Sabbaticals can be life-altering, and in today’s episode, we dive deep into just how transformative taking a break can be. Our guest Bex, a career transition coach, shares her own journey from the corporate grind to a refreshing eight-month sabbatical that reshaped her life. We chat about the importance of stepping away to reevaluate what truly matters, like freedom, sunshine, and surrounding ourselves with cherished people. Bex dishes out some juicy insights—like how talking to strangers can lead to unexpected adventures and connections. So if you’ve ever felt stuck in the 9-to-5 hamster wheel, tune in for some inspiration on how to break free and discover your own path!

Links referenced in this episode:

1. feelgoodgetaways.com
2. linkedin.com/in/rebeccathomas

Hello, travelers. My name is Grace Simmons and this is the Random and Wonderful podcast.

Settle in and listen to stories of wanderlust and transformation as you gain tips to inspire your next travel experience. The Random and Wonderful is brought to you by the Amethyst Palava Hut llc.

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Random and Wonderful podcast. My name is Grace Simmons and today my guest is Bex.

So we are going to have a great conversation about the importance of sabbatical. Going to get a little bit of our story, but I cannot wait. So first I'm going to let Bex introduce herself and then we can move on from there.

Thanks, Grace. And firstly, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited about this discussion. So I'm Bex.

I am now a career transition, sabbatical and career break coach. But my background is all in corporate recruitment. So originally from the uk, fell into recruitment as most recruiters do, very unintentionally.

And then after sort of five years in Sydney, had that, you know, wobble both professionally and personally around, okay, what does the next chapter look like? And so we took a sabbatical, which for us was totally life changing.

And we now live a bit of a kind of dual life between Europe and Australia and a lot of travel in between. So I retrained and now I'm a coach.

I think sometimes the thought of a sabbatical, especially for someone who lives in the States, it just seems like a very far off kind of goal.

Right.

Something that other people do. What was it about needing a sabbatical. And six months you were on this sabbatical, so can you walk me through that?

What was that moment that you realized this is what you needed?

Yeah, absolutely. The defining moment was ironically and weirdly being promoted to director.

So actually achieving one of my career goals that I had set out to achieve from when I joined the company. So as a sort of fresh faced 22 year old joining the company, it was always my goal to reach director.

And I think that had always been the sort of that north star that I was following. And then once I was promoted to that, it was like, oh, okay, what's next? I always had that goal, and I was always chasing that goal.

And then it was like, okay, what's next? I've. I've done that now. What's next? And that also came at the same time that my husband and I, as I said, had been in Sydney for five years.

It's the other side of the world. We had absolutely forged an amazing chosen family over here.

But I'm very close to my family and, you know, had only seen them once a year for five years. My brother started to have children and I wanted to be more involved in their life and see them grow up.

So it was a bit of a professional and personal crossroads, really, of what do we want? Do we want this life? Life was amazing. We had an amazing life in Sydney, but it was like, actually, what do we want?

And I really felt as though I'd been unintentional around life. I just kind of followed this sort of blueprint of career and.

Yeah, so I. I knew that I needed to take time out to be able to really form what the next chapter looked like, because being a director in a recruitment firm was all encompassing. You know, it was long hours. It was from a mind perspective, filling my mind totally.

So I wanted to take just time where my husband and I could really dream up and decide what the next chapter looked like.

Wow. So getting or connecting back to that intention, what have you figured out? What exactly is your. Your purpose or what does that drive now?

Yeah. So, as you mentioned, we did originally take six months. That actually turned into eight.

So we both had to, you know, ask our current employers nicely if we could extend it for two months. And that really came down to the fact that we had landed on what was important to us and our values and everything like that.

And there were a few family things going on in the last two months of our sabbatical that we wanted to be there for, like my mum's 60th and a couple of weddings and things like that.

So we extended it to eight months, but during that period of time off, intentionally, it was around working out what we wanted life to look like, what was important to us. There was a fair bit of compromise as well that went on because actually, my husband and I weren't totally on the same page.

