At the age of 60, when I was at a crossroads in my life, I attended a remarkable summit in Tallinn, Estonia. It was there that global storytellers forever changed the trajectory of my life.

My husband and I were there as entrepreneurs from South Africa. We had never had a global perspective on our achievements. We had started a company against all odds. Everyone laughed at us when we co-founded our company 27 years ago, because neither of us had a formal business background. By the time I was 60, we had built a successful brand through sheer determination and a passion to serve and grow people.

We built up the company from a shed in a field with two employees to 150 employees, and we were featured on television, radio, and in entrepreneur magazines. But I always dismissed our journey as insignificant, because I always compared our humble path to much bigger companies. I don’t think I realised at the time how many life lessons we had learned, or how this journey had shaped us, or how many lives we had shaped and nurtured over decades. We never had time for reflection. We were so ‘in it’ and so immersed in the challenges. This was a moment to pause, to reflect, to step into a new era.

The summit that changed my life and perspective

I remember posing next to a poster outside the entrance of the summit. It was a picture of an astronaut, and it said, ‘Be Extraordinary’. Those words were lost on me. I just quite liked the way my blue outfit matched the tones of the poster.

I had always been passionate about self-development, but now I was at a crossroads, a fork in the road. At the time, I had been the public face of our manufacturing and design company, The Creative Stone Company, for 20 years. Something told me it was time to let go of the reins. I knew it was time for our emerging leadership to step into the power of who they were meant to be. It was time for me to stand aside, time to take stock of my life, time to look in the mirror. Time to step onto a different bus. I posed next to that poster, never realising that it would be another turning point in my life.

After a two-week immersion featuring speakers from around the world on a variety of topics, including entrepreneurship, mental health, yoga, parenting, and sensuality, it became a deep reflection of my life’s journey thus far. It was not just another conference or summit. It was a shape-shifting whisper in my soul. It was not the ‘how-to’ speakers that changed the course of my life. It was the profound storytellers. It was the storytellers who helped me understand the power of words to change people’s lives from the stage and from the page.

How storytelling inspired me to reinvent myself

I sat in an auditorium of 1,000 people from 52 different countries when a young Australian woman named Nicole Gibson strode onto the stage. She was the most extraordinary storyteller I have ever encountered. She did not act like a speaker at all. She sat on the edge of the stage in her ripped white jeans, crisp white shirt, and sneakers, her legs dangling over the edge. Her blue eyes were piercing. She peered into the audience and asked, “Who here feels lonely?” Hands raised silently, solemnly, a symbol of our modern isolation, despite the internet’s global connection.

Nicole proceeded to tell us the riveting story of how she had overcome severe anorexia and how the kindness of her headmaster changed her understanding of the power of love. After overcoming anorexia, Nicole traveled across the breadth of the Australian outback for two long years, speaking to the dismissed, the broken, the lonely, the abandoned. It gave her a deep understanding of the human condition and the voices many in the world had left behind.

At age 21, Nicole became the youngest commissioner to the Australian Government for mental health. Today, Nicole is a global visionary who is changing the world of Emotional Intelligence through the power of technology. Now in her early thirties, a documentary is being created about the company she founded, In Truth, and its remarkable contribution to the science of emotion and how we can harness that wisdom for greater healing and understanding in a complex world where so many are battling mental health challenges. That day, at that global summit, it was as if Nicole Gibson’s words pierced my soul and whispered, “Maybe you, too, have a story to tell”.

Healing emotional wounds through travel and reflection

What most people did not know about me back then was that I had battled with emotional eating, anxiety, depression, bulimia, and extreme yo-yo dieting for decades. Emotional eating had become a pattern of coping, a way of being. When I was younger, my father battled severe bipolar disorder. He would drive off, tires squealing into the night, saying “I am going to kill myself”, threatening to drive off a nearby mountain pass. This would happen again and again. I grew numb. While my siblings buried themselves in sport, I buried myself in food. I ate my pain and stuffed the anguish down my throat.

