Educator and jewelry designer Kamara Coaxum felt like she was dying. After toiling away for years as a teacher in Tampa, Fla., she needed a way to break away from a life that was pretty uneventful.

I still have flashbacks of water not coming out of the faucet, constantly needing to clean to stop ants or other things that became habit. Most of my sentences start with, "In Botswana..." The change is hard.

I was blown away by how sometimes I am so absorbed in getting frustrated at my outlook being too slow, or my BlackBerry freezing, and how there is a total opposite way to live full of appreciating the little things in life and being happier than ever doing so.