If you had told me on March 10, 2013 that in the next 4 weeks I would fly myself to Spain for a job interview, accept an offer to join a tiny European company (in an industry I didn’t even know existed), willingly consent to move to a new country every 3 months as part of the position, and quit my job as a management consultant in New York City, I probably would have demanded you drag me to the nearest shrink to make sure I hadn’t totally gone off the deep-end yet.  

But alas, this is the truth, and I am delighted to announce my escape from doing something I wasn’t really happy doing, but just too scared or confused about how to make things better - a situation not uncommon for today’s 20-somethings who find themselves caught between high ambitions and the murky waters of reality.  

Fortunately, my experience has proven to me what people are capable of when we simply resolve to make things happen and throw all caution to the wind in fierce pursuit of our goals.

Here’s the full run-down on what I have done in the past 30 days in case we need to catch-up a little bit…

• Resolved to change my life by getting a new job in a new geographical location

• Secured job interviews in support of that desired change

• Flew myself to Europe for a shot at a dream position

• Underwent three full days of tough interviews

• Got offered the job

• Accepted it on the spot

• Negotiated my new job’s official start date

• Bought plane tickets to Taiwan and Japan to live it up for a month before my start 

• Officially quit my job in New York, turned down counter-offers, and defended my decisions to onlookers

• Began packing up my apartment in New York and figuring out how I will live with only 23kg of belongings for the indefinite future

• Pinched myself about 500 times to make sure this was all really happening

As I plow through so much change in such a short period of time, it’s pretty much a miracle that I haven’t had a crippling nervous breakdown by now.  Instead, I’m finding myself energized by the changes I have been able to make in an effort to take life by the balls and stop complaining about being in a position that I didn’t like.

Here are a few reflections on what I have learned and experienced in the past several weeks that have helped me achieve these results.  Hopefully this will inspire you to create powerful change in your own life, as well!

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I went to my first ever yoga class class last night. That’s right, I live in New York, and I don’t actually do yoga. I think I might be the only one.

However, I’m recovering from the flu and thought the free “Yoga To The People” classes might do the trick to loosen me up, calm me down, and get me doing more physical activity than moving the cup of Gatorade from the nightstand to my mouth. (Yup, having the flu sucks.)

When I showed up, the room was already packed out with East Village hipsters deep-breathing and practicing their warrior poses. There was even a middle-aged guy covered in tattoos doing headstands in the corner, looking impossibly serene.

It was everything I had hoped for.

Photo Credit: Time Out New York

Over the next hour, the room of wall-to-wall yogis was coaxed through a rhythm of posing, balancing, and dramatic exhaling by our breathy instructor who spoke exclusively in metaphor. (“Imagine your body is being stretched by fairies pulling you gently upwards by strings held between their teeth…” Um, excuse me??)  I eventually gave in to the mood, my focus shifting inward, my movements becoming more fluid, and my entire body finding relaxation.

We were somewhere on the floor, balancing on one knee and one elbow with fingertips stretched towards the ceiling, when our crunchy granola instructor purred, “The mind has a way of talking the body out of doing things. So move fast, before the mind stops you from acting.”

In reality, she was imploring us to switch to some other equally-as-ridiculous pose before we collapsed in sweaty heaps on our mats, but that little pearl of yogi wisdom got me lost in thought.

As human beings, we’re good at keeping ourselves comfortable. That’s probably what we do best, actually. We resist change, fall into routines, avoid food we don’t recognize… hell, we almost have a nervous breakdown ordering something new at Starbucks. We require coaxing, or having the rug totally pulled out from underneath us in order to really do something different.

What causes this is what Seth Godin calls the “lizard brain” in action - part of our cerebral complex left over from when we had to escape predators, catch our dinner with spears, and generally minimize risk-taking because that’s what kept us alive. It still exists, and nowadays it’s a professional nuisance.   

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To the despairing “Fed-Up Employee” who anonymously penned this woeful Forbes piece, I feel your pain.  Your heartache and distress is palpable.  You echo the voices of tens of thousands of ambitious, unapologetically idealistic recent graduates entering the job market who are all about to pull their hair out over the meaningless, thankless nature of a lot of our work.  

But you know what the trick is here?  To acknowledge these thoughts and feelings, embrace them as valid and important to you, and then turn them into purpose-driven action as quickly as possible.

As Pamela Slim says, “hating your job intensely is not a business plan” (although I think that’s all a part of the process, so do take this time to voice your frustration and rally alongside others who feel similarly).  However, I find I became much happier once I started working on solid plans to take control of my career and lifestyle.  

Photo credit: Forbes 

Here are some of my ideas for you (and the thousands of other 20-somethings in your shoes):  

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Yesterday, J. Maureen Henderson wrote to Forbes about “3 Reasons Following Your Passion Will Send You To The Poorhouse,” which is not a statement that someone throwing on her grey suit, workplace appropriate kitten heels, and spinning through the revolving corporate doors in New York City’s financial district at 8:59am with her creative spirit caught in her throat can honestly agree with.  

Hi, there.  I am doing what you’re telling everyone to do, and I’m slowly losing. my. mind.  

That’s why I’m here to speak up and share one important fact a lot of us seem to be overlooking on our robotic quests for stability and comfort.  

Life is an adventure, ladies and gentlemen.  

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This week I received an email from LinkedIn congratulating me on being among the “Top 5% Most Viewed Profiles on LinkedIn.”  Now, I knew I got a decent amount of traffic to my profile, but I had no idea I was that popular.

But what I did know is that I often get questions from people about my LinkedIn strategies – and even my co-workers have admitted they weren’t sure how to use the site properly.  

Given that even Fortune 500 consultants – some even 10+ years into their career! – aren’t making the most of LinkedIn’s capabilities, I figured I’d take some time to break down my favorite ways to use the site, along with tips on how to drive traffic to your profile page.  

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For starters, I’m not necessarily a huge Beyoncé fan (and anyone who knows me will mock my astounding ignorance of American pop culture), but there is something about her that captivates and inspires – not only me, but her audience of all genders, races, ages, sexual orientations, and musical preferences. 

Especially after her outstanding SuperBowl performance on Sunday, I began to do some reading – I love biographies! – and watched some ridiculously addicting YouTube videos, and the result is a fresh, fiery energy and drive… to, well, be like Beyoncé. 

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Earlier this week, Nomadic Matt gave some pretty solid advice on how to save money while traveling.  As someone who has done a fair amount of vagabonding, I thought I’d supplement his comments with my personal top 10 tricks for not going broke on the road. People also tend to think I’m secretly rich because of the amount of traveling I do, but reality couldn’t be any farther from that assumption. 

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I have often joked that the longest relationship I have ever been in is with New York City.  If New York were a man, he would be responsible for inflicting a serious emotional rollercoaster upon me.  He takes me soaring from one high to another and then plummets me down into the deepest of lows.  But I stick around for those euphoric ups, pretending the downs aren’t that bad, just like every girl does who is head over heels with one very toxic boyfriend.

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This week I had approximately 3 nervous breakdowns.  I would say that’s about normal these days.  I’m working a full-time consulting job (Read: Lots of hours in a windowless conference room churning out dense PowerPoints for our client, who takes on some bizarre God-like status everyday from 8-7. Sigh.), trying to launch 2 side projects, growing my blog and other social media, having what sort of resembles a social life in New York City, seeing someone new (Yeah, throw that one into the mix, why don’t ya?), and, oh, eating and sleeping – sometimes. 

WHY DOES NO ONE TELL YOU DOING ALL THIS IS A RECIPE FOR SLOWLY LOSING YOUR MIND?

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