How do major life changes actually happen?

Two years ago, my partner and I visited my brother in Colombia. We were in a beautiful, greenery-filled cafe in Medellín talking about his life there and the untraditional path he had taken to get there. He had sold a company and, realizing dating in America wasn’t giving him what he wanted, decided to try South America during the pandemic. What started as exploration became the life he’d been looking for. Mallik and I contemplated what our life would look like living in a different country and noted the juxtaposition: how complex it sounded to move abroad, yet how simple life seemed for my brother.

After an initial assessment, big life changes can be as simple as packing a few things, buying a one-way ticket to the only country accepting U.S. tourists at the time, and seeing what happens.

Although moving to a new country was enticing, it wasn’t the big life change on my mind. As a software engineer, I solved hard problems. Mostly by reducing complex structures and systems to if-then statements in a text editor. The problem was that I don’t think in words, I think in pictures. I see tables and graphs, not array.index(2). This daily translation from vision to words drained me for eight hours a day, year after year, one line of code at a time.

Through the trial and error of my seven-year stint in a software career, I learned that I enjoy solving hard problems visually.

So now I had established that I understood my discomfort well and identified what in my life was misaligned. Most importantly, I was ready to admit it to myself.

1. That leads me to my first step in any major life change: Courage.

Courage begins with admitting to yourself that there is something wrong in your life and you are able to identify it. In a society obsessed with control, the idea that you have agency to make your life exactly what you want often feels the most uncomfortable. It means one of your earlier choices that you had full control over was completely wrong and now you have to admit to the world that you didn’t know what you were doing then and that it cost you a few years of heading in the wrong direction. What makes this step the hardest, and most deserving of courage, is precisely that contradiction: believing what you were doing then, yet standing by your decision to change now.

The desire for change is something many people resonate with: the impulse to quit, or the acknowledgment of the work needed for change. What varies at this stage is an individual’s willingness to commit to that work. For me, it initially looked like waiting for a potential layoff. In that fantasy scenario, I’d get temporary pay while working toward my dreams. In general, there is always a more convenient time than now to commit to the work that comes with a life change.

People who hear my story often tell me I have a lot of courage. They’re right about the assessment part, it does take courage to admit you’ve been heading in the wrong direction. But courage alone doesn’t get you moving. That requires something else entirely.

2. A Sense of Urgency

It’s common to keep these dreams or aspiration alive by talking about them often. Back in our scene in Medellín, that’s what I was doing: letting my brother know that I really wanted to switch my career to design one day. I must have mentioned it to him a few times before, because instead of going into it much further he hit me with a very apathetic:

“if not now, then when?”

Those words stuck with me. To be honest, I’m not sure why they became my wake-up call. Maybe it was realizing I was visiting my brother in Colombia so he could meet my partner. With marriage and kids in mind, the window to calmly make a career shift felt much smaller. Maybe it was focusing on the support systems I had at the time. Someone willing to back me through the changes, yet how much longer would we have the flexibility to live recklessly? Or maybe it was simply the way he said it, as if I had all the resources needed but wasn’t actually going to do anything.

Something about it flipped a switch. My opportunity window was fleeting, and if I didn’t act soon, what was the point of my epiphany?

3. Baby Steps

Great, I made the decision, quit my job, and started a two-year self-taught journey to enter a field so competitive you have to beat out 599 applicants just for a single internship position. Just kidding. If you had told me this is where I’d be two years ago, I would have laughed and gone back to something more realistic, like my well paying 9-5. But that’s the beauty of a life change. It unfurls slowly and confidently, with a few achievable leaps there to challenge you. A large stack of small, approachable decisions that lead to a big change. All you have to do is get the ball rolling.

So that’s what I did. I went home and signed up for a self paced UI/UX course that could take anywhere from three to nine months. That’s the only expectation I had for the first six months. After work each day, instead of dance classes and workouts, I’d complete part of the course. If I stuck with it for that long, software to UI/UX was a common transition with similar pay and benefits, and I could even do a move within my company. Not scary, no courage needed, just a bit of exploration.

At the end of the six months, the ball was in full swing. I absolutely loved problem solving in a visual way and couldn’t wait to spend more time on my after-work endeavors. My confidence grew, and lesson by lesson I had built up a real passion. My only wish was that I had more hours in the day for it.

4. External Initiator

I believe the universe has a funny way of changing your plans. That can come in many forms. At this point in my journey, the plan I had developed was about to meet a few external factors. First, my partner decided to take a two-month sabbatical to surf around Southeast Asia. From this came two options: ask for two months unpaid leave to join him and finish the last part of my course with full focus or quit to join him and start looking for a new job earlier than expected.

Either way, I had built up the confidence for a future UI/UX career and felt alright to take the leap. But really, I hoped for the two-month leave option, commonly accepted at my company, because I was keen on going back.

That hope came crashing down when I submitted the leave application and my manager promptly rejected it. Enter external factor #2. At the time, it felt like the worst outcome. I called my partner to break the news that I’d have to come back to NYC jobless, or not go at all. He thought for a while and then suggested quitting his job too. That way, it wouldn’t make sense to return to NYC’s cost of living and we could just… stay in Asia.

In a 15-minute call, we decided to quit my job, quit his job, and move to a foreign country. Incredibly, it all made sense.

5. Going with the Flow

Since allowing the tide to guide me through each turning point and leap of faith, I’ve experienced the best year of my life. Traveling through eight countries in Asia, getting engaged, discovering industrial design, getting married, selling bespoke furniture, building a portfolio, and most of all, doing exactly what I want each day.

My brother packed a bag for South America after admitting dating wasn’t working in America. I signed up for a design course after admitting I was translating pictures into words all day. All it takes is a baby step forward and staying open to what unfolded.

I’ve yet to land my first real ID job, but my life has changed majorly in many ways. All for the better. Whether I have to fall back on UI/UX or software again if money gets tight, it won’t change how truly happy this year has made me. My only wish is that I had started earlier.

When considering your own ‘if not now, then when’, ask yourself: is one baby step forward as scary as staying exactly where you are?