So he would have 100% stayed in Sydney, lived life out in Australia, sold up the UK and France and stayed here. And I was not on the same page. So it was about taking the time to really get to grips with what our future looked like together.

So we did a fair amount of. I Suppose work together around what our values were, what was really important to us.

We threw out money and almost said, right, if we won millions on the lottery, what would life look like? You know, if money was no object, right. So that we could then kind of work back from that.

Of course, money is an object, but it gave us this kind of absolute blue sky thinking that we could then work back from. And we actually landed on three themes that were super important to us as a couple. The first was freedom. So we have chosen a life of freedom.

We don't have kids. And that was very intentional from a freedom perspective. And it's both sort of location and financial freedom was really important to us.

So that was the first theme. The second theme was sunshine. We both hate winter. Hate the hate, hate the cold. So it was okay, how can we live in sunshine the. The whole time?

And then the third thing was people. We are both, you know, people light us up.

We are very lucky that we have favorite people on two sides of the globe, you know, in the UK and also in Australia. And what travel has also allowed us to do is foster friendships across the globe.

So we've got friends in different countries that we want to spend time with and want the freedom to be able to pop in and see. So it was those three themes that we kind of landed on very intentionally to then build life around.

I love that. So just the word freedom, I know, I feel like that can be a kind of a two parter.

So freedom is just that, you know, you're independent, you're adventurous. Is there fear or concern about that freedom?

No, no, I've never. I actually think it goes the opposite way. What gives me anxiety and almost brings me out in hives is not having freedom.

So that for me is if somebody said, this is it forever and this is your sort of container forever, that that would bring me out in fear. So. No. And everybody's different, right? I'm sure for some people there is fear.

I think the fear for me was around, shit, what do I do from a revenue perspective and from a career perspective and from a. Yeah, what do I do as a job? Right? Like to keep the money coming in to have this life. I had only ever been in recruitment in a huge global corporate.

So that's where the fear came in, was like, oh, okay, what do I do? How do I do this?

Can you tell me what was that conversation like with your. Well, I guess you were the boss then. So who did you have to report to when you needed to take your sabbatical? How did that conversation go?

So I was reporting, yeah. To my people leader. She was amazing. And actually the company that I worked for has got a great sabbatical policy.

I had then been there, what, 12 years, so had got history. And they were absolutely amazing. I was just totally honest, I did say, and was honest in the fact that we were going to do it, whatever.

So if it came down to it and they wouldn't support them, I would have left. And I was pretty honest with, with that. But they were brilliant.

And they basically said, yep, fine, it's a six month unpaid sabbatical, you can come back. And actually even better. And I suppose from values alignment perspective, it's why I stayed with the company for so long.

You can have a global headcount. So we actually also didn't know when we took off on that, that sabbatical, we didn't actually know whether we would come back to Sydney.

So we gave up our apartment, we put things into storage. And the headcount that I had from a sabbatical perspective was global, which was awesome. Right.

So we could have gone then to Hong Kong or Singapore or done another. Another sort of version.

Nice. So, okay, I want to get into the details of this six month sabbatical. So where did you go? What experiences did you have?

What lessons did you learn during this experience?

So it was intentional in the sense that we spent some time in the UK back to see whether we wanted to live back there, whether we could see ourselves back in the uk. So there was a period of time there, spending time with friends, family, you know, living the normal life in, in the uk. So we then.

And we had sort of previously bought a derelict barn in regional France.

Okay.

Do we want to hold onto this barn or do we want to sell it and it not be the dream anymore? So we spent a period of time there.

I think it was about two months that we spent there, two or three months in France in a caravan on site with this derelict barn that we were staring at. And it came.

It became pretty apparent that actually, yes, we wanted that to be part of the future and we wanted to see ourselves there and enjoy that part of the world. And then we traveled and we did Europe. So we did port. We did some of the.

