Shadowing Practice: I Quit my Corporate Career to Pursue A Slower Life as a Barista // Stepping into the Unknown - Learn English Speaking with Video

A leap of faith.

Stepping into the unknown.

Walking into darkness and trusting that you will find your way again.

Forging an unknown path is scary and something we often avoid.

When the path we're choosing is unconventional or unknown, so many fears pop up and try to stop us to keep us on the main road.

What will my peers think?

This isn't what society expects of me.

This isn't what my family expects of me.

Will I be happy?

Will I succeed?

There are no answers to these questions for anyone.

We have no way of knowing if what the future holds for us is bright.

And the only antidote to anxiety is to have a deep trust in our own intuition and perhaps something greater.

Six months ago, I made the choice to leave behind a career I had been working towards for six years.

I walked out the door of my office on a rainy November evening and have not looked back since.

To the job, to the career, and to that old dream.

you you Crossing that threshold marked a significant change in my life,

and a significant moment of growth for myself.

Three truths became clear to me as I drove home that day.

I am not willing to sacrifice my health and happiness for a job.

Money will not control my choice of how I spend my life and time.

I will let the future unfold organically by following my intuition and my heart.

These realizations ring true to my soul, and over the course of six months, I have adhered to them.

It hasn't always been easy, and at times, Doubt would begin to seep in.

Yet I've always found my way back to confidently stepping forward on the path I'm forging for myself.

Every morning is a fresh start.

a chance to build the life you dream of.

The story of how I got to this place is like many others.

I went to college and studied very hard.

I was in a grueling, competitive program that lasted five years,

full of all -nighters, sacrificing health and personal care, and of course, stress.

But it all seemed worth it.

You have to work hard for your dreams, right?

My desire to be successful in a career

and my love for interior architecture kept me from noticing some bad traits about the field.

My professors encouraged us to pull all -nighters and pushed us to our limits.

We got speeches about how important it was to keep up with the cutthroat pace,

and how those of us who couldn't would probably end up working at Lowe's after we graduated.

While I learned and developed creatively and technically so much through this schooling,

and I am forever grateful for the skills it taught me, I didn't really seem to notice the toxicity in the culture that was being taught.

I saw it as temporary.

If I put in a crazy amount of work now, I would graduate, get a great job, and enjoy my life again.

Oh, how wrong I was.

This culture I experienced in college very, very smoothly transitioned over into the workplace.

In the two firms that I worked in, the status quo was: Work comes first, your health comes second, and everything else doesn't matter.

After my first day at this job, I came home in tears.

I cried and cried and cried and wondered how I could return for another day.

"Give it time," I told myself. And so I did.

But the overwhelming feeling of sadness and depression that I had on my first day only grew.

Every day at my desk, I looked beyond my computer, out the window, and watched one tree.

I watched it sway, I watched the leaves change from green to red as the weeks passed.

I wondered how I would get through my 10 -hour day staring at a screen missing the world outside.

As I began to show that I was a hard worker and quite competent, the work began to pile on.

Work days became an undefinable blur of unhappiness, and days off felt precious and short.

Every weekend ended with tears, anxiety, and above all else, dread.

I wondered how people spent lifetimes in these jobs feeling the way I did.

I could barely get through every week.

Gradually, things started to change within me.

Every day after work, my husband and I would go for walks.

We would walk under tree -lined streets glowing red and gold and marvel at how beautiful autumn could be.

you Something about this contrast The world lighting up with beauty, vibrancy, and passion.

compared to my unhappy, silent, and cold office days shook me.

I started wondering if everyone in the world had gone crazy.

How could people work in offices behind computers every day?

How could people spend their life tucked away, bored or numb in a toxic office that definitely cared nothing about them?

With our one precious and fleeting life in a world so beautiful I could cry, why would I choose to live my life that way?

I began to really contemplate the road that we're expected to take in society.

we're supposed to get a job or go to college and then get a job.

Of course, this job is supposed to be our soulmate career that absolutely fulfills us, so work never feels like work.

And then, we spend the majority of our lives doing this job.

We see our coworkers for more hours a day than we see our partners and kids.

We cram living into two days on the weekend, if we're not too tired from an overly long work week.

Then, when we are at the end of our lives, we are finally allowed to prioritize ourselves and our desires and do what we wish.

I started to feel like my dislike of my job wasn't just the company or the wrong career choice, but a feeling that I don't fit into this system at all.

What was money and career status worth if I wasn't enjoying my life? you

Sometimes I think it's hard to remember that life is more than just a progression of items to check off a list.

It's so easy to be swept up into doing what's expected instead of what makes you happy.

Thank you.

As I pondered all this through my long days in the office, I stumbled upon a parable that impacted me in a distinct way.

It's a simple story, but the message was very poignant to me at the time.

