A Different Way to Live: How to Change Your Life When It No Longer Fits
There's a strange point that can come in life when everything looks fine from the outside, but something inside you starts asking a question you can't shake.
Is this really it?
You have a job, somewhere to live, people around you, bills that get paid and holidays to look forward to. You might even have the things you were told you were supposed to want. Yet you find yourself counting down to the weekend, waiting for the next holiday, telling yourself it'll feel different when you have more money, more time, a smaller mortgage, or when you finally retire.
I think far more people feel this way than admit it.
I certainly did.
For sixteen years I worked in the corporate world, eventually helping run a business with thousands of people and an operation worth around £85 million. I had responsibility, money, status and all the things that are supposed to tell you you've made it. I'd become very good at building the life I thought I was supposed to want.
The problem was that I wasn't sure I wanted it anymore.
It wasn't one clean decision. Life had been hitting hard. My dad struggled with his mental health, my mum died of cancer, and my back gave out, the discs blowing so badly that I lost the ability to walk.
All the while I was running something high pressure and relentless, and looking fine from the outside.
Moments like that make you ask harder questions. What was I actually working towards? How much of my life was I handing over for things I thought I needed? And if I kept doing exactly what I was doing, where would I end up?
Eventually I had the clarity to know it was time to step away, and to stop chasing growth on the outside and start looking for something deeper within. I tell the wider story, from the Lake District to Birmingham to Portugal, in The Meaning of Life: A Journey Through Time, Travel, and Transformation.
I couldn't answer those questions by carrying on as I was.
So I left.
Seven years ago I moved to Portugal with a car, a caravan, a tent and about €10,000. I lived in tents, yurts and caravans, learned about water and power, bought land, rebuilt ruins and made plenty of mistakes. I built businesses, created an Airbnb and ended up living beside a river. I've become an internationally published photographer, written about it all along the way, and appeared twice on Ben Fogle's New Lives in the Wild.
You can read my full Life journey here https://www.wylderoots.org/post/the-meaning-of-life-what-i-ve-learned-living-many-lives-and-experiences
If you'd described all of that to me in the boardroom, I wouldn't have believed you.
But I don't think the biggest change was moving to Portugal. It was learning that I was allowed to question the life I'd been building.
That's what this article is about. Not telling you to move to Portugal, live off grid, quit your job or sell your house. It's about what happens when your life stops feeling like yours, and what you might find when you start asking what you actually want instead.
The Life We're Told To Want
Most of us grow up with a clear picture of success. Get qualifications, find a decent job, work hard, earn more, buy a house, climb the ladder, take nice holidays, retire.
There's nothing wrong with any of that. A good career can be rewarding, a home gives security, and looking after the people you love matters. The problem isn't the conventional life. It's never stopping to ask whether this particular version of it is the one you want.
That's where I think a lot of people get stuck. They're not unhappy enough to change, but not happy enough to feel settled. They keep going because there's no obvious reason not to.
I was the same. I was doing well, so there were plenty of reasons to stay. There was always another promotion, another target. But eventually I realised that being capable of doing something doesn't mean you have to spend your life doing it.
I wrote about that period in From Boardroom to River: What Nobody Tells You About Leaving Corporate for an Off-Grid Life, because leaving wasn't just a career decision. It made me ask who I was when the job no longer defined me.
That was much harder than I expected.
When Success Stops Feeling Like Success
Something odd happens once you've achieved the things you once wanted. The next achievement doesn't give you the feeling you expected.
You get the promotion and start thinking about the next one. You earn more and your expenses grow to match. You buy the house and spend your time working to pay for it. You finally take the holiday and, before you've unpacked, you're thinking about Monday.
The reward for getting somewhere is being handed somewhere else to get to.
None of that means everyone should abandon modern life and head for the woods. That would just be following someone else's idea of how to live.
The better question is simpler. What do you actually want your life to feel like?
