievement —and in doing so, invite others to do the same.
The Invitation
** Where might your Body already be signaling that something in your leadership—or life—is no longer working? *
** And what would change if you listened, before the system forces a reset?*
If you’re standing at the crossroads, contemplating a longer break, sabbatical, leaving your job or changing your current life in some way — I’d love to hear from you. And I return every email and message I receive from you.