The story goes like this:

- An American businessman is walking down the pier of a Mexican coastal village

when he notices a fisherman and a small boat having just come in for the day.

The fisherman was cleaning his catch, and the American complimented the Mexican on his fish and asked him how long it took him to catch them.

The Mexican replied, "Only a little while." And then the American asked,

"But what do you do with the rest of your time?" The Mexican fisherman laughed and said,

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife,

and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my friends.

I am very happy." you The American raised an eyebrow.

I have an MBA and I can help you.

You should spend more time fishing and with the profit buy a bigger boat.

you With the profit from the bigger boat, you can buy several boats, and eventually you'll have a fleet.

Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery.

You would control the product processing and distribution.

You would need to leave this little village and move to a major city where you can better run your expanding enterprise.

The Mexican fisherman asked, "But how long would this take?" And the American replied,

"15 to 20 years." "But what then?" asked the Mexican.

Oh The American laughed and said, "But that's the best part.

When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become a very,

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very rich man." "And after I'm rich, then what?" asked the Mexican.

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The American thought about this for a moment.

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Then, you would retire, move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife,

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stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your friends.

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This story resonates with everyone differently.

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Some may say it's just two different lifestyle choices.

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You can find happiness in either path depending on the person you are.

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I found this story so interesting because we don't often praise

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or encourage a lifestyle in which enjoyment and relaxation are our greatest goals.

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We're often told inspiring stories of people who've struggled and persevered to make their way to our society's definition of success. being wealthy.

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Thank you.

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And these stories are great.

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It's good to know what's possible and to praise people for their hard work.

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you But there are other options for a happy life besides climbing a career ladder to wealth.

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A life in which career is used only as a means of living, and all extra time is spent in enjoyment, can be a fulfilling and beautiful life as well.

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Who's to judge which is better?

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you But we aren't encouraged or presented with the option of a simple life.

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It seems like it's often looked down upon or discouraged as the lazy choice.

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We tell people who don't meet our societal standard of success, a white collar job, they could have done more.

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They had so much potential.

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you These deep conversations swirled through my mind as I worked and worked and worked.

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I could see where I had come from: career -focused, goal -driven, and I could also see new ideas emerging.

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A slower life, time spent taking care of myself and my relationships, finding beauty in every day.

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As I walked beneath falling leaves and listened to birds chirp and watched the golden hour sun scatter through the canopy,

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I knew more and more that the path I was on, the path to 40 years on the career ladder, was not for me.

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It was a strange and scary thing to realize this.

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It meant everything I'd been planning and working for might change, might develop into something different.

127

I wasn't certain what the future would hold.

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I am passionate and hardworking, and I like having goals to work towards, but I also value mindfulness, enjoyment, and being stress -free.

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All I knew at the moment was that my life was out of balance with the priorities tipped too far towards career,

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hard work, and stress, and it was making me deeply unhappy.

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Everyone has different opinions on what is the right way to live your life.

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And that's hard.

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You just have to follow what feels right to you.

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So there I was on a rainy November evening, leaving a job that changed me more than I ever could have expected.

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I had absolutely no plan for the future, but the thought of this brought a smile to my face.

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For the first time, my life was unscripted.

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I could explore nature, art, creativity, and fall in love with living again.

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I could choose to work at a job that paid my bills or build another career.

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Anything and everything was open to me, which was exciting but also so frightening.

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I knew in my gut that this amount of change and growth would not come without its pains.

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And that has been true.

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In my time away from working, there have been difficult weeks where I've felt depressed and lost.

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but I've also had beautiful, meaningful moments of growth.

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and learning about myself.

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For the first time, I've had space to explore who I am, to work through bouts of depression and anxiety,

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instead of covering it up with a busy schedule.

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you I've been trying to journal, reflecting on who I am and who I am becoming.

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It's been six months since I left my old job, and I am not anywhere close to having things figured out.

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But I'm so proud of the path I'm walking down.

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you Now, I work in a coffee shop part -time as a barista.

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It is such a stark change from where I was at the architecture firm.

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I get up before dawn with the birds and spend my day getting to know people and serving them coffee and pastries.

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I love being on my feet all day and being active and feeling alive.

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you And on my days off, I get to leave work completely behind and become immersed in my personal life and joys.

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Financially, being a barista is enough to pay my bills, which is all I need right now.

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I would so much rather choose to have time and happiness than money.

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you Do I have any idea where the next six months will take me?

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No, not really.

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I'm open to anything.

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you you My passions are blossoming in the space that I've made for them in my life.

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Creativity has once again become a source of enjoyment rather than work.

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And building my skills in woodworking, watercolor, video making, and so much more has been a favorite pastime.

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Maybe one of these pursuits will lead to something bigger, or maybe they will just be hobbies I love. Who knows?

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For now, being a barista, a creative A friend.

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a daughter, a sister, And a wife is enough to fill my life with joy.

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