Archive

Life Imitates Yoga Class

posted 7th February 2012    Written by: Kat    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kat, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 5, Travel, Travel/Adventure, What I've Learned

I remember the day my hamstrings loosened. I have kind of a terrible memory, so naturally I don’t recall the exact date. But oh, the feeling. I was in a yoga class last summer, about five or six months after my teacher training began. As I moved into parsvottanasana – a forward bend that makes me want to punch things challenges me – I noticed that something felt different. That day, my hamstrings didn’t scream quite so much as they had been for months prior. That day, there was space to go a little deeper. I inhaled, straightening and lengthening my spine. I exhaled, folding forward just a little more than I ever had before. It might only have been one-quarter or one-half of an inch, but there it was. Something had shifted, and I was present, breathing, noticing.

Now I have a confession: I didn’t accomplish any of the goals I set for myself way back when in my third post.

In my first few drafts of this post, I wrote an explanation here about why I didn’t complete them. But you know what?

It doesn’t matter.

I wasn’t ready.

Am I now? I think so.

Five months after the beginning of my Stratejoy journey, I’m getting that same feeling in my life as I did with my hamstrings last summer. There’s space now. Things are shifting.

* * * * *

Five months. 15 countries (including the United States and Canada). 37 beds, couches, futons, armchairs, air mattresses, and uncomfortable, questionably clean train seats. Thousands of photographs.

Have I changed? Good lord, yes.

How have I changed? That’s…more involved.

There are the obvious things, of course. I’m no longer working a 9-5 job. I no longer live in Brooklyn; my residence is still transient. I’ve put on weight. I drink coffee now, and I don’t spend as much time on the internet. I no longer hit snooze ten times when Joan Jett yells, “I don’t give a damn ’bout my bad reputation!” in my ear.

The more subtle stuff is harder to nail. Some days, I still feel stuck in the same patterns in which I’ve found myself for years. Other days, I feel like a new person. I frequently find myself feeling so fucking grateful for people, places, and moments that I want to explode with joy. I’m more at peace; I’ve shaken that stressed-out-hurry-hurry-frequently-annoyed attitude that I picked up during my six years in NYC. And overall, I’m feeling truly empowered and happy. I’m sure that there are other things, but those are the ones that I’ve figured out how to verbalize so far.

It seems that the nomadic lifestyle mostly works for me.

* * * * *

While preparing to write this, I took a look at my values from The Joy Equation, which I mentioned in my second post.

Connection. Bliss. Abundance. Trust. Adventure. Courage. Magic. Strength. Without even planning it, I’ve ended up posting about each of those over the past five months. I love when it’s suddenly clear that I’m on the right track, even when I hadn’t been planning every detail.

Seeing in concrete terms that I’m now living my core values feels really fucking amazing.

* * * * *

Though my time writing in this space ends with this post, my journey will continue. Today I’m on a flight back to New York. That was definitely not part of the original plan – but then again, neither was staying in Europe until February. I wanted time for yoga, tattoos, my favorite foods, and friends and family.

And then: Australia. I’m sad to leave Europe, and at the same time, I’m ready to develop a routine again. I’m excited to meet Kate and other new friends, and pumped to start teaching yoga again. I’m gearing up for summer, kickboxing classes, and maybe learning how to surf!

I hope you’ll continue following my adventure:

twitter: shinyredtype
facebook: pierced hearts and true love
blog: piercedheartsandtruelove.com
yoga teaching schedule: katselvocki.com

Thank you all for being a part of my QLC! And as Edward Abbey wrote, “May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.”

[photo credit: my friend and travel buddy, Jenni]

divider

Adventures in Iceland, or How Living My Values Led to Magic

posted 6th November 2011    Written by: Kat    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kat, Life Lesson, Season 5, Travel, Travel/Adventure, What I've Learned

Over the course of my life, I’ve made some pretty poor choices about friends. At a very young age, I had a friend stab me in the back of the head with a pencil. (Okay, that was an accident that happened while she was hugging me to thank me for the pencil, but still. It should have been a sign. Years later, she ended a coffee date early to go do her ironing.) In high school, two separate groups of friends stopped speaking to me for no apparent reason. (Fortunately, only one of those groups decided to compose mean songs and poems about me.) In college, one of the first close friends that I made decided that we got too close too soon, and then I never heard from her again. (It was probably all for the best, as she lived in one of the dorms all the way on the other side of campus. Still, it was strange. I mean, don’t all early college friendships begin with fast bonding over something random?) These days, it usually works that a close friend starts dating someone, and then suddenly, I’m no longer needed as the partner-in-crime/adventure buddy/confidante. (Admittedly, I’m pretty sure I’ve done that to people, too – and yet, it still stings when it happens.)

Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that the friends I’ve got are the most amazing people in my life. They’ve stuck with me through: cross-country and cross-city moves; poor dating/relationship choices; job transitions; joining and subsequently retiring from roller derby; starting a business (and then determining that it wasn’t the right time); and obviously, my current travel adventure. My friends have had many a long discussion with me about all of those decisions, and I’m a lucky lady in that regard. And of course, there have been all of the fun times, too!

I always expect that those two scenarios will balance out over time, and yet, in the end, it’s often easier to get stuck in the mode of remembering the bad things that have happened. Enter: trust issues. The type where I feel like if I obsess about one more decision out loud to my friends, they’re going to tell me to get over it and stop being so self-absorbed. The sort that lead to difficulties opening up to people. The kind that make it hard to ask for help, even from those who know me best.

My time in Iceland challenged all of that.

I expected to be spending my two weeks there alone, save for a few interactions with my CouchSurfing host and the farmers. I figured I would learn about sheep and producing jam for sale, struggle with Icelandic words, and spend my evenings reading and knitting. I suspected I would excitedly await my time in England, when I’d finally get to be with friends who were fluent in English and wanted to hang out with me.

Things didn’t exactly work out that way.

When I arrived at the farm, there were already two other volunteers there. This turned out to be a very good thing, as I soon discovered that the farmer was a teacher and thus not home all day. I wouldn’t have known where to find anything or what to do if not for them – and I also wouldn’t have learned as quickly how little work there was to do. And I most definitely wouldn’t have decided to hitchhike to another farm further east that needed extra hands harvesting before the first snow.

Before this year, I probably would have stuck it out on the farm alone, even though my compatriots were leaving for likely greener pastures. I would have assumed that hitchhiking wouldn’t be safe enough to try, and that I might get stuck in the middle of nowhere – or worse. (Americans don’t really hitchhike much, at least not in my experience.) If I decided that the farm really would be too sad and lonely, I would have paid for an earlier flight to England and high-tailed it out of Iceland to a safe space with people who know me well.

I chose to try something different.

In one of my first posts, I talked about realigning my life to reflect my values, and one of those is trust. After spending two days hitchhiking about halfway around Iceland, I think I can safely say that I’m learning to live that one. For two days, I traveled with two people I’d met less than a week earlier, trusting that they wouldn’t abandon me somewhere along the way. I relied on the kindness of strangers driving past, who were giving us rides in exchange for nothing other than conversation with an American, a Belgian, and a German (and sometimes cookies, which I’d baked without a recipe before leaving the first farm – and I must say, they were a big hit). I needed to trust that our lifts would be safe drivers on winding Icelandic roads; it’s a small enough country that I didn’t need to worry that they knew where we were going. I hoped that once we got to the junction nearest the farm, that the directions we’d received from the farmer would be clear enough that we’d easily find it as we walked at dusk with all of our bags.

Two days, 600 kilometers, six lifts (including a member of an Icelandic punk band and a former Icelandic Olympian), two dozen cookies, an unexpected stay in a village called Kirkjubæjarklaustur (seen in the above photo), three kilometers walking from the main road to the farm, and countless hours waiting by the side of the road and at petrol stations, we made it. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

I haven’t even touched on the people that I met on the other farm or my two CouchSurfing hosts, both of whom turned out to be really rad. I haven’t talked about the connection I formed with the two other volunteers with whom I was traveling, the silly inside jokes we developed, and the ease of our time together. I haven’t shared any of the farming experiences I had and what I learned about herding sheep and harvesting turnips. All of those things were a bit part of my two weeks in Iceland, too.

What I’ll remember the most, though, is how letting other people in and trusting strangers can lead to adventure and magic, and that I’m ready to do that a little bit more than I was before.

[photo credit:  me!]

divider

Conquering the Mission Holding Me Back

posted 29th September 2011    Written by: Dusti    CATEGORY: All Posts, Creativity, Dusti, Quarterlife Crisis

I’ve been grappling with writing this stupid manifesto for months now. I’ve known it’s needed written since May. I’m really excited to write it and share it with the world! But somehow, it keeps getting pushed to the backburner. Why?

Well, honestly, a couple of reasons.

I don’t have a solid grasp on what it needs to say. I want this short piece to form the foundation of everything else I do from this point on. The holy grail of my blog. The big idea – the mission – that inspires everyone else to get onboard and go with me wherever this crazy train goes.

That’s pressure. Self-applied pressure, granted, but still. What if I decide to change course midstream? Will my people still be behind me? Will they still be interested in sharing a mission and taking it to new heights on different levels? Will they even like the idea I start with?

For any of you familiar with the StrengthsFinder test, my chief strength is input. That means I absorb information like a sponge. I’m great at synthesizing ideas, but I have issues standing behind an idea or way of thinking for long because I’m constantly analyzing and adding new information.