Obviously a lot of France, Spain and Portugal and the travel piece for us was allowing us that time to be able to dream and to be able to really, just through a lot of discussion, a lot of talking, come up with those themes and. And what we wanted life to look like. We sl.

We actually traveled really slowly, so it was around a week to 10 days in Airbnbs in small towns where we would really get under the skin of the local culture and the food and the people. And that's how I love to travel. My husband and I love to travel. So we did that.

The lessons learned, I think, were primarily how important taking that time is to designing the next chapter. Like, we could never have done that in the normal BAU world that we lived in, with the demands of work, the demands of running a house. You know, you.

You're passing like ships in the night, lots of social things to go to, and there's just not the headspace.

So I think the lesson for me really was around how impactful having that time and also just talking to other people, so random strangers that you don't know. You know, I think it's about what. What I love about travel is that, for me, it really expands your reference pool.

So you would talk to a random stranger in a coffee shop in Lisbon, and they do a job that you have no idea existed, or, you know what I mean, you know, or live a life that you have no idea is possible or potential, or. And so, yeah, for me, I think those were the. The two lessons.

One, the impact of that sacred time that we had to be able to carve out what the future looked like.

And then the second was really just the expanding the reference pool of really seeing what other options were around and what types of lifestyles different people lived.

And, you know, why the hell did we have to live the societal blueprint of getting up every morning, going to the office, coming back, you know, saving till you're retired, and then having freedom.

So could you share a story? Especially when you were in Bangkok, was there an adventure that happened there?

There was.

So Bangkok was actually the first place that I had been to outside of, really, the uk And I mean, I'm saying I would say Europe, but actually hadn't even experienced much of Europe. It was sort of the Canary Islands. And the UK was probably the remit of my travel experience as a youngster and when I was 21.

So after university, I did the right of passage, backpacking across Asia and through Australia, New Zealand. And I remember landing in Bangkok. Bangkok was the first place that we landed in. And I tell you what, the Culture shock. Oh, my goodness.

To come from a tiny seaside town in the uk. Yes. Okay. I'd experienced London for uni, but the culture shock of landing in Bangkok. And when I think back, I was so young. Like, I was so young.

And I remember standing on this flyover and just watching the chaos unfold beneath me of, you know, the. All the different colored taxis and the noises and the smells and the. And I just remember thinking, life's never going to be the same again.

Like this. This has just. And I. When I think about it, it still sends shivers down my.

Down my whole body, because I just think that was, for me a defining moment of going, oh, my God, the world is huge. There's so much to experience, so much to see, and so much more that I personally want. And that, for me was a defining moment.

Wow. So what. Okay, how long were you there? How long were you in Bangkok?

God, I can't even remember. Maybe a week. I mean, we traveled. Myself and two girlfriends, we traveled for about seven months backpacking.

So that was my first, I suppose, taster of. Of travel. And, you know, the travel bug that got me, ironically, I actually did leisure and tourism. Leisure travel and tourism as a degree.

So I'd obviously got. I loved it, but I. It would.

It had always been really from, you know, sitting and watching documentaries and programs and things like that, and I hadn't.

Yeah.

Like. But this was the first taster of. Of real travel. And then since that point, it's just been an absolute part of. Laced through life. Yeah. And.

And now, as I say, we spend normally around six to seven months in France and then come back to Oz. But there's travel that is laced through that. So. So, for example, we're have.

We're spending four months in Australia this summer, and we will then travel back via Vietnam. Vietnam's always been on the bucket list.

And so we're going to spend about a month or sort of, you know, five, six weeks there, and then we've got a couple of weeks in Sicily to meet up with my mum and dad before we go back to France. So we now lace travel through the year.

What was it about or what is it about Vietnam that it's on your list?

It was on the list when we actually backpacked. So it's always, you know, that seed.

Has always felt like in the back. Yeah, yeah.

And we just never got there. We had too much of a time in. In Thailand, to be totally honest. So it just. It was.

