31 : A Three Month Sabbatical That Changed Everything with Eric Sanabria

“It forced me to be intentional about every choice that I make and that every choice can have a consequential impact.  Obviously not everything is gonna be life-changing, but at least treat every decision, every moment that life presents you with the attention it deserves.” - Eric Sanabria

Welcome to the Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I’m your host Adam Coelho and I’m so glad you’re here.

In today’s episode I’m joined by my good friend Eric Sanabria. Eric and I used to work together at Google and now Eric is the Chief Business Officer for Oyster Financial in Mexico city.

In this episode, Eric and I explore how he came to learn to trust himself and his intuition about what he really needed during a difficult period in his life and how he ultimately took a three month sabbatical from his work at Google and how that sabbatical redefined his life and his priorities.

Eric felt this need within himself to take a break and he trusted this intuition and this feeling of simply one to take some time off, turn inward and to go to Mexico, to play his guitar. And that's exactly what he did.

One thing that stands out to me about this whole conversation is how important it is to take a step back sometimes to slow down, to create some space where we can turn down the volume and the busy-ness so that we can see more clearly what's going on in our minds and our hearts and our bodies.

And really that's what he did with this three months sabbatical. He cleared some space to go to Mexico, to play music, to work on the book, the artist's way, which included a lot of journaling and self exploration. And he really came to understand what's important to him, what he wants to get out of life and make some pretty big changes, ultimately resulting in him living and working in Mexico.

In this episode, Eric share some concrete practices for how you can tap into what it is you need, what it is you want, and to work through some of the limiting beliefs that might be coming up that tell you that you shouldn't pursue what you feel you need and how to deal with that using journaling, mindfulness and other techniques .

I really enjoyed this episode with my friend Eric sanabria. I think there's a lot of wisdom here.  I learned a lot. It was a very reflective episode for me. I hope that you enjoy it as well.

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