Okay, confession time.

I’m afraid of commitment. Not like I can’t hold down a relationship type of commitment. It’s more like I’m terrified of committing to an idea or belief system. And it’s starting to hold me back.

That’s why I’ve been holding off on writing this thing. It’s a statement of what I believe and what I’m looking for. And being in the midst of a QLC, these are the major things I’ve been struggling with. Most of August, I felt like I was stuck and had no idea which direction to go next.

That’s when I started the Joy Equation. Now, being a writer in the lifestyle design niche, I’ve seen a LOT of personal development guides like it. I’ve even started a few of them.

But, as I started to go through the exercises, I found that I wasn’t just engaged – I was smiling the entire time I was going through the guide. Even with the tough topics, I was so happy just to have it written and out of my system! What a relief. I did think something – something I could stand behind without any doubt.

Like my values! I thought I had them pretty well refined, but it turned out I had been operating under limiting beliefs of sorts. I’d never given myself room to explore what my values looked like in a larger context. The definitions helped, too. Defining something makes it easier to understand and implement.

Here’s what I came up with:

This was such a massive discovery for me. I knew freedom, adventure, and community were important to me, but romance was like finding a missing link.

It was everything I could never find the words to describe before. I knew I was passionate, but finding such a perfect word was empowering and revitalizing. It was like, “Holy crap! I can finally explain to my partner why little things are so important to me!” It was a revolution for my heart.

So here I am now. This is me presenting what I believe without question. The first words in my manifesto are…

“I believe you are beautiful, brilliant, and unique beyond any doubt. There is nothing you can’t do, and there is no situation you can’t overcome.”

Because it’s my truth. And I can commit to truth.

divider

Vulnerability As My Tipping Point

posted 16th February 2011    Written by: Laura    CATEGORY: Laura, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 4

Vulnerability. One word that summarizes my tipping point. One word that describes the difference between pre-QLC me and current me.

Dictionary.com tells me that vulnerable means:
1. capable of being physically or emotionally wounded or hurt
2. open to temptation, persuasion, censure, etc.
3. liable or exposed to disease, disaster, etc.

Those definitions leave out a lot, don’t they? They make it seem like being vulnerable is a bad thing. Which, I suppose, if you’re in a war zone or a red-light district, it is.

But to me, being vulnerable means allowing yourself to be whole. It means accepting the bad with the good. It means exposing your heart and your soul, knowing it could backfire but trusting that it won’t.

And if it does, believing there’s something really valuable to be learned. It means acknowledging that you’re not perfect and you’re not capable of everything. You have limits. You don’t know every answer, you can’t infinitely work harder and harder, you can’t avoid emotions forever, and you can’t make it through life without leaning on people. We’re human, that’s just reality. Things like marriages, families, friendships, neighbourhoods, and cities exist because we need each other.

Acceptance, support, advice, laughter, love, conversation, comfortable silence, teamwork, generosity, kindness, honesty. We thrive when we give and receive as much of those things as we can. To me? Embracing that truth and all of the imperfection that goes with it is what vulnerability is all about. Remember that fierce sense of independence I alluded to in my first post? Well, it didn’t really allow for vulnerability. That’s the key lesson I learned last year that catapulted me into a QLC.

Don’t get me wrong, I was never a cold, unfeeling, non-social person. Oh no. I love spending time with people and I love feeling part of something bigger than me. I love being supportive, compassionate and considerate. I love being a good daughter, role model and friend. I’ve been with my boyfriend for 10 years and would like to think I’ve contributed a lot of great parts of myself to that relationship. But in doing all of that, I’ve always kept a little something to myself. I’ve always held a little bit back.

I wasn’t completely honest about how I see things; about how I see the world.

I didn’t verbalize my dreams and how much I want to contribute BIG, inspiring things.

I never defended my wish to be an artist, because it seemed frivolous and far-fetched.

I didn’t long to get married because I was afraid of losing my independence.

I wanted to be self-sufficient, successful and stable. Not because I’m risk averse, but because I’ve always been terrified of three words: I need you.

So I made a lot of choices that guaranteed I didn’t have to say them. In doing so, I missed out on opportunities for authenticity, creative expression, and passionate, enduring love. I missed out on opportunities to just be me.

The remaining piece of my story you need to know is that last year, I set out on a journey to shed that fierce independence and replace it with fierce vulnerability. I may not have described it that way at the time, but that’s exactly what it was. I took on a personal challenge posed by my BFF, who wondered: How would life be different if we said yes to 30 things we’d normally say no to? The answer? It would be knock-your-freaking-socks-off different.

