Turning your life upside down
MY JOURNEY TO A HAPPIER AND MORE FULFILLING LIFE
'I wish I could be as brave as you. But ….’ And the ‘buts’ never end.
This is the typical response I receive when I speak to people about my decision to throw in the corporate towel and turn my back to the life I had been trained to build for decades. Was it hard to make that decision? No. Was it hard to execute the decision? Yes
Would it be harder to keep living the life I had up until then? YEEEES
I THREW IN THE THE CORPORATE TOWEL AND TURNED MY BACK TO THE LIFE I HAD BEEN TRAINED TO BUILD FOR DECADES.
So what happened exactly for me to say: 'F**k it! F**k it all' and just leave it behind?
Well… I was successful in a job that wasn’t meaningful to me. I was earning decent amounts of cash that I would spend randomly, as I didn’t have ambitious or focused enough plans to save for. And I was in a relationship with a man who hated my spirit. In other words – I was tired of lying to myself and I realised I have nothing to lose because whatever I thought I had, didn’t actually mean anything to me.
One could say that most of my life choices were never particularly conventional for the environment I was in at any given time. I left my hometown in the South of Germany the second I finished school and have been changing my locations on a regular basis ever since. Always a bit torn between my little hippie self and the pursuit of recognition in the world of head offices. I felt I knew so much less about myself than other people my age. But I did know that I liked the unconventional, the unknown and the concept of change. I was scared of it, and addicted to it at the same time. I made unusual life choices especially when it comes to the places I decided to live in. And despite my hippie-ish spirit, I still drifted into and got absorbed by the corporate world with every passing year. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty easy to find comfort and ambition in that world.
From observing management meetings to being invited to them. From junior manager to senior manager, salary raises, people from offices abroad requesting your presence. You start building your territory, hear praise from peers, start creating the illusion of being valuable, hopefully irreplaceable. It’s in our nature to feel wanted and needed and there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, I do believe it’s of crucial importance to be part of an environment where one can feel that way. But as the years passed, I started to catch myself thinking more and more about what it actually was, that I felt needed for. Disappointments in the form of people taking advantage of my trust, my time and my ideas began surfacing simultaneously. Not just professionally. I started to feel alienated from my colleagues, my partner, and some of my friends.
And back to the question of ‘what am I doing all this for?’ The urge to step out and go for something completely different began to dominate my mind.
It is a blessing and a curse to love ‘change’ as much as I do. In this case that love helped me make that step into a new life more effortlessly than other people might experience. But don’t let this blind you. Adapting to new circumstances and a new life was just as hard. The change was drastic. I left a life of urban habits, pressure and communication to start my new journey with an Ayurveda retreat in the middle of nowhere. I spent weeks torturing my mind. Trying to get over the heartache caused by the end of my relationship, looking for emails that might need an answer or asking for other people’s problems so I could delay dealing with my own. Silence, meditation and a healthy diet eventually allowed me to ease into my new slow-paced routines. And one baby step at a time, I started to address and deal with my thoughts, fears, demons, fantasies, judgements and limitations. And so the new chapter of my life began to unfold.
IF YOUR INTUITION TELLS YOU SOMETHING IS OFF, DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR AND LISTEN TO IT.
Fast forward 12 months:
What a year! My life has been and still is a bit of a rollercoaster. Nothing is certain, little is stable. The Corona pandemic added its weight to it, of course. But it’s all good. In fact, I actually love it like that. I have been walking the path of finding out about myself and that has given me enough peace of mind to enjoy the ride of the universe playing its funny games with me at times. I accept that I never wanted or want to get absorbed in what I consider to be the limiting power of a community.
I am a Marketing professional, I am a Yoga teacher and I am a party queen. Aware of what food is good for me, I still eat shit sometimes. Or I can wake up at 5am to do Yoga and meditate or I can go to a techno rave and dance for 12 hours straight. Fully accepting that about myself now, too. I won’t bloom when expected to explore every little detail about a topic or interest. Because I am a master of knowing, experiencing and being many things. I could work in an office environment again, but the list of companies I would consider worth my time, energy and devotion has decreased to a small fraction of the size it used to be.
So to sum up all of the above: If your intuition, your gut (or whatever you want to call it), tells you: ‘something is off’, please do yourself a favour and listen to it. There’s a reason you’re on this planet and it’s not to conform to how society expects you to live.
FREEDOM IS SIMILAR TO LOVE. NOBODY AND NOTHING CAN TAKE IT FROM YOU. UNLESS YOU LET THEM.
Fast forward 30 months:
What an absolutely mind blowing 2.5 years! The rollercoaster of the first 12 months continued but this time with a forward direction, rather than funny little party loops. I went from dancing yoga girl, to mother, wife, founder of globalistina and house owner. I also took a little detour and visited the corporate world again for a while. This time it was mostly fun because I knew it had an expiry date and I had no emotional attachment to my job. My somewhat restless mind found a lot of peace thanks to my calm and caring husband, who somehow managed to help me accelerate my creative thinking and execution, yet keep me grounded and balanced. 2022 and 2023 have been immense. Mind-blowingly life changing. Entering a phase of my life that I would definitely describe as the absolute most precious chapter of this story, so far.
Today, I understand that it is good to have somewhat of a plan for life. But it must be thought through calmly; without an egocentric mindset. And we must not hold on to it with force. The sooner we accept that, the more fun life will turn out to be. I stayed away from major responsibilities for 35 years, thinking this will keep my spirit free. Now I am a mother and it is the most serious responsibility on this planet - yet I have never felt so alive, free, content and purposeful in my entire life.
Freedom is not circumstantial or conditional. It is similar to love. Nobody and nothing can take it away from you, unless you let them.
