A year that made the difference of a lifetime

You Chang, 28, shares her experience of setting off on a year's break and returning a better person.

I quit my job and started my yearlong independent traveling experience in July 2014. Before that, I had been close to burning out after having worked for a year at a website in Beijing, where I was an event planning specialist.

I was the kind of person who could not say no in the office and, for that reason, I had taken on way too much work. It got so that the workload was driving me crazy and I decided I needed to put everything on hold.