It was supposed to be Thailand, Lao, Vietnam, and I think we just suddenly woke up, was like, sugar, okay. We've been in Thailand for two months, so we never got there. So Lao and Vietnam have always been this little seed and like on the bucket list.

Also hearing different people's stories about Vietnam and we've got a heap of friends and my goddaughter actually, who is, she's just started university and between school and university she did some backpacking and she absolutely loved Vietnam and all of her Instagram stories and everything like that. Oh my God, I need to go.

It's like reawaken the desire.

Yeah, absolutely. And also just the history as well, the food obviously. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to it.

That's wonderful. I'm going to want to hear about it when you get back.

Yeah, sure.

I'm wondering, do you have a preference or do you kind of encourage people to pick one or the other?

So if someone is thinking about traveling or making travel, kind of like a, a full time thing, do you encourage them to start with the sabbatical or let's say they're ready to quit tomorrow and travel the world. How do you guide them as a, as a coach on that decision?

It absolutely is their decision.

So how I guide them is I would ask them questions around what is important to them and really try and get under the skin of the why around a quitting their job or why. Take time out. Because I think if you really understand the why, the journey then sort of can unfold and actually relate to the why.

So it's, it's super interesting.

A lot of people that I work with on the sabbatical and career break side of coaching, they start working with me with already this, this is what I'm going to do on my sabbatical, this is what I'm going to do on my career break. And actually as we peel back the layers and explore what it is they really want to get out of it and why they want to take that time out.

Actually their list of this is what I'm going to do doesn't actually satisfy the why.

And so it's really interesting that a lot of times that what they actually do on their sabbatical shifts and changes so that it really does satisfy the why and and almost answers that question that's in the back of their head of the reason for taking the break. I actually do a lot of work with career crossroaders and sometimes that doesn't even involve a sabbatical or career break.

So that really is people that are in a job that they go, oh, I just. I don't know, you know, I don't love my job. I don't know how I ended up here, but I don't know what I want to do and I don't know how to get there.

And sometimes that doesn't even involve a sabbatical. So, you know, a lot of the time that's us working through what their values are, what their strengths are, what they love doing.

I don't know whether you've heard of the concept ikigai, but this was something that when I was on my career break, I listened to a podcast about ikigai and then I sort of went down that rabbit hole around reading the book and finding out my, I suppose my purpose and my why.

And so that's what I do with clients, is really look at, okay, all of the things that make you you and then your unique kind of skill set and then how you can shift into something that really is more aligned and that you jump out of bed and want to go to work with or for. Sometimes people actually decide that they want to stay put.

So through the sessions I do with them, sometimes it's like, actually, this is good enough for now.

You know, their priorities, when they really think about it, their priorities might be family taking their kids to swim carnival or being the rugby coach.

And actually the job that they've got, they then realise, and the, the industry that they're working in and their, their leader and everything, they realize actually they've got it pretty good for their priorities. And so it's almost a bit of a stick or twist point.

You know, they go, actually for the next five years, the chapter I'm in, this is good, I'm going to stick works.

But there's, there's clarity, though, after they've talked to you. And I think that's, that's kind of the key part, right. Is because the first half of that you're super confused.

You're probably really frustrated trying to figure out the how and the what. And I don't know where I'm supposed to be going. And after that conversation, I like that because there's.

You now understand one, what your priorities are and you're able to understand what aligns best with those priorities.

Yeah, yeah. And it's amazing how many people don't do that. You know, life gets in the way and it's again, it's almost that mini sabbatical, isn't it?

It's taking, even if it's an hour coaching, it's that time to Just focus on you and focus on your priorities and be guided a little bit through the questioning around how, as you say, how to get there.

Yeah. What's a swim carnival? Is it like a competition with every.

Yeah, it is. It's very Australian. Actually.

I don't think the UK would even call it swim carnival, but yes, it's like a school swimming competition and then when they win that they then go to the state carnival.

And yeah, I think carnival makes it sound a lot more fun than a swimming race.

That's awesome.

