Thailand was wonderful, but I had to leave. The reasons I left a near-ideal country for the laptop lifestyle might land close to where you are right now. Look at your own energy landscape for a moment. We’re in the middle of a significant reality shift, and there may be a better place for you to be than the one you’re in — so you can manifest and change your reality rather than wait for it.
I had a good life in Thailand. I stayed five years. I built most of my online business there while living well — a nice condo, weekly massages, good food. Then something changed last autumn. In my YouTube video I go into more detail about why it became necessary to pack up and end the lease.
I even mummified the original Apple Studio Display box and dragged it back to Norway. My precious.
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Something changed — and something is changing
Last autumn the vibe changed, and Thailand was no longer the right place to be. I don’t think it was only Chiang Mai. It was a general sense of needing to move.
My girlfriend and I felt the pressure of leaving around October. It was clearly time. After some browsing and research it became obvious what we were missing: Nordic nature, cool air, a proper winter. Keep in mind, this is what happens when you deliberately focus on what you want and let your energy match it.
So — winter. We definitely got winter.
In December 2023 we left Thailand at +32 degrees and landed in Oslo at −13 on a chilly evening. I loved it. What I can say for certain is that the energetic landscape of our reality is changing significantly right now.
Whether or not you’re deliberately working on spiritual awareness and a wider consciousness, things are shifting. And depending on your awareness and what you want from your life, you may be standing in a place — literally, a location — that isn’t doing you any good. This is a moment to be clear about a few things, so you can manifest and change reality toward what you actually prefer:
- What you accept as truth, and what you choose to believe
- Which side of that truth you’re standing on
- Whether you follow and obey, or captain your own ship
- Whether you value and honour your own uniqueness, path and dreams
Are you a follower keeping pace with the flock, or are you thinking for yourself and going your own way? The first option — what most people do — will cost you in the long run. The second takes some courage, and it pays in self-respect, freedom and a life that’s actually yours.
Following the norms is riskier than it looks. It leads you into places you don’t belong. You have your own energy signature, different from everybody else’s, and if you spend your life acting — dancing to whatever’s playing on the radio — you’re not being yourself. You fake it because you’ve been told you’ll make it.
An online business makes the move easy
I’m glad I ignored other people’s expectations years ago and kept building my online business as planned. That’s what gave me the freedom to move whenever it felt right. Thailand was an important step and it was good to me — it’s also a great place to build something online, with plenty of like-minded people around.
Though I don’t much care for mingling. It was nice to observe.
So leaving was a smooth transition — the coaching work travels, and so does the web design side of what I do. If that’s the part you’re stuck on, I wrote a beginner’s book on building websites for a living. It’s the most straightforward way I know to earn from anywhere, and most people have more of the raw material for it than they think.
It’s time to choose and manifest your reality
You can’t fake it any more. Don’t fuck around with reality. Spend some real time alone with your own mind, work out who you actually are, and decide which direction is genuinely right for you.
This is a moment where a few decisions matter more than usual:
- Decide who gets to influence your life — friends, family, institutions
- Look at where you live and work, and whether it matches your energy
- Look at what you feed your mind and your body
For my part, I’ve never been much good at being a sheep. I barely made it through school. I left employment a long time ago so I could choose my own crowd, income and lifestyle.
What we started feeling in Thailand was simply that this was no longer the right vibe for us. There was a heaviness in Chiang Mai. So when I tell you to use your inner guidance system — those built-in intuitive feelings — here’s what that actually looks like in practice:
- We felt excited, relieved and genuinely motivated at the thought of being in the Norwegian forest, far from people. The smell of pine, firewood and clean mountain air gave us goosebumps.
Exactly like this. (iPhone 15 Pro Max, one winter evening.)
That’s the sign. That reaction is what you’re looking for in your own body-mind system. Notice how a possible change — or a possible location — actually feels before you reason your way out of it.
Your reality is shifting on this planet
If you’re at all into spiritual awakening and metaphysical topics, you’ll know we’re going through a significant energetic upgrade on this planet and in the cosmos around it. If it’s new to you, it isn’t hard to find.
And I’m not talking about anything coming out of the church system. Those institutions have spiritually abused humanity for a very long time and are finally coming apart. That control system doesn’t work any more, because people are starting to think for themselves and have worked out that God doesn’t need to be pleased, paid or obeyed. It just is. And it’s all fine.
The challenge now is that most people aren’t used to the idea that they’re in charge of their own reality — which means they have to start making choices. No priest is going to tell them where to go. Or how to confess their “sins”.
The truth about this awakening is that not everyone will understand it, agree with it, or want it. Plenty will stick with the old thing, follow the system, obey the norms and stay in the fog, sleepwalking under old beliefs until they die. And that’s fine.
It’s completely okay to be unaware. Just don’t drag the people who are starting to see clearly back down with you.
Your reality is shifting either way, whichever side you pick. Blue pill or red, you’ll experience a transition. And the way you’ll see it is in how things unfold around you. What events keep showing up? Who’s leaving your life, and who’s arriving? Is there more friction in your days, or less? What are you actually thinking about — is it uplifting, useful, good for you and for the people around you?
Or is it the opposite? Either way, the choosing is yours now. What, where, and how.
Seeking solitude and filtering your reality
It may well be time to put more focus on yourself, seek some solitude, and start filtering your reality. Switching on a reality filter means consciously deciding where you feel good about living, who you let in, and what mind-and-body input you allow to shape you.
For some people, spending more time alone sounds frightening and lonely. It can be, at first. I’ve tried it, and I cried. But once I went back to thinking about myself and what actually mattered to me, it settled, and I found some peace. New people arrived too, because what I was putting out had changed.
And think about this: if you’re making these decisions at all, you’ve already changed.
An earlier version of you wouldn’t have thought this way, and wouldn’t have made a choice like that on your own behalf.
That’s a personal reality shift, and you should be pleased with it. You’re looking after yourself, and setting the stage for what comes next.
For us it felt superb to move away from crowds, traffic noise, overlapping wifi and mobile signals, and the general busyness. Take a look at what we walked into when we arrived in the Norwegian countryside in winter.
This is why I left Thailand
Why leave the fuzzy warmth and the cheap food? Because what I was aware of and what I was feeling pointed the same direction, and I made the call.
It felt superb to trade constant sweat, stickiness and air-conditioned rooms for cold air and serious quiet.
If you’ve been asking yourself how to change your reality and move onto a different timeline, the fastest way I know to start is The Reality Shift Template — the free framework I wrote a few years ago. The feedback on it has been good, and there’s a decent chance it does something for you too. What matters is that you make deliberate choices now about what your life is supposed to look like.
If you want the behind-the-scenes version of how I travel and work, I edit the YouTube films in hotel rooms and Airbnbs. The channel is there if you want it.
Thanks for reading to the end. I think words like these do their own quiet work on the direction you’re heading. Hold the picture, and move toward it without forcing it.
Send this to someone you think needs it.
Ready to stop drifting and start creating on purpose?
The Reality Shift Template is my free 3-step framework — filter the noise, get clear on who you actually are, and consciously create what comes next. Drop your email and I’ll send it over.