Seize The Opportunity: Luccas Pessoa

Thief champions a mindset of Seize The Opportunity. We caught up with Luccas to talk about his current adventure and how he did just that when he decided to pursue a life-long dream.

Hey Luccas, tell us a little about where you are right now.

We are in Iceland 🇮🇸 at the moment! We drove all the way from Amsterdam to Denmark and then put our campervan onto a transatlantic ferry. We were 2 days at sea and arrived in +3 degrees Celsius. It has been breathtaking so far and in the meantime the weather has gotten a lot better.

We are 40 days on the road now. Next we are going south, to the Dolomites, Italy, Portugal and Morocco... or we might chance our plan entirely, who knows. :)

What does your current day-to-day look like?

Living in a van is a surprising amount of work, we definitely underestimated it. We mostly try to live off the grid, so parking somewhere in nature preferably. That also means we need to make sure we do not run out of resources: Water, electricity, diesel and gas for cooking.

It's kind of like a real life video game where you have to manage your resources, plan ahead and sometimes you have to accept that you won't have enough of something. That's life!

What inspired you to go on this adventure?

My wife and I talked many times about traveling the world but we never had the courage to actually do it.

I used to work for a big tech company, in a leadership role, with great responsibility and a career I was proud of. Then corona hit and I worked myself into a burnout.

During my recovery, I realized that I thought I was "seizing the opportunity", through my career, but I had lost the connection to my dreams and aspirations outside of my work. I was working so much but where was I going?

Thief champions a mindset of "Seize The Opportunity". How does that mantra relate to you?

My wife and I have always shared the dream to travel and explore the world, but fear and uncertainty held us back for many years. The decision to finally ‘seize the opportunity’ did therefore not come overnight. Things started changing for us when we decided that we will always be afraid, because that is a normal feeling when you are about to do something that is going to rock your world.

Skaters are afraid all the time before trying something that is more dangerous than anything they ever did before!! But if you don't do it, you can't grow and become a better skater. In much the same way we continued moving toward realising our dream and the fear helped us to be smart but this time it didn’t stop us.

I relate to "seizing the opportunity" because in March 2021, we both quit our jobs, bought a campervan and left our home in Amsterdam behind. We felt somewhat fearful, but no longer afraid.⁠ "Seizing the opportunity" means to me knowing what you want and when that thing you want comes along, you accept your fear but you grab the opportunity with both hands because that is how you grow.

So, where to next?

We always experienced bursts of growth when we abruptly changed our circumstances of life: Leaving home, a new country, - job or unexpected crisis. Leaving the familiar life or doing the unusual, like salmon swimming upstream, comes with struggle, sometimes pain and with a lot of discomfort.

Unlike salmon, who die at the end of their journey, we often felt like these abruptly changed circumstances gave us a new vantage point: One life before and one after this point. Most people ask us about which countries we will visit but the real destination is the one we have yet to grow into.

Our plan is to NOT have a plan but rather let the journey unfold.

And yes, of course we do have some long awaited bucket list destinations along our journey, like Iceland, Italy, Portugal and Morocco. :)

To see more and follow Luccas' journey, check him out on Instagram at instagram.com/van_with_us