Okay, what is, what's a self care practice that you have acquired through your travel?

Oh, there's lots of self care practices that I have acquired, but I think, I think we're relating it to travel and what I wouldn't have if I hadn't traveled is actually, and I'm gonna plug a amazing person here, but I am part of what's called the Wonder Lab and it is a online community that, where we basically stalk magic. So it's around stalking Wanda and the wandering the world magic. And the leader is a lady called Neela.

And I just absolutely love her work because for me it's about that self care and it includes things like breath work, meditation, going on wonder walks and being able to just find the beauty in any kind of neighborhood, finding the awe in the world. There are practices like wander writing, so.

Or wild writing, I think she calls it, where, you know, you just spend 10 minutes, she gives you a prompt and you write for that period of time. So it's a real combination of different modalities.

But the beauty for me and how it links back to travel is I would never have met Neela if travel wasn't part of my life. Right. So she's from Belgium. I met her in Sydney. She emigrated to Sydney and works in Sydney.

And the fact that it is online really for me is perfect because we live in rural France where there's not a lot of access to those sort of modalities. When I'm back in Sydney, yes, fine. But also when I'm traveling, I need something and want something that's online and I can feel part of a community.

But also that really is something for me. So, you know, I might wake up one morning and I'll listen to a meditation that she's done and then go for a, a wonder walk or.

But that for me is my continuous self care. And yeah, it's an ongoing monthly sort of subscription that I subscribe to and it's just for me.

Nice. Last question is what's One piece of advice that you would give a new traveler as they're trying to explore the world and figure out what's next.

Talk to lots of different people and really start to just engage in conversation with strangers. That would be my biggest piece of advice. I think where that then takes. You can be just so magical.

I actually had a lady on my podcast recently who I think this sums it up for me. She asked somebody for directions. I can't remember where she was. Some, I want to say somewhere in Europe.

And she got on the bus and then started to talk to this stranger. Ended up then staying with this stranger's family in Africa. Ended up going somewhere she'd never thought about going.

And subsequently, through this whole sort of tapestry of conversations with strangers, met her husband. So how amazing is that, right? Just from asking for directions and having a conversation with a stranger. So that's.

That's my piece of advice is it's sometimes scary, and I think you really have to push yourself out of your comfort zone. But it's a bit like a muscle. The more and more you do it, the more comfortable you will become. But it's definitely talk to strangers. Nice.

I like that. We're going to keep that as a. As a good piece as we are wrapping up.

I just want to know what's next for you, Bex, with either your business or you make your travels. And then please let everyone know where we can find you if they want to work with you. Yeah.

Thank you. So what's next? We are three years through our French renovation, and I think it's probably going to take six, so we're halfway.

Oh, okay.

So I think the next three years will be actually doing a little bit more work around what that next chapter looks like. Right. Because we're living our next chapter almost at the moment.

We took our sabbatical to dream up what the next chapter looked like, and we're actually living that.

So for the next three years, I think very much living in the present, enjoying that, finishing the house, but also starting to dream up what next looks like from a travel perspective. As I say, Vietnam can't wait. And Italy and then spend time in. In France and then who knows? The world's oyster, right?

Yes, exactly.

Freedom to be wherever.

Freedom, sunshine and people.

Exactly.

Yes. Where can we find you? Either socials or email.

Yep. So my email is rebeccaealgood getaways.com the website is the same. So feelgood getaways. And my Instagram is sabbatical underscore stories.

And also actually LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. Rebecca Thomas at LinkedIn Nice.

Put all those links in the show notes for you. Bex. Thank you so much for spending some time with me and sharing your stories.

Thank you so much for having me. Grace.

I'm glad we're able to do this. I appreciate it.

Hey there Grace here. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and gained some useful takeaways. Thank you so much for listening and staying until the end.

Don't forget to rate the show or.

Share it with some friends. Have a wonderful week. Take care and remember, be bold, be curious. Be ready to tell your story. You never know who needs it. Bye Bye.