In July 2021, I stood on a remote beach in the Scottish Highlands, iPhone in hand, called my boss, and quit my job.

My girlfriend was parked about 100 meters away. Apart from her, there wasn’t a soul in sight—just powdery sand dunes, crashing waves, and the occasional bird chirping overhead.

In a lot of ways, the setting was idyllic. But the reality was a lot less idyllic.

Twelve months earlier, I was sitting on my girlfriend’s sofa, drinking a cup of tea, when I spontaneously burst into tears. What I see now—and what I didn’t see then—was that I’d burned myself out. After months of my body giving me subtle clues like losing concentration, then less-subtle clues like headaches and increased irritability, then even stronger clues like exhaustion and cynicism, it was finally taking matters into its own hands and giving me an unmistakable, unequivocal sign that something needed to change.

That something was my job.

I worked in banking for thirteen years, firstly in Edinburgh and then in the heart of the financial district in the City of London. My life revolved around work. There was little separation between the two. Each day in the office was a non-stop barrage of emails, meetings, phone calls, and deadlines. Work would drag on past 5 p.m., to 6 p.m., often to 7 p.m., sometimes to 8 p.m., 9 p.m., 10 p.m., and beyond. In one role, I was regularly switching off the lights as I left the office after midnight to go home, crash into bed, lie awake wired from the day, catch a few hours’ sleep, and then head back to the office the next morning to do it all over again.

Anyone looking from the outside would’ve seen me living in a funky flat in the middle of London, working in a secure, well-paid job, and taking holidays to glitzy places like Japan, Argentina, and Las Vegas. On paper, my life looked pretty good.

But beneath the surface, I felt fed up, trapped, and overwhelmed. I had a visceral sense I’d look back at the age of 65 knowing that I’d resigned myself to a life where I had all the material trappings of success yet never felt happy or even fully alive.

When I was growing up, I had a fire inside me. I had ambitions, imagination, and creativity. But all these were disappearing. It felt like my zest for life was being sucked out of me, and my job was the reason why.

Things came to a head during Covid. A few months before the world went into lockdown, I’d successfully applied for a promotion into a new role. When Covid arrived, I found myself stuck in my flat on my own for days on end, working in a position with more responsibility than I’d ever had, yet I was still trying to figure out the technical aspects of the position, who was who, and what exactly I was supposed to be doing.

My response to all this was to put my foot on the accelerator and push harder. As I was newly promoted, I wanted to impress. And as the work built and my hours got longer, I was asked to take on a bigger workload. I said yes, and my response stayed the same: head down and put my foot on the gas. All I was doing was working and sleeping, and it felt like my internal battery was hovering around 5%, dangerously close to running out of charge.

After that day on the sofa, I knew what I needed to do. I knew I needed to make a big change at work. But doing it was a whole other matter. It took months of agonizing, endless internal tug-of-wars, and a 4-day Tony Robbins event to finally take me from knowing what needed to be done to actually pulling the trigger and doing something.

I asked my boss for a 6-month sabbatical. And after some back and forth (“don’t you think 3 months would be enough, Tom?”), she said yes.

That sabbatical gave me some breathing space. I began by doing nothing and simply resting, recharging, and living moment to moment, day to day. At first, it felt like the 6-month sabbatical would go on forever, but as time went on and I realized that I’d be returning to work, I became itchier. I began to wonder if corporate life and the 9-to-5 was really for me. The more I thought about it, the ickier I felt about going back to my job. The pull to do something different became increasingly enticing.

So I started brainstorming potential business ideas. I dived into books and podcasts about entrepreneurship and life outside the 9-to-5. And I came across The Pathless Path.

Reading The Pathless Path was a revelation. The book was reassuring, validating, and I felt seen. I realized I wasn’t the only person having doubts about the 9-to-5, and I started getting glimpses of how there might be another way. For the first time, I was seeing words on a page that articulated exactly how I felt yet didn’t have the words for myself. I started to realize there was a huge discrepancy between how I was living my life and how I wanted to live my life. And, worst of all, I saw that even though I felt this way, I wasn’t doing anything about it.

All of this, together with a second spin through the Tony Robbins event, was what led me to decide that the six-month sabbatical wasn’t enough. I needed to quit my job.

Funnily enough, I found the decision to quit a lot easier than my previous decision to take a sabbatical. It still wasn’t an easy decision, but in some ways, it felt natural, like the next step had been laid out before me. So while my girlfriend and I were road-tripping around the Scottish Highlands, I asked her to pull over the car one day, called my boss, and quit my job.

Quitting came with a huge duality. On one hand, I felt an amazing sense of freedom. On the other, there was now a big question mark about what I’d do next.

In December 2022, during one of my daily scrolls on LinkedIn, I came across an advert for a program called Creating the Impossible, run by the American coach Michael Neill. Something about the ad caught my eye. I clicked through to the webpage, and as I read, I became more and more interested. The program asked participants to choose an “impossible” project and guided them to bring this project to life over the next 90 days. The webpage gave examples of how people had used the program to create new jobs, new relationships, and new income. I thought this sounded amazing, so I signed up.

Over 90 days, Michael guided us through various aspects of creation and the creative process. But more than this, he talked about life and how it works. As the program continued, I began to realize that this is what I wanted to do too: help people turn their dreams into realities. So in May 2023, I joined another Michael Neill program—a 7-month coaching certification with a simple idea at its heart:

How do you light a spark in other people?

As the program unfolded, I learned about the mind’s capacity for insight and problem-solving, discovered where happiness, peace, and calm come from, saw how anyone can move from surviving to thriving, and learned how to ignite, inspire, and energize others.

But as the months went by, my savings started running out. Despite my hesitation about returning to corporate life, I applied for some jobs without success. Then, out of the blue, I got a WhatsApp from a buddy saying my old job was becoming vacant.

I decided to go back, not as a step backward, but as an experiment to apply what I’d learned. Almost a year later, I’m more relaxed, my creativity is back, and even my colleagues notice a difference. I ran mindset workshops that received great feedback.

Nowadays, I juggle my 9-to-5 job with coaching and writing. I’m proof you can find flow and fulfilment without changing careers.  I’m on a mission to share what I’ve learnt, especially with 9 to 5ers who feel that sitting behind their desk is like having their soul sucked out of them and who are resigned to the next 10, 20 or 30 years panning out in the exact same way.  This was exactly how I felt.  But I’m living proof that it’s possible for anyone to find a more relaxed, easy-going and fulfilling relationship with work without changing anything about your job but by viewing work through a different lens instead. 

Proust once said that “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes”.  With this in mind, I’ve created a special report for readers of Paul Millerd’s newsletter which dives into how you can find more fun, flow and fulfilment at work without “seeking new lands” but by “seeing with new eyes” instead.  

The report’s called 17 Ways To Find Fun And Flow At Work (Without Changing Career Or Quitting Your Job)

It contains the key insights which allowed me go back to a job which used to be a source of misery and now actually look forward to going into the office each day.  If you’d like to find a freer and more relaxed relationship with your job without making big changes to that job, applying for new jobs, re-training to change career or quitting your job to go it alone, this report is made for you.

If you’d like to pick up a copy: