I am on the longest journey of my life right now.
This particular trip is not about crossing cities off a bucket list or hiking across a continent. Instead, the trip itself extends beyond the bounds of location. It is a journey within myself. It is a journey to better understand who I am and the essence of my personal happiness. If I had to estimate, I think I’ve already been on this journey since 2013, and this year I’m simply starting a new leg.
Many career events that have occurred over the past couple years have led me down a figurative windy, rocky, muddy path. I think there may have even been some quicksand patches that I narrowly missed!
I found myself in cycles of discontent within my former career. I observed that as soon as I felt that I was happy and enjoying my work, something catastrophic would happen that quickly changed the dynamic. To me, these changes always felt surprising and destructive. They were almost always out of my control and dictated by people with far greater power than myself. I started to feel that if I felt content and appropriately challenged at work, I had to watch my back because I knew that it wouldn’t last.
Needless to say, this constant feeling of instability led to dealing with low-level anxiety issues for the first time in my life. On a daily basis I found myself suffering from symptomatic stress, and also noticed a slow deterioration in my typically strong self-confidence.
I tried so many treatments. I started writing poetry. I started talk therapy. I started yoga. I started Pilates. I started personal training. I did a 21-day cleanse diet (twice). I started consuming psychology texts. I tried going off the pill. I started journaling. While all of these can be healthy choices for leading a balanced life, I found my issues were not caused by something missing. All of those activities were not cures for simply being on the wrong path for me.
During that series of therapies, I also started this travel blog. I found myself LOVING this blog, because it allowed me to write and share about my passion. However, when I started at a new company in 2015, their employee handbook specifically said that I could not write a blog without the company’s consent. Consequently, my desire to impress the new agency overrode my commitment to this creative outlet. So, I let the blog go. In hindsight, it was likely one of the worst decisions I’ve made as an adult.
Now that I have had the opportunity to reflect, I feel this blog is one of the few elements in my life where I am in complete control. And that in itself is confidence-building.
This blog is owned by me, and it also serves as a way for me to provide the value I want to add to the world. I am incredibly passionate about travel, but most importantly, I am passionate about helping other people be happy. I want to be the person people thank for having an amazing, rewarding, life-changing, MEANINGFUL experience.
So that brings me to where I am at in my journey right now. A couple months ago I read the below literary quote that has stuck with me repeatedly as I’ve worked to figure out what’s next.
In life, “there are years that ask questions, and years that answer.” -Zora Neale Hurston
While I’m currently on a path to find an answer to my question of “what exactly is next?,” I am also on a longer journey towards finding my overall purpose.
Thus, the important thing is that I’m finally taking some bigger steps.
This spring I made the decision to leave the advertising industry that I had loved working in for many years because I felt that we both had changed, and we had grown apart. Despite my feelings that leaving was the right choice, it has still felt like a rocky divorce. We had loads of great memories together! It has taken me a longer time than I expected to adjust to not having my fancy title. Now my title is Entrepreneur, and I am in complete control of defining what that means – but I have found that control to be just as freighting as it is exciting.
After years of feeling like nothing was in my control and I was constantly in a reactionary mode at work, the shift to complete control has been a bit overwhelming. Now it’s all on me. Instantly I became the one with all of the power. I get to make EVERY decision. Unfortunately, I am extremely out of practice.
As the old saying goes, the first step in finding a solution is recognizing that there is a problem.
My inner voice recognized that I was out of practice right away – and instead of trying to lift me up, it started chastising me. As soon as I left my job, my inner voice started telling me things like “what makes you think you’re going to be any good at being your own boss?” and “you’ll never be as good as your role models.”
If I no longer had a boss who could critique me, why was my inner voice immediately filling that gap? Why was my subconscious giving me a bad review before I had even done anything? Why did it feel like some people have inner cheerleaders, but I had an inner bully? When did my cheerleader – who had been so great earlier in my life – go to the dark side? Was I going to fail because my inner cheerleader wasn’t being as loud as other people’s?
Geez, those thoughts were incredibly counterproductive!
I’ve decided that I don’t want to listen to thoughts like that anymore. They’re getting me absolutely nowhere, and keeping me from my dream!
So, I’ve decided that my next step in entrepreneur life is to re-teach myself how to think.
For the past couple months, I have been focusing on the wrong thoughts. I cannot get that time back – but I can move forward. I am taking this post to acknowledge and recognize the negative pattern, and to create a plan to initiate very positive momentum.
By leaving my old industry, I already took a step to remove myself from certain negativities. Now, I have to do the same with the negativity within. There will be new vulnerabilities and challenges that arise as I build my digital business, so I must commit to not letting personal insecurities be my biggest roadblock to pursuing my dream.
So, it’s time to begin. It’s time to start turning dreams into reality, and end my negative thinking.
Refocused: It’s time to start helping my amazing readers travel meaningfully, and within their means!
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Laozi, Chinese philosopher
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