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I think one of the biggest questions people ask themselves any number of years into their career, so this could be anyone who’s been out of school, working for a while now, they will have days where they ask themselves, should I take a year off to explore something else besides my career?

At the beginning of last year, I took that jump and decided to take a year off from focusing on my career to look at other parts of my life, I wanted to change, I wanted to lose some negative parts of my lifestyle and become a more grounded, compassionate human.

Before I made the decision to break from my career, my whole life centred around my career goals. It was probably reinforced by going to a really competitive high school, having migrant parents who wanted their kids to have an education and a career they had dreamed of, but maybe you’re like me, it felt like a long and never-ending race that I didn’t even have second thoughts about, I just catapulted myself into a long list of career goals that just kept on growing as I spent more and more money.

Most Asian kids are taught from an early age, this is the type of house you want to live in, you should be better than others around you, your place on the table is earned through your spending power. It was whack.

So imagine being a guy, 28 years old, who everyday thought about his career. One day, he made a mistake with his job, I fucked up, just google my name and the name Forbes,  and because of that, he was hit so hard personally by the negativity of the consequences, that he finally started to question his whole career and the choices leading up to it. And that’s all it can take sometimes.