It seems that during crises we tend to go back to our essence and question the meaning of our lives. Finding meaning, your why, your purpose, your north, true north, your ikigai...as many ways to name it as ways to get to it. For me, these times of pandemic have pushed me to confirm my WHY and to keep walking into that direction, align with who I am, and build the HOW and WHAT, as Simon Sinek calls them.
If you ask me when has this adventure started? I would go back to summer 2018...finally reaching holidays, taking a deep breath from my work in Barcelona, and traveling with my best friend in a 33-year-old WW van, a big boy that we'd rented for the journey to Croatia. It was joy and freedom all along the road, with beautiful surprises every day.
Along the way, I read a book called, “The Power of Meaning” by Emily Esfahani Smith. And when I finished it, I could feel tears forming in my eyes. I probably understood at that moment that it was time for me to go into that inner exploration… Now I know that I was just about to start a new fascinating journey, both physically and emotionally :)
The problem was that outside of my current adventure, in my actual life, I was feeling trapped, like in a washing machine I couldn't stop. So I decided to look for help…
6 months later, I was with my dear friend Sophie who had previously recommended that book, going through what could be the first step of the transformation: analyzing my childhood memories and psychological preferences that I never knew I had. Sophie helped me navigate my MBTI results, which is a famous and reliable personality test that helped me better understand myself and my reactions and to appreciate the reactions of others around me. And so I began scratching the surface to better define myself, reaching out to the little girl inside and exposing some deep recesses.
For the first time, I was formulating my WHY... or let's say, a draft!
With the MBTI in hands, suddenly everything just accelerated. I was connecting dots. I knew why I had this gut feeling sometimes at work saying that I was not in the right place, despite my notable marketing senior manager position in a renowned company, and all I could appreciate from it. Of course I was scared to make it all explode. Would I demolish my career? How could I start over? What might people say? But at the same time I couldn't wait to feel that release! Something inside was telling me I couldn't go backwards and I was excited to experiment with a new career, though it was not clear yet HOW.
Within a few months I was out of the company! Unexpectedly, it all went more than well…Sometimes we say that planets get aligned. I guess they were. It came the right moment, with the right people, willing to help and support me, and not only financially. And I do believe it was not just luck, I even remember that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity" (Seneca). In a way I was getting ready without knowing it, and my impression was that the universe was giving a hand to prepare the playground for me to begin this new game.
So the 2nd step was done with the summer starting, perfect timing to rest and charge the battery with the family and traveling a bit. In September, I was ready to start that battle. And you know what? With so much freedom and possibilities, I was simply terrified! But training was my constant, driven by a deep need to keep exploring the possibilities of my body. I could see it was slowly changing, adapting, getting a bit thinner, shaped by the air while taming the hoop. I always see the body as a big dough. You cannot change what it is made of, but the form can vary, depending on how you feed and move it. At some point I was just combing the city in search of new experiences and people related to dance, in the air but also in the ground. While training I was also given opportunities to give classes and experiment my teaching skills.
November came, and as I was enrolling to study to be certified as a Personal Trainer, I also registered for a 12 month online training called Towards Vivencia made for artists to better train their connection between their body and mind, and guess what…we are now right digging into that topic! Defining our North. So here I am again, making sure I am on the right track with more tools. And hopefully, this program reminds me that, though it is a serious game, the most important is to have fun on the way!
Then there is my HOW. In the meanwhile I was working on it with Sophie and she is without any doubt one of the people that has deeply inspired me. I am so grateful that I have had her guiding me on the way, wisely helping me to open my eyes, supporting me with her kind words, and putting in my hands her tools. And magically I was having in front of me a dream team actively working to help me build my personal brand and cheer me up in those times of such uncertainty. With the help of Dani, a brand creator, Meryl, a strategist, and Sophie, an executive coach, we experimented with putting words to my purpose and personal brand identity, with a visual and playful coaching method that involved using my unconscious mind.
This is how I got to the brand and business I have today.
I can say it has been a lot of “first times” lately!
It is scary and risky, but I feel calm and confident.
Tiring also, but I feel I have a special fuel to keep going.
And this is definitely a never ending journey! Taking me out of the bed every morning to add a new stone to the path...Finding my best way to impact, making a fuller use of my gifts and handing the power on to others. Simply being the best version of myself. I have realized also that I did not demolish my career, I am actually properly using everything I learned before, and I know it makes the difference in what I am building. And I am developing new skills on the way, such as introspection and writing :)
In my opinion, your WHY will always be a draft, with a deep essence that has no words, you can just always shape it with the words that better fits with who you are at that moment. Because we constantly evolve and so the weight we give to our words will also. Imagine painting your why, the same will happen with the colors you pick and how to use them on the board to express it. I guess we are rarely completely satisfied with the result but each painting will get closer to it for sure because you are simply putting your intention into it. I wonder now…what about dancing my WHY?