Not what it looks like on Instagram. Not what impresses the neighbours or makes your parents proud. How do you want to spend your Tuesday morning?
That question changed a lot for me.
Leaving The Life I Thought I Wanted
When I walked away, I had no ten-year plan. I knew what I didn't want. I didn't know what would replace it.
That frightened me.
We're told we need a plan before we change anything: the destination, the risks, the finances, all sorted first. Sometimes that's sensible. Sometimes it's impossible. You can't always see what you want while you're still immersed in the life you're questioning. Sometimes you need distance first.
For me, that distance became Portugal. Not a magic answer, just the next direction I decided to explore.
How I Ended Up In Rural Portugal
I arrived with a car, a caravan, a tent and about €10,000. My first piece of land cost €8,000, which left very little room for error. Just as well, because I made plenty.
I spent a couple of thousand more on solar and started working out how to live with far less infrastructure than I'd taken for granted.
Later I sold my house in the uk as I lived Portugal so much and didn’t wana go back so I bought a much bigger piece of land, around fifteen hectares, with three old ruins. The buildings became projects, and the land became another education. There were things I knew how to do and an awful lot I didn't. Including dealing with landslides and sink holes .
I wrote about that first move in Buying Off-Grid Land in Portugal on a Budget: How I Moved to Portugal With €10k, because the reality is more interesting than the polished version.
Starting with very little is oddly liberating. You quickly learn what you need.
You also learn what you don't know.
Moving To Portugal Is Not The Same As Starting Again
There's a lot of romantic talk about moving to Portugal. I get it. The weather, the countryside, the old villages, the slower pace.
But changing country doesn't give you a new life. You take yourself with you. If you're unhappy at work, Portugal won't fix that. If you don't know what you want, sunshine won't answer it. Unresolved problems travel very happily.
What it can do is change your circumstances enough to make different choices possible. It gave me space. I still had to decide what to do with it.
If you're seriously considering a move, I've written How to Move Off-Grid in Portugal: A Complete Guide, covering property, paperwork, water, power and rural life.
There's a big difference between dreaming about a Portuguese ruin and owning one.
The first is very romantic.
The second involves plumbing. Electrics and a lot of hard work .
The Reality Of Living Differently
People ask what living off grid is like, and the honest answer is that it depends which day you ask.
Some days it's the best decision I ever made. Other days something breaks and I wonder why I didn't stay in a normal house where you can phone someone.
You don't remove problems, you swap them. You might spend less each month, but you take on responsibility for things other people usually handle. The upside is that you become very aware of what your life actually costs, in money and in time.
I wrote Off-Grid vs Reality: How I Cut My Living Costs to Under €7,000 a Year because people wanted the numbers. The real point is bigger, though. It isn't just cheaper electricity or home-grown veg. It's changing your relationship with consumption.
I go further in Ways to Save Money Living Off-Grid in Portugal, because once you stop buying things just because everyone else does, your idea of "enough" shifts.
There are costs too, and I've been honest about them in The Real Cost of Living Off-Grid in Portugal: What Nobody Tells You About Money, Freedom and Survival.
Freedom isn't free.
But neither is the conventional life. We just hide the cost in mortgages, commuting, subscriptions, cars and the hours we trade for a salary.
What Living Close To Nature Changed For Me
Nature hasn't made me a perfectly balanced person. I still have bad days, still get frustrated, still wonder why I thought a particular project was a good idea.
What it gave me is more ordinary, and I think more valuable.
Space.
Spend enough time away from constant noise and you notice how noisy modern life is. Phones, emails, advertising, news, traffic, and the pressure to always be doing something. It becomes normal, so you don't see how much attention it eats.
Then you spend a day outside with very little happening. It feels strange at first. Then you start noticing again.
The weather. The seasons. The river changing. Birds. Trees. Light. Your own thoughts.
That last one isn't always pleasant, but it's probably useful.
