The 4 Things I'm Doing to Find My Voice Again

Over the past few years I’ve lost my voice. In Peace Corps, I felt like I really knew who I was. Every day I got clearer on that. As the pounds fell off and I lost more than just 70 pounds of unnecessary weight I also lost parts of my identity that weren’t really me. I lost my ambition to become someone just to become someone. I lost the need to please others so much while ignoring that quiet little voice in my head. I lost my tolerance for injustice and privilege. I lost my silly rule to not fall in love. I was lighter than I had been in my entire life and I like I was fully myself for the very first time.

I’ve now been out of Mongolia almost as long as I was in Mongolia. After my three years of Peace Corps and a year of mini-retirement, I jumped into two years of graduate school and a year of being an entrepreneur. I gradually put back on every pound that I had lost and with every pound I lost touch with that person I was. As amazing as I had felt, I felt increasingly worse.

I also started writing less. I shared less. I felt confusion around who was and what I stood for, what kind of a life I was creating and the kind of difference I wanted to make in the world. That quiet little voice that became a booming part of my life after 10 days of meditation and years of service in Peace Corps became so quiet that it felt like a distant memory.

I lost my voice.

But recently it’s started to come back.

Slowly. Quietly.

A whisper at a time, I’ve heard it. The more carefully I listen, the more it’s spoken to me. Saying things like: Relax. Get outside. Exercise, just a little. Do a pushup. Write a little. Pay attention. Really listen. Read a little more. Don’t be afraid. Smile a little more. Don’t worry about that, it will work out. Be honest, don’t hide how you really feel. Write about what you’ve been going through and share it with others. Don’t wait.

So here I am.

The truth is, this is hard for me. I can be a perfectionist and it’s hard for me to put things out into the world that aren’t just right. But I’d rather be human than perfect. I’d rather share this with you, let you in on how things have been going and let you know that I’m not perfect than to pretend. I’d rather be a real version of myself than a perfect version of someone else.

I’d also love to help you find your voice too.

So here are 4 things I've been doing that have worked for me:

1. Exercise, don’t sit around. Research has shown that not exercising is the same as taking a depressant. That’s certainly true for me. Not exercising because I’ve been busy, tired (and lazy honestly) has felt depressing. Now the more I exercise the better I’ve felt. I’ve lost 15 pounds in the last 3 months (thanks nifty watch!) exercising 30 minutes a day. My favorite activities have been walking, stationary biking, hiking in the park, doing pushups, and lifting some weights. I plan to lose another 15 pounds in the next 3 months and I look forward to telling you all about it.
2. Really share, don’t hold it in. My friends have been amazing and wonderful, but they’ve only been able to listen as much as I talk to them and share. It’s hard to share when I’m having a hard time and it’s easy to just say “Fine” when they ask how I am. Instead I’m trying to really share how I am with others. I started with those closest to me and as I’m gaining my confidence I’m sharing more with others, including you right now. We all have hard times, they mean we are human. My dad once told me, “It’s a gift to allow others to help us.” If we were perfect, we could never give anyone that gift.
3. Be inspired, not drained. I’ve read that there are two types of people: those who inspire us and those who drain us. My experience confirms that. I have quite a few inspiring people pictured on my office wall and I actually just read about one of them (Gandhi) in this month’s National Geographic right before writing this post. Not a coincidence. When I read about, listen to, watch, or hang out with people who inspire me great things can happen. I bet you have a friend who really inspires you. Take a moment right now and name them out loud. If you text or call them right now and tell them that, I promise it will lead to good things.
4. Get outside, don’t be a fuddy-duddy. It’s easy to sit inside. Ooo, it’s nice and cool in here. It’s so hot/cold, wet/dry, crowded/lonely outside. Yeah, I know. Whatever. I always feel better when I get outside. That’s where all the action is! And all the cool people. They are in coffee shops, in the library, in the park, hiking on trails, at the gym, the beach, in offices, puttering around in their Teslas. This is easily incorporated into my exercise, but it goes beyond that too. Fun awesome people are usually busy being awesome. I have to get outside to find them. Plus I also get a little exercise and some vitamin D from the sun while I'm at it. Win-win-win!

This is really just a short list to get you started and I hope to add more as I explore this and find my voice more in the coming weeks and months.

I'd love to hear ideas from you too! The internet is fun like that.

30 Life Lessons I've Learned in 30 Years

Today is my 30th birthday! To celebrate, I thought it would be fun to create and share something with you: 30 Life Lessons.

I've been reflecting on these for a few weeks and put them together into a PDF as a Week 4 challenge in my Crafting Your Purpose course which just finished up its inaugural course this week!

These 30 Life Lessons include everyday truths that I live by and other things that have made a big impact on me.

I thought it would be best to offer it in two ways, paid and free.

Of course it would mean a lot to me if you buy it for $5, but either way I want you to have it and enjoy it.

Thank you for being with me on this fun journey!

Waiting + Being Happy

When I first started my job as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I was just beginning to learn the Mongolian language while at the same time teaching English to doctors and nurses in our hospital. This, as you can imagine, was a lot of fun.

And by fun of course I mean hilarious and confusing. One particularly confusing verb for me to explain, because I didn't know the word in Mongolian, was "patience." Actually, this is embarrassing... I still don't know the word for patience in Mongolian.

I tried to explain the word to my class and the best thing I could come up with in Mongolian was "Baych bain, givch bayartai bain." Which is a horrible translation, but my students understood what I was trying to say, “It's like waiting, but still being happy."

I thought about it after class that day, and everyday since then I have loved that definition more and more. Mongolians are very patient people, probably the most patient people I have ever met. It's like they are born patient!

Whenever I see a Mongolian baby on an 11-hour bus ride in the countryside, they are like little Buddhas. It doesn't matter how little they are, they just sit calmly, look around, sometimes smile, sometimes laugh, sometimes drink, sometimes eat, but never cry, or whine, or complain, or act up, or get impatient.

Nope, the little Mongolian babies, the big Mongolian kids, the bigger Mongolian women, the really big Mongolian men and the saintly Mongolian grandfathers and grandmothers all sit quietly on the bus from the morning when we leave until night when we arrive. Once we arrive in town the cellphones pop out with “bainuu?” and “bain bain,” which is “Hello, yes I’m here”, but until then being inside the bus is like being inside a Buddhist monastery with everyone meditating.

And of course, it goes beyond the buses - it's in everyday conversation. You can find it in words like zuger, margash, dara, za za which mean, loosely, it’s okay/don’t worry, tomorrow, later, and okay, okay.

If patience were an art form in Mongolia, life would be the canvas, "za" would the paintbrush and "zuger", "margaash" and "dara" would be the paint. Za, za, za. Actually... patience is an art form here.

Mongolians know that if something doesn't happen today, the world isn't going to end. And even if, as Mongolians say, "tomorrow never comes" then that's okay too.

Thank you Jen for the inspiration to share this. This is from my book Enough which you can read free here.