This time last year

I was wrapping up my projects in Brooklyn and getting ready for my winter escape. Several months earlier, I'd booked a one-way to Hawai'i for $251, which included stops in Dallas, San Francisco and L.A. to re-connect with friends.

I didn't have a plan, I just knew I no longer wanted to be tethered to my work, nor did I want to live in cold weather.

I had a great life in Brooklyn. I have the privilege of what I call "legacy housing", which means I can live in my gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood without having to worry about rent, I led a food buying club that focused on local and seasonal foods, which allowed me to eat for free, and my friends are a wellspring of inspiration and accountability for me.

But I was bored and my work was largely unfulfilling. I kept recalling a passage from Jo Dale’s Get Clients 101: The Essential Handbook for Coaches and Consultants about finding your true strengths. She writes about real strengths vs learned strengths, and how doing something just because you happened to be really good at it did not necessarily mean it was something you should be doing. Learned strengths (or learned behaviors) take up more energy and leave you feeling drained and exhausted by the end of the day, requiring longer recovery times.

 I was juggling several part-time jobs and projects (work I actually prefer to do vs one static full-time experience), and each of them left me feeling depleted. It became increasingly challenging to show up fully for each of them. I would need several hours and sometimes days to build the capacity for them, and then I’d come home wondering how much longer I could keep up the facade.

While I was good at what I was doing, and people loved my work, it wasn’t making my life better. I didn’t have a plan for what to do next, I just knew that how I was living was the definition of insanity, and I wasn’t ready to lose the battle with my mental health.

I’m back in Brooklyn, having flown in on another $250 ticket (how does that happen, twice?), to check in on friends and family and to purge and pack. I’ve been in and out of Brooklyn over the years, living in different places, and this is the first time I’ve felt alienated, a stranger in my place of birth. Energetically, I no longer belong here. This surprises me, because I always felt I would never leave Brooklyn.

But we grow up and out, and things we were once absolutely certain of can shift with one experience.

Being home, I’m reminded of why I left. My family continues to support me, even as they don’t and may never fully understand me and my decisions. I observe that they are still playing out a negative feedback loop of trauma and fear in their respective lives. Brooklyn is no longer recognizable to me. Rent is too damn high, and has pushed out many of the characters and the businesses that made NYC the very place people dream of making a living and a life in. It is both disappointing and exhausting. And it occurs to me that living here is learned behavior, and not one of my natural strengths.

We have outgrown many of our existing models, yet most of us don’t know it yet. So we keep trudging along, choosing work, relationships, and situations we that aren't making our lives better.

I left Brooklyn last year for Hawaii with $1,000, no connections, and no prospects. I’ll be returning to a new home, a BFF, a lover (thankfully, he surfs waves and not the Internet, so he won't be reading this word he hates that I love referring to him as) and a new opportunity, all patiently waiting for my return. 

Your current situation should be enough motivation to take action in the areas you want to change and improve on.

We’ve three months left to the year: What would you like to be starting on, right now?

What are you ready to say YES to, instead of what you keep wishing for?

I have twenty spots left for the next cycle of Get Sh!t Done, my half-day intensive of 1:1 balls-to-the-wall coaching for self-motivated grown-ups who are ready to own their shit.

Click here for the details, or click here to get straight into the hot seat.