A list of the 30 things I did can be seen here, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. At first glance, it doesn’t tell you that I embraced my talents, started letting go of my money-related hang-ups, spent countless hours creating a business model I believe in, and became really comfortable with not knowing the answers to stuff. It doesn’t tell you that I had eye-opening moments about my relationship and realized how unbelievably lucky I am. It doesn’t tell you that I slowed down and started taking the time to really see, hear and feel things. (Well, I dabbled in it. I need to do a hell of a lot more of that this year.)

By saying yes to 30 new things, I said yes to becoming whole and vulnerable. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I now know how much I value creativity, authenticity, fun, kindness, momentum, and big-ness. I now realize how awesome it would feel to create, read, write, laugh, and play every day, at least a little bit.

What do I have to do and what habits do I have to create to turn those wants into realities? I don’t know. Yet. But that’s what my QLC, what my life right now, is all about.

{Photo credit: Edward Townend Photography}

divider

The Quarterlife Crisis is Real

posted 3rd December 2010    Written by: Alisha    CATEGORY: Alisha, All Posts, Job/Career/Work, Life Lesson, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 3, What I've Learned

Mention the phrase “quarterlife crisis” to someone over the age of 45 and they’re likely to laugh and roll their eyes.  Then, if you’re lucky, they will tell you that your generation is selfish, spoiled, dependent, lazy, and self-indulgent.  “When I was your age, I worked two jobs, was married, owned a house and fed 3 children!” they might say.  We kids have made up this quarterlife crisis thing because we just don’t want to work hard.

That’s rather insulting and Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a research professor of psychology at Clark University in Massachusetts, agrees.  Arnett’s main focus of research is in the area of development, specifically “emerging adulthood.”  He has conducted various studies of individuals in their late teens and twenties in order to demystify this challenging period of life.  According to Arnett, emerging adulthood is characterized by these key features:

it is the age of identity explorations;

the age of instability;

the self-focused age;

the age of feeling in–between;

and the age of possibilities.[1]

Tell me that doesn’t sound like you—or any of your friends.

Your parents and their parents may not have had it very easy, but our generation faces some unique circumstances.  We grew up during the Clinton Era, one of the most affluent in US history, which gave us high expectations for our experience in the “real world.”  Yet the reality is that right when we were about to head off into the land of golden opportunity, our dreams were dashed by downsizing companies, outsourcing, bursting real estate bubbles, thieving CEOs who drained bank accounts, and the exponentially increasing costs of higher education.  Pension plans and employer 401k contributions are rare, and we probably won’t see any social security.  People are marrying and having children at a much older age, thus lengthening the time between graduation and “adulthood” and that feeling of being “settled.”  And, ok, so maybe more and more of us live at home with our parents and our salaries barely cover the bills—but don’t despair.  There is some light in this tunnel.

Our generation has also experienced one of the largest technological booms.  My first cell phone was a tiny Nokia with like, a 16-bit screen and all you could really do was make phone calls and text.  Oh, and there was DOS.  Remember audio-cassettes?  If you didn’t know how to read maps or hadn’t memorized “Never Eat Soggy Wheat,” then you were S.O.L.  Now you can send emails, listen to music, find the nearest coffee shop and then tell 100 million people what you ate at said coffee shop all from a little piece of plastic that’s the size of your palm.  I mean, wow!  We’re no Jetsons, but we’re pretty damn close.

As technology expands, so do our horizons.  Through the internet and cable television we can see how the other billions of people on this earth live.  We no longer connect with just our friends and family, but with the whole world.  Access to information is instantaneous (at least for much of the developed world and non-communists countries).   We can run a business from our home.  We can run a business out of a hotel room or on a boat or on a space ship if we’d like.  It’s no wonder we are confused, overwhelmed, depressed and won’t settle down!  One of the worst things about having options is that if there are too many, you become paralyzed.  However, we. have. options.

So you want to know what I really think?  I really think that deep down, the people who scoff at us are really just jealous. They are jealous because they let their vibrant years slip past them in a haze of “yes sir”s .  Instead of blazing their own trails, they blindly followed others through the forest.  They didn’t question authority and challenge convention.  And now, they feel trapped by the lives they allowed others to create for them.  That must suck.  Hopefully that will not be us.

This period in our lives—the quarterlife crisis, emerging adulthood, whatever you want to call it—is not self-indulgent.  It isn’t laziness.  It isn’t selfishness.  We are being responsible.  We owe it not only to ourselves, but to the world to become leaders and freethinkers.  Yes, by taking this time to connect with ourselves, and remember our core values (if you don’t know them yet, The Joy Equation can help you with that!), we can become of service to the world.  This journey is about gaining self-awareness.  The discovery of our gifts will allow us to shine.

Even though this quarterlife crisis thing is a pain in the butt, it’s just another step we have to take to become the adults we want and need to be.

[1] http://www.jeffreyarnett.com/windingroad.htm

(photo credit: emerging photographer and my brother Clarence G. Richardson III)
divider

Next Page »