Lately I’ve been having people ask me how I made the decision to leave home.  It wasn’t easy, and a lot of thought and planning went into it, but the turning point came when I stumbled upon this quote.  Cliche?  Maybe.  But I scribbled it down in my planner and kept returning to the phrase as it got closer to finalizing my plans and making a move.

                              “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do

          than by the ones you did do.

                                               So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor.

                                 Catch the trade winds in your sails.

                                                                           Explore. Dream. Discover.”

                                                                                                                                                       – Mark Twain

It was the first sentence that really stuck with me -now it’s been two years since seeing the quote and I’ve been living and traveling abroad for more than a year and a half.  Now I don’t regret the decisions I have made, but believe that eventually I would have if I had never made the jump.

What has influenced your decision to make a big change or move?