Nature doesn't fix you. It just makes it harder to distract yourself from yourself.
Photography Taught Me To Pay Attention
Photography became a big part of that. My work has been published in Digital Camera World, Practical Photoshop, Fstoppers, Dodho, 121 Clicks and Shutterbug, and exhibited internationally.
But to me it's about more than a camera. It's about paying attention. You notice how light falls across a landscape, the expression on a face, the texture of an old wall, the tiny detail in a forest you'd normally walk past.
That's the philosophy behind Wylde Photography. It isn't separate from everything else I do. It's another way of looking at the world.
I think changing your life often starts with exactly that.
Looking again.
You Don't Have To Move To Portugal
I want to be clear, or this becomes a very long advert for moving here.
You don't have to move here. You don't have to buy land, live in a tent, quit your career or become self-sufficient. You don't even have to make a dramatic change.
Maybe it's changing your work, or starting something on the side. Maybe it's moving somewhere quieter, spending more time outside and less online, simplifying your finances, or making room for creativity. Or maybe the life you've built is good and it's your relationship with it that needs to change.
I don't love the phrase "alternative lifestyle." Alternative to what? There are millions of ways to live. What matters isn't whether your life looks alternative to someone else.
It's whether it feels right to you.
What Do You Actually Want Your Life To Feel Like?
We spend too much time asking what people want to achieve and not enough asking how they want to feel while doing it.
We talk about salaries, houses and careers because they're easy to measure. Freedom is harder to measure. So are time, peace, connection, and whether you wake up and actually want to get out of bed.
You can have a brilliant career and be miserable. You can live in a tiny house and be miserable. You can live in a mansion and be happy. You can live in a caravan and be happy.
None of these things is automatically the answer. The real question is whether the life you're living has any connection to the person you actually are.
For me, eventually, the answer was no.
So I had to find out what yes looked like.
You Don't Need To Know What Happens Next
What I struggled with most was not knowing what came next. I wanted certainty. I wanted to know the money would last, the land would work, the buildings would work, I'd be okay.
You don't get that. At some point you make the best decision you can with what you know.
I've made plenty of wrong ones. Some cost money. Some cost time. Some taught me things I didn't particularly want to learn. But you can't build a different life without being prepared to get some things wrong.
You don't need your whole future mapped out.
You just need enough to take the next step.
How Wylde Roots Came From That Journey
Wylde Roots didn't begin as a business plan.
It grew out of my life. The writing came from what I was experiencing. The photography came from learning to look. The coaching and psychological work came from my interest in why people get stuck and what helps them change. The River House came from the life I'd built in Portugal.
Eventually it all came together.
If you're only starting to question things, the free Wylde Reset is somewhere to begin without buying anything or already knowing what needs to change. If you want to go deeper, The Wylde Path is a self-guided journey built around reflection, personal change and the CBT and NLP approaches I've studied.
Sometimes you don't need a course. You need to talk to someone who's done something similar. My One-to-One Consultation is for people who want to talk through a major change, a move to Portugal, rural property, leaving corporate life, business decisions, or just the feeling that something has to change and not knowing where to start.
And sometimes you don't need to think about it any more. You need to experience it. That's why I have Wylde Roots River House, my riverside Airbnb in rural Portugal. You can stay in the place I've been describing, spend time beside the river, and feel what it's like to step out of your normal surroundings.
The creative side is there too, through photography and the books, journals and workbooks I've created around reflection, creativity and personal change. And Wylde Spaces comes from the same idea: sometimes you don't need to move your whole life. Changing the space around you can be enough to change how you experience it.
I don't see these as things I'm trying to sell. They're different ways into the same conversation.
What do you actually want your life to be?
You Don't Have To Throw Everything Away
The idea of changing your life can get unnecessarily dramatic. You see people online selling the dream of quitting everything, selling the house and travelling the world.
Good for them. But you don't have to.