I battled with emotional eating for most of my life until I found a different way. I had been on a health journey for some time when I attended that summit. But now the journey deepened into a spiritual journey, a journey of the soul. Beyond the body. It became a journey of changing my frequency.

Letting go and travelling lighter in my 60s

At 60 years old, following that summit, I stopped weighing myself. For years, I had battled with constant diets. Twice I got extremely thin, flirting on the fringes of anorexia, willing that needle to drop, taking laxatives to move the needle on the dial. Maybe then I would be more at peace. Perhaps then I would be more lovable. Maybe then I would feel like I belonged.

At the age of 60, I threw away every scale at home, and we started to travel more lightly, both physically and metaphorically. Now, the only scale we have is a small hook to weigh our luggage because we love travelling. Last year we traveled to ten countries and to four continents.

How travelling after 60 gave me a new sense of freedom

Travel has shaped and shifted our lives in ways we could never have imagined. One of the greatest joys of entrepreneurship is the gift of travelling, sometimes for work and sometimes for adventure, but both for life.

At age 60, I turned my life around and entered a new era within the coaching, speaking, and writing space. I transitioned from my leadership role in our manufacturing company, to allow our emerging leadership to step into their own visionary leadership. It has been a remarkable journey seeing them grow and develop. I watch in awe as they take our manufacturing and design company forward in a new and dynamic direction.

In my sixties, I turned my hobby of personal development into my calling. Writing my book, Belonging: Finding Tribes of Meaning, made sense of my whole life – from political activist to entrepreneur, to speaking and writing. In joining the dots backward, it all finally made sense. Becoming a vulnerable storyteller, I finally felt whole. Aligned.

Now I inspire others to have the courage to tell their stories. To find the deeper purpose in their life. To take the road less travelled. To live my message that it is never too late to change your perspective on who you can become.

Finding belonging and meaning through travel in my 60s

Travelling continues to fuel my perspective. Having travelled to almost forty countries throughout the world, travel has shaped my calling. It has given me a greater perspective on the challenges South Africa faces. In our country, we have a staggering unemployment rate of 33 percent, whereas Australia, where our daughter lives, has an unemployment rate of 4 percent. The more we travel, the more we seek perspective in tackling the massive differential of poverty and wealth in the country we call ‘home’.

But travel has also highlighted for me some of the joys of living in South Africa. It is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and diverse countries in the world. Cape Town, where I grew up, has been voted the most beautiful city in the world several times. Despite all its challenges, it is a country where entrepreneurship can flourish. It is a country where one can truly make a difference due to the enormous infrastructural challenges we face as a society and the endemic corruption that has derailed our development. It is a country where living as a change-maker and being a voice of unification allows my team to live a message of contribution and legacy.

How travel in your 60s can change your life forever

Travel continues to shape my life in so many ways. It makes me feel young and alive, more than ever before. In the last few years, I have got stronger and leaner, more resilient, more courageous. I have changed not just the shape of my body, but the shape of my soul.

When travelling, we walk kilometres every day. We swim, we hike, we explore unusual destinations. We are living the road less travelled. It’s unpredictable. It’s sometimes messy. And it’s sometimes jaw-droppingly beautiful. It’s a metaphor for life.

My husband and I are travel soulmates. We often stay in unusual areas where we get a slice of life in the local community. We were recently at a meditation retreat on a remote island in rustic Sumatra. It gave us a renewed perspective on the challenges of many third-world countries. It gave us a renewed passion for this life we are living in our sixties, a life of adventure, a life of perspective, and a life of giving back to the country that shaped us and to the entrepreneurial journey that allowed us to make this possible.

Travel can change your life. I never thought I would be living this life in my 60s, a life of such rich adventure and fulfilment. I started my own personal development company last year, called Soul Voice Journeys. We are currently creating a documentary about the story of belonging and the voice of powerful change-makers in South Africa. I never thought I would be living this life in my sixties. It is indeed extraordinary. It started with an immersion in a shape-shifting global summit. Now it has become the scale of my life.