What would you do if you won the lottery?

Here’s something the majority of us have been asked at least once in our lives, if not a hundred times. ‘What would you do if you won the lottery?’  Here are four common answers you get from most westerners:

• ‘Quit my job’ – often followed by ‘I wouldn’t even work my notice!’
• ‘Go on holiday.’
• ‘Buy a supercar.’
• ‘Pay off my mortgage.’

At least three of the above can be achieved without winning the lottery, but by having a winning attitude. I’ll let you consider which three. In the meantime, how about we explore LIMITING BELIEFS. Let me ask you:

• Why do you need to keep buying a bigger house to ‘keep up with the Jones?’
• Why do you need to seek social acceptance?
• What’s stopping you from visiting different countries and experiencing different cultures instead of staying in your comfort zone and ‘going on holiday’ to the same country every year?

Hard work can bring most of what winning the lottery can, and not just material gains or financial achievement. It’s about striking a balance between achieving career and life goals. Some generations are unfortunately slipping into a culture of relying on inheritance or hand-outs to achieve anything.

Without any financial assistance from my family (as I mentioned in Money), I went in 50:50 with my fiance, Lucas, to set a clear goal for 2016. We paid off our mortgage last year, unusual for a couple in their early thirties! Granted, we don’t live in a mansion. Our goal for 2016 was to invest in a classic car. Well, we bought a Ferrari! This was a daunting and lengthy process which took approximately four months.  We spent most of our days off travelling up and down the country looking for the right car, to the point where I was fed up with looking at Ferraris. Lucas’s persistence paid off when we finally found our perfect car in February.

Growing up in a working class family from Mauritius, I never thought I would be able to sit in a Ferrari, let alone own one. I remember having a red Ferrari Enzo as my laptop wallpaper as a teenager. Ours is a 360 Spyder. Maybe we’ll have a Ferrari Enzo one day, who knows…! I will never forget how nervous I felt on the day we picked her up. It felt like she was too good for me and I didn’t deserve her. I stood back and looked at her, convincing myself that she was mine. It’s been eight months and I still have a lump in my throat every time I look at her. She is a result of all the struggles, all the stressed, sleepless nights and all the determination.

Lucas and I aren’t your usual couple. We don’t spend our weekends in the same restaurant; we don’t pay for a kazillion TV channels which we don’t watch and don’t get me started on take-aways! As Londoners in their thirties, it’s easy to fall into the trap of the daily grind. Keep in mind, you are your biggest priority. Whether it’s getting married, having children, having a career break, taking time out for family, volunteering or just walking away from everything that’s familiar. Think about what will bring a smile to your face and prevent you from saying ‘I wish I did that…’

So with that in mind, we decided to quit our jobs.

Yes, you’ve read that correctly. Neither of us were unhappy in our jobs but we had realised that there is a big, beautiful world out there and that we would like to take some time out and explore its beauty. We wanted to step out of our comfort zone, i.e. booking the usual 4 or 5 star hotel for the usual 7 or 14 day period and then coming back to the rat race of London. This wasn’t an easy decision to make. We spent many evenings discussing the options. The easiest option was to continue earning in excess of £150k a year and allowing our lives to slip through our fingers.

We had to choose between travelling through different countries or doing something productive with our time. After many discussions, we decided to move to Asia to teach English as a second language. We are moving even further out of our comfort zone as neither of us have any teaching experience. We’ve enrolled on a  Cambridge CELTA  course in Thailand and this will be our first stop for four weeks from October 2016. I don’t believe that one goal fits all but I do believe that we can all work towards what makes us happy. As my mama taught me: ‘After rain comes sunshine.’ With this in mind, we will deal with all the rain that comes our way and bask in all the sunshine which shall follow.

To conclude… we haven’t won the lottery… we’re not lucky… we don’t know whether we’ll love it or hate it…

“If your life was a book, what would you want it to say?“