I wouldn't recommend big decisions just because someone else's story looks exciting.
You can experiment. Start a business while keeping your job. Spend time in Portugal before deciding to move. Spend more time in nature, cut your expenses, photograph, write, learn something you've always been curious about.
Make a small change and see what happens.
That's largely how I got here. The story sounds dramatic told backwards: corporate career, Portugal, land, ruins, river, Airbnb, photography, Wylde Roots.
At the time it didn't feel like a story. It felt like one decision after another.
The Life You Build Doesn't Have To Look Impressive
I think we've got confused about what a good life looks like. We photograph holidays but not ordinary Tuesdays. We photograph houses but not the lives inside them. We talk about careers in salaries and job titles, and rarely ask whether someone enjoys Monday morning.
But what about having time? Feeling connected to where you live? Walking outside and knowing the land around you? Having a relationship with your work that doesn't leave you counting the hours? Having enough space in your head to hear your own thoughts?
My life wouldn't have looked impressive on the spreadsheet I used to work with.
But it feels like mine.
That counts for a lot.
Maybe We Need To Rethink What A Good Life Is
Perhaps people know perfectly well how to change their lives, and we're just very good at measuring the wrong things.
We know what someone earns, what they drive, where they live, how many followers they have. We don't know whether they enjoy their mornings, have time for the people they love, feel connected to where they live, or are living by their own values rather than the path put in front of them.
Maybe a successful life isn't the one that looks most successful. Maybe it's the one that makes sense to the person living it.
That doesn't mean everyone should head for the countryside. It just means we should stop assuming there's only one definition of success.
Where My Story Ends And Yours Begins
Sometimes I look back at the person I was before I left and can hardly believe how different life is now. I thought I knew what I was supposed to be doing.
Then I stopped.
I left corporate life. I came to Portugal. I lived in tents and caravans, bought land, rebuilt ruins, learned about water and power, made mistakes, built businesses and made a home beside a river. I started taking photography seriously again. I started writing. I started helping other people who were questioning their own lives.
Eventually all of it became Wylde Roots.
Looking backwards, it can look like a plan. It wasn't. It was one decision followed by another.
And maybe that's the most useful thing I can tell anyone wondering how they'll ever change their life.
You don't have to know. I didn't.
You don't have to see the whole road. You just need to be honest about the direction you're travelling in.
Maybe There Really Is Another Way
I don't know what your different life looks like, and I'm not going to tell you.
It might be Portugal. It might be somewhere completely different. It might be staying exactly where you are and changing what you do. A new career, a business, a simpler life, more time outside, more creativity. Something neither of us has thought of yet.
The point isn't to recreate my life. I've already got mine.
The point is to give yourself enough space to work out what yours could be, and you don't have to do that on your own.
I've spent years working with hundreds of people at exactly this point. Some were frightened of the leap, some were stuck and couldn't say why, and some were carrying grief, burnout or a lifetime of "shoulds." What I've learned is that the fear rarely disappears by thinking harder. It softens when you can say it out loud, look at it properly and take one small step.
That's what I help people do. Through my One-to-One Consultation we can talk through what's holding you back and what you actually want. If you'd rather work at your own pace, The Wylde Path will guide you through it step by step, using the CBT and NLP tools I trained in.
You don't need the answer yet. You just need somewhere safe to start finding it.
I spent sixteen years building a life that looked successful from the outside.
Then I walked away.
Seven years later, I'm sitting beside a river in rural Portugal writing about it. I couldn't have planned that.
And perhaps that's the point.
Sometimes the life you end up living is hidden behind the decision you're currently too frightened to make.
You don't have to make it today. You don't have to know where it leads.
But you can start asking the question.
Is this really the life I want?
And if the answer is no, even if you have no idea what should replace it, perhaps that's where something interesting begins.
Because maybe there really is another way.
Maybe you don't need to find it all at once.
Maybe you just need to start looking.
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