How Environment Shapes Purpose: Why I Left South Africa in My 20s

Leaving your home town, yet alone your home country is never easy. I didn’t leave South Africa because I'm running from something. I left because I'm growing into something. Most people don’t struggle because they lack talent or ambition, they struggle because their environment has already pre-determined their ceiling.

It was this feeling that there had to be more than the routine life happening around me. More than the same conversations. More than the same fears. More than the same expectations that slowly shape you into a version of yourself you never consciously chose.

I dont know exactly what I'm looking for, all I knew is that its was not where I was.

Your environment has a strange way of convincing you that its version of life is the only one that exists. When you’re surrounded by people who think small, avoid risk and fear change, it becomes normal to shrink yourself. You don’t even realize it’s happening.

For years, something inside me whispered that my surroundings were shaping me more than my intentions were. I was becoming a product of comfort, expectation and routine... not purpose. Purpose is what I am in search for. Not money, not status, not the illusion of success. I'm in search for clarity - for who I was supposed to become.

The breaking point wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t a major meltdown, or an emotional moment. It was quiet. It was a simple realization that If I stay here, I already know exactly who I’ll become - and it’s not enough.

I wasn’t running from South Africa. I was running towards the person I knew I was capable of being. A person who needed a different environment to emerge.

So I left.

Moving to Asia wasn’t some glamorous Instagram moment. It was a lonely, disorienting reset - the kind that forces growth. As an only child, Ive always carried a certain independence, a tendency to navigate life alone, to rely on myself, to internalize everything instead of leaning on others. Those characteristics can feel like both a strength and a weight. Maybe that’s why I felt such a strong pull to break away, to step into a place where I could rebuild without the influence of anyone’s expectations.

Upon arrival I didn’t know a single person except my girlfriend, the person I had travelled to the other side of the world to be with. Together, we are building everything from scratch. Somehow, in the middle of that uncertainty, the unfamiliar streets, the silence and the pressure to start over… I finally found what I had been searching for... space

Space to think deeper. Space to question the beliefs I inherited. Space to explore who I was without the noise of familiarity. Space to rebuild my identity without judgment or expectation.

And in this space, meaning finally has room to grow.

For the first time, I don’t feel out of place. Back home, I could be surrounded by people I’d known my whole life and still feel strangely alone. It wasn’t that anyone made me feel unwelcome, it was that I struggled to find my identity within an environment that felt familiar but not aligned. That quiet loneliness, the kind you feel even when you’re not physically alone, had followed me for years. But here, in a new country where no one knew my past or my patterns, I finally feel free to figure out who I actually am.

I feel aligned.

That alignment that's becoming the foundation for everything I'm building. Legacy, TradeNexus and the entire vision that now drives my work. But none of it would have happened if I hadn’t listened to that inner pull telling me there was something more out there for me.

Leaving South Africa hasn't magically transformed my life...yet. But its transforming the conditions under which my life is being built. It pushing me into growth, discipline, introspection and the kind of personal evolution that only happens when you remove yourself from the environment that shaped your old identity.

Not everyone needs to leave their country, but everyone needs to leave the version of themselves that their environment trapped them in. You can change your city, your people, your influences, your inputs - anything that breaks the internal program built by your surroundings.

Because the truth is simple:

When your environment changes, your identity changes.
When your identity changes, your future changes.

I left home because I was searching for something meaningful... and so far, what I have found, is myself.

— Zack Rens
The Young Founders Report