Growing up in Australia as a brown kid and in an Eastern family, I never felt like I truly fit in anywhere. I was always the smallest kid in whatever group I was in. The pain of being different and not truly belonging anywhere were the sparks that lit the fire in my heart to eventually transform my own life.

I didn’t want to live with external constraints and limitations telling me who I should be and what I should do with my life. In my adolescent years I had already begun breaking the shackles to set myself free. During my Psychology studies in university, I took the opportunity to go on a student exchange to Vienna and began breaking my mind open with travel and new experiences. After this, I decided not to return home immediately. I deferred my university course to go to Kenya to work as a teacher. My priorities had changed – I needed to discover myself and figure out I fit in to the world. Africa was both wonderful and terrible. I continued to develop my own concept of freedom and for the first time in my life, I felt like I had developed real competence and resilience. 

But it was all too much for me to handle. I returned from Africa a broken man and fell into a deep depression. I was struggling to integrate my experiences and my life in Australia suddenly felt soft, uninspiring, and worthless. Nothing felt good anymore. I was lost between worlds. After a while even my friends avoided me for fear that they too might be pulled down in to the depressive shadowy depths of the underworld. I spent a lot of time alone and began to enjoy it. To crave it. Feeling alienated from the world and feeling like a victim was addictive. But I knew that this way not the way I wanted to live. And over the course of finishing my last year of university I decided to change my life.

Stack your security. Avoid taking big risks. Pour the best years of your life in to some company that doesn’t really value you. When the people in my life did implore me to take part in this game that I couldn’t understand, I could always see that they were speaking through the lens of their own fears. It all never really spoke to me. You live one time. You are all-in on this experience whether you like it or not – so you may as well play the most magnificent hand that you can.

I left again to look for myself, and to once and for all become the architect of my own life. That was 7 years ago.

I experienced everything I could. I explored distant lands. Talked with strange people. I learned whatever peaked my interest. Fundamentally, I realized that home is a concept that can be found basically anywhere, as long as you can take shelter in the confines of your own heart.

I had lost so much, but found much more. Since that fated decision to carve out my own life path, I have been living successfully around the world as a digital nomad, traveler, and expat. I have worked as a Teacher, Coach, and Mentor in various countries and contexts, and have also found my way through Entrepreneurship and online business. Development of the Self has been my true passion and has been the real source of the footprints I’ve left behind me. I have found this by studying Martial Arts, physical practice, and Psychology.