Just before 2019 ended I realized that 2020 marks something very important for me: 10 years since I got back to Romania after 9 years spent abroad in various countries. I left Romania at 18 to study in Germany; after 3 years in uni I stayed and worked in Bremen for 3 more years before going for an MBA at INSEAD. From 2008 to 2010 I worked as a McKinsey consultant in Brazil.
The return felt like hitting the breaks while stepping on the acceleration at the same time; coming from jumping around the planet with a final stop in Sao Paulo to my hometown in Romania. I felt dizzy for the first few weeks and did not know what to do with myself.
It all started back in September 2010, the 12th to be precise; that’s when I returned to Romania planning to take a whole year off.
A year off was the scariest thing I have done so far in my life. I will never forget a headhunter who told me that such a long time away from work sends the wrong signal to the job market. It did get me worried but I was determined. Luckily I was also too unhappy to care about the job market, all I wanted was to stand still and decide where to go next and more importantly, what to do with my life.
Have you ever experienced days when you have nothing planned? I know it’s everyone’s dream until they actually are in this situation.
A friend took days off before her first child and one day called in panic asking what to do with herself? She had lists of things to do when finally she could stop working but nothing seemed to attract her anymore.
So what do you do when there is absolutely nothing you HAVE to do? Or when nothing truly appeals to you? When activities planned throughout the day do not provide you with a structure to your time, what do you do? How do you handle that?
You can surely find ways to be busy, I went for that too. But on days when I managed to be honest and brave enough, I just took in the scary feeling of not having to do anything but be with myself. It got easier in time and soon I became to realize just how much I needed that: to slow down, to feel lost, to have trust that somehow things will be ok, that something from somewhere will come my way eventually and that all I had to do was to stay true to myself.
My CV speaks of my degrees, the jobs I’ve had but nothing, not my INSEAD MBA, not my time with McKinsey, not the projects I did in Romania give me the pride that I get from that one gap year.
It was in that year that I grew richer as a person and decided that I was enough and could do anything I wanted. It was in that year that I started saying NO more often which in turn helped me build a life based on YESes.
To me that was the big win I needed to build everything I have now. And that is what I celebrate on September 12th 2020.
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