How to Completely Change Your Life
Just about a month ago, an old colleague reached out to me saying she would be in Switzerland for a few days and was wondering if I would be free for dinner. When I last saw her (nine years ago!) she was working as an assistant account executive at the same luxury brand as I was in New York City. When I left the company she was reeling from a bad break up and seemed a bit lost in her personal and professional life. As the years passed by, I watched, via Instagram, her complete life transformation as she moved to California, got married and became an interior designer working for one of the hottest firms in Los Angeles. Her recent posts showed her on the red carpet at the Grammy’s! At the time of her reaching out, she was on her way to Switzerland with her design firm to do an install of a ski chalet in Gstaad. Pas mal!
While working in fashion for over a decade, I had observed and mentored many young women who were facing pivotal forks in the road of their lives. Some chose the more prosperous road and others didn’t. Some got lost on bad career tracks, wasted years in bad relationships, tethered themselves too tightly to bad friends.
I had been silently proud of this colleague from afar because she didn’t let the break up lead her down a spiral of low self esteem and poor dating choices. She didn’t let the faux prestige of working for one of the most important luxury brands trap her on a potential hamster wheel of a career going nowhere. She wasn’t seduced by the elusive promise of eventually living the glamorous New York City life.
I was eager to hear how she avoided all of the commons traps and found the courage to chase her dreams, dramatically change her life and live on her own terms. Her answers lined up closely with a lot of my learnings from when I left New York City for Europe and a corporate career for a creative and independent one.
In a nutshell, my former colleague first allowed herself to heal from the devastating breakup. She cried a lot, sometimes in our sample closet, accepted things and let him go. Being untethered to him left her untethered to New York City and freed her to explore a dream she had long suppressed: moving to California. She widened her job search and took the first decent opportunity that would enable her to move to Los Angeles. After a few years, she began taking interior design courses online. Her open heart allowed her to give a chance to a man- who was not her usual type- that she met on an airplane while on a work trip for that same decent job. The pandemic of 2020 rid her of that job, which freed her to dive fully into her interior design studies. Later, that same man on the plane, who eventually became her husband, was talking to a client who mentioned that he was looking for an interior design assistant. She swallowed her pride and took the lowly job and gave it her all. She got promoted while others around her didn’t make it because they were too proud to submit to what the job entailed. And here she was today, sitting at a brasserie with me in Switzerland, a happy and successful young woman, dreaming about motherhood and what else the future may hold for her.
Often times people expect a miracle when they hear stories about how people turned their lives around or achieved their life’s dream. But almost all of the time, it really comes down to lots of small but meaningful mindset shifts and movements:
Letting go of people, places and identities that may no longer serve you or have run their course.
Opening your heart and your mind to possibilities or opportunities that you may not have considered or previously accepted.
Swallowing your pride and ego and allowing yourself to be new, unknown, uncertain, teachable.
Indulging in your existing curiosities and interests.
Not being enslaved by the idea that you don’t have enough time. (Think about how recent 2019 feels!)
What I find incredibly duplicatable about my friend’s story is that it was practical. She didn’t have to blow up her current life to build her new one. She took a good-enough job to get to California, she took online courses while working, she leaned on her network and on her existing interests.
I know that executing the five points I’ve listed above is not as easy as it sounds, requires a huge mindset shift and a desire for change that’s strong enough to help you cope with all of the inevitable discomfort. But I promise you, it will all be worth it. And I’m here if you need someone to talk to.