Though at first glance my website probably looks like an ordinary travel blog, my biggest inspiration for starting this website wasn’t actually just to write about my travels. The real reason I wanted to start this blog is because I want to really inspire people who feel stuck or unhappy in their current life, like I did. I want to show others that no matter what, it is always possible to form a life that you can be proud of and truly happy living.
If you have read my about me page or know me personally, you probably already know that before I got my dream career, I was slaving my life away working two jobs with no real belief that my future would ever get any more exciting. A majority of my days were spent staring at computer screens, sifting through invoices, and rushing to my second job to wait tables in order to make enough money to pay the bills and live “comfortably”.
I had ten paid vacation days a year, but I rarely felt I could utilize them without jeopardizing my client relationships or a chance at a promotion. I was extremely stressed out and wanted desperately to find a job that I could truly love. Between working 26 days a month and trying to maintain my sanity, the prospect of sending in countless job applications and enduring awkward interviews was entirely overwhelming. Not to mention most job interviews are held during normal business hours, which made it even harder to figure out how on earth to find a new job while working my current one.
Due to financial needs, quitting or losing either of the jobs I had in order to find another one wasn’t a viable option. Just like that, I found myself where many of you have probably been at some point before or may even be in now…STUCK. I began to battle serious depression and anxiety, crippling panic attacks, and almost completely lost hope that things would ever turn around for me. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon this silly quote block at a store while running errands one day that my mentality started to change. I guess you could say I had my “aha” moment.
I usually avoid buying things I don’t need, but for some reason this quote block really hit me hard like a slap in the face. It read:
Just like that, that simple statement sent my brain on a serious mental train ride and crashed it right into a reality check. I realized right then and there that if I kept telling myself things like, “I’ll get out of this office job that I hate “someday”, “I’ll travel the world someday”, “I’ll be happy someday”, that ‘someday’ would never actually really happen.
Things were not just going to fall into my lap no matter how hard I wished for them to. I could daydream all day but in reality, someone wasn’t going to just walk in and suddenly hand me my dream life. I realized that by continually telling myself I would get there someday, I was just simply allowing myself to procrastinate and avoiding taking any responsibility for my own trajectory in life.
That day I went home and decided it was time for a serious change. I vowed that no matter what, I wouldn’t let another day go by without exerting every effort possible to achieve my dreams no matter how many resumes or awkward interviews I had to endure. To make a long story short, after a little bit of hard work, some soul-searching, and a serious effort to build up my self-confidence, I landed my dream job.
I finally quit a life I wasn’t passionate about and moved on without ever looking back.
It wasn’t easy dropping my entire life to go live in another city for unpaid training with no idea where I would end up, but I knew that if I didn’t take the chance then, I would never take it. Now I can proudly say that through these last two years in my new career, I’ve completely fallen in love with my life. I’ve been able to visit 16 new countries and done more than I ever thought I would get to do in my entire lifetime.
My hopes in sharing my experiences with you are not for you to walk away saying, “MAN, I wish I could do that”. I don’t want anyone to look at my life and say the words “I can’t”. My hopes are to show you that you CAN do that. Anything is obtainable with the right amount of passion, desire, and most importantly, hard work.
Once you let go of your fears and self doubts and learn to embrace uncertainty, your mindset slowly starts to change. You stop doubting yourself and you start thinking, “well if I could do that, maybe I can do this.” Each experience, whether uncomfortable or relatively easy, is a lesson. It’s a strengthening piece we can play off of to make our next big move.
The hardest part is starting out. That first interview, that first flight across the ocean, that first step up that great big mountain. But once you start, the possibilities truly become endless.
IF IT SCARES YOU, DO IT!
Throw yourself into your fears head-first. Open your life to new opportunities and let the future surprise you. The more you put yourself through “undesirable” situations, the stronger and even happier you will eventually feel. And just when you feel like giving up, push yourself harder. Stop asking yourself “what if I fail” and start telling yourself “SO what if I fail”! You can always fix it, improve it, or try it again – but you can’t do any of those things if you never try in the first place.
I absolutely love being able to look back now and say, “WOW, I can’t believe I did that,” and let me tell you, I regret ZERO of my life experiences – even the scariest and worst. I’ve run through foreign airports crying like a maniac trying to make my connecting flights. I’ve spent two weeks in China completely alone and thought I would never make it back to tell the tale. I’ve panicked 35 feet under water and surfaced without making a safety stop. I’ve had to endure a lot of turbulence (literally and figuratively) and I know that in the future, I will have to deal with a lot more.
As scary and stressful as these experiences are, they all have one thing in common. They have given me the strength and opportunity to trust and believe in myself, to do things better the next time, and to share my what-not-to-do’s so you don’t have to go through them yourself.
In the end though, you have two options. You can simply maintain where you are now and live within the confines of your comfort zone, or you can choose to hop on the roller coaster headed towards your dreams, and let life take you on a wild ride. I opted for the second option because life is too short not to live in happiness. I strongly encourage you to find the strength within yourself to do the same. Trust me when I say,
YOU are in control of your story…how will you write it?
Everything about this i ❤️