This story is about being exactly where you want to be, every day of your life.
A few weeks ago, I told you about my constant and haunting desire to dive into a new adventure, travel the world as if I was on a never-ending quest. Recently, I bought a one-way ticket for Indonesia, because of course I’ve been dreaming of exploring its luxuriant islands, enjoying surf sessions at sunrise, scuba diving with Manta rays and chilling endlessly on the beach. But it is essentially because I was lost and uncertain about the level of happiness my daily project was bringing me lately.
Since the first step towards getting somewhere is deciding that you are not going to stay where you are, buying the ticket was the best way I knew to impose myself a deadline in order to make serious moves. The truth is that there is NEVER a perfect moment to take a big leap of faith. If you are waiting for the perfect timing, believe me, it’s never going to come. You have to create the perfect opportunity. This can be scary at times and it truly takes balls to make life-changing decisions, but at some point you will realize that you are the only person who can make it happen. And so I did…
A few weeks after I bought the ticket, I officially decided I wanted to sell my Jane&Rye shares entirely. My baby, a project a friend and I started 2 years ago by combining our wild ideas, our innocent hearts and a lot of intuition. We knew nothing about business or jewellery making; we only had a vision, an impressively high level of confidence and mostly, nothing to lose aside from our time… Turns out things unfolded in a way that exceeded our expectations. We never encountered any major problems, we quickly felt gratitude from the public and we managed to make this start-up our fulltime job within a year and a half. It was the kind of adventure girls my age dream of: selling jewellery in Empire stores – where we use to shop during our teenage years – organizing photo shoots here and there, participating at the Montreal Fashion Week, seeing our names in magazines, being stars of a day on Musique Plus and supplying runways with our creations all around the city. Like waoh, what was I bragging about?!
The thing is, at the end of the day, this masquerade was leaving me with a growing feeling of emptiness. It is not something you foresee at the beginning… The world around you is too noisy, the rhythm of your life becomes crazy, people are telling you how much they like your stuff and simply acknowledging the progress your project has made can easily fool you. If you don’t listen closely to your heart, there is enough to make you believe you’re on the right path thus you should stick to it.
But deep inside I cultivate other aspirations. I dream of spending most of my days playing outside while inspiring others to adopt a healthier lifestyle and to live happily with less.
Don’t get me wrong, I strongly believe J&R is an amazing company with great products and a really exiting future ahead. Though, on my side, the spark that used to drive me to work every morning had vanished. I couldn’t keep playing the game. I needed to step away from the city life.
You know, how we spend our days is, basically, how we spend our lives. So I found myself in this big dilemma with an ultimate question constantly popping into my mind:is what you’re doing today taking you to where you want to be tomorrow?
I think it is pretty sad to see that there is so many people getting up every day to go to jobs that they don’t like, jobs that are making them sick… and still they do nothing about it.
In order to grow, you must keep on trying things that are beyond what you’ve already mastered; things that scare you and force you to step out of your comfort zone. Trying might make you sweat, but it will always be worth it!
I believe there is so much more to life, you simply have to listen to your wild heart and your gut feeling; they know the way when your head doesn’t.
Ask yourself what it is you want to accomplish. What drives you? Greatness starts with establishing a plan and working on it day after day. It doesn’t matter if you can’t see the big picture at first, but in order to get somewhere, you must take a step forward. And trust me, as soon as you put things in motion you will be amazed by all the opportunities that unfold before you. But you must jump first.
So here I am, leaving everything behind and heading towards the unknown. No job, no apartment, no man. Absolutely no strings attached. Just a lot of ideas and a burning desire to discover my higher purpose & live with passion. I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring. When nothing is certain, everything is possible.
So let’s jump!