My Journey to the Uncomfortable

I am the most awkward when it comes to taking pictures. My next challenge: to be more comfortable posing for the camera!

Millennials (or not), it is our turn to go through it. Our generation is realizing that there is more to life than the prescribed pattern that society has been pushing down our throats in pretty much every culture. It is believed that in this “known” path we will find comfort and stability, but does comfort and stability bring true peace? True satisfaction?

Nobody likes to feel uncomfortable. I have been avoiding uncomfortable situations since I can remember. Somewhere along the way though, something in me pushed me to dare to be uncomfortable. Perhaps it was curiosity to know what lies beyond this state of being. Maybe I needed solid answers as to WHY the “known” path is the best path and I felt the need to figure it out on my own. I am also highly aware of my surroundings and consider myself a very empathetic being (needless to say emotional as well). When I constantly heard and witnessed stories from people who were dissatisfied with their lives but refused to change it because of comfort, it really sparked something in me. How much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice because of comfort? What are we missing out on when we prioritize comfort over authenticity? I had to face it. I was not completely fulfilled with my lifestyle. I felt like I had to be. I also thought that this fulfillment will eventually arrive. But how long was I willing to wait? Was there something wrong with me for not feeling this satisfaction with comfort that everyone else was somehow feeling? Did I miss out on something? I have heard that one of people’s biggest fears is being judged. And if I was outspoken about how I really felt, would I be judged as ungrateful? I know that I have always been #Blessed. I’ve had everything to be content, at least based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Entonces, WHY WAS I HAVING A LIFE CRISIS? Perhaps I was too comfortable. So the most logical thing to do was to venture into the uncomfortable. Maybe by putting myself in uncomfortable situations I would get the answers I was desperately seeking.

So my first decision into this journey of uncomfortableness was going back to graduate school. It had been 5 years since I had graduated college, so becoming a student again at age 26 was definitely going to be a challenge. I had two options: pursue a master’s degree in education, a career field that I had embraced for the past 4 years, or just venture into something completely new. Now here’s a thing about me: I am intense. I truly embrace the “Go Big or Go Home” philosophy. So naturally I chose option 2. Then I thought, hmm… how can I make myself even more uncomfortable? Moving to a different country, DUH! So I applied to business school in Spain. As if this wasn’t already one the most radical transformations I have put myself through, the world gets hit with a global pandemic. A challenge that nobody personally decided to take but everyone has to face. All of a sudden the voice (anxiety) I have been struggling to shut up gets louder than ever. What if this doesn’t work? Did you really have to put yourself through this? Why are you doing this to yourself? You have 0 rationality! So here I am once again, trying to control that voice by telling it that this is part of the journey. We are here to learn how to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.
Abraham Maslow

P.S: Shout out to my loving and supporting community. Like I said, I have been #BLESSED with the most amazing family and friends who no matter the time difference or the circumstance are always there to listen to my rants and love me despite my ugly crying face. ¡Los amo!

When your love language is Quality Time

When your love language is Quality Time
Fernanda Ramirez, Sunday September 2, 2018

What do you want? This is a question that I have been asking myself in my solitude. At moments I have the answer, especially when it´s an immediate desire: I want Chick-fil-a; I want to drink a beer and watch Sex and the City; I want to go to the mall and for no reason; easy and immediate desires. When it comes to actual long-term decisions though, I have a hard time defining what I want. My answers seem to be always abstract. Yes I want to travel, yes I want to be successful in my career, I just do not know where to begin. At the moment, I am struggling with defining what I want out of life in general. And maybe its because there should be a limit to the number of expectations we set for each other. But if there is something I have learned about myself in this process of self-reflection, is that when it comes to social relationships, it is best to come with a clear head of what you want from that person.

Living alone affects your outlook on life more tan you can imagine. As an extroverted person who enjoys a balanced social-personal life, I get really overwhelmed when one thing weighs more than the other. I also value my time so much more and I am very conscious of whom I spend it with. I want my social time to be worth it, valuable, and enjoyable. I am trying to deal with the disappointment of not finding people as like-minded as me. When I do not enjoy the company of someone I am spending my social hour with, I consider it wasted time because I´m more in my head than in the conversation.

This is something that is probably hard to understand for a person that does not live alone and is constantly interacting, (consciously and subconsciously), with other humans. But when you live alone, the silence lets you listen clearly to your thoughts, the voice you hear the most is your own and the person you interact with the most is yourself. So when you socialize, you do it so you can listen to someone else´s voice and thoughts rather than your own, and finding people that can actually get you out of your head can be a frustrating process. In simpler words, if I can still listen to my thoughts while I am spending time with you, that means I did not fulfill the purpose of going out. Being aware of this, has made it easier for me to distinguish who REALLY is a good fit with me and who is not. It has made me value the person that has taken me out of my zone so much more. It would be easy to say I REFUSE to waste my time and words with a close minded person, someone that I am not compatible with, but this is something that will never stop happening. Maybe instead of calling it wasted time we should consider it a lesson learned. After all, as I recall from a Pinterest quote, ¨a wise person knows there is something to be learned from everyone.¨

I have constantly read about how important it is to spend your time with people who uplift you and inspire you. Putting this into practice is a fervent process; the disappointment is rough, but the victories are savory. Please know that if I seek you out, it is because I genuinely value you.

(P.S This is not meant to sound condescending, I of course give everyone I meet and interact with a chance, but there is only so much you can do to accept the fact that that person and you are not suitable.)

Did I explain myself? Can you relate?

Figure out what your love language is

What the thought is real happiness?

First of all what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Am I going to regret in the morning once the wine has worn off? The truth is, I don’t know, but I need to stop stressing out. My life is like a constant hazard light that I turn on in every kind of situation. There are the flats on the highway, where I know that if I keep going, I’ll be in danger. There are the slow downs in the drizzling traffic, when I don’t even know what is going on and why it’s necessary to have them on, but everyone else’s are, so I turn them on. Then there are the hazard lights that we turn on when we’re obstructing traffic to wait for someone or something. It feels dangerous and exciting at the beginning but after a while you’re annoyed and desperate. Am I explaining myself?

Well, today I realized, that I’m at the annoyed and desperate stage. I am the kind of person that overthinks, analyzes and deeply reads between the lines. I find myself always reflecting on any interaction I have throughout the day. Now I know this is normal to some extent, but I just don’t know how to turn the switch off. My brain is constantly documenting and saving observations and thoughts for later but never takes the time to organize the files. It was not until the last few days that I started listening to the files in my brain that got put in the back. They were my feelings. As I grow, I start to understand and relate to all the concepts humans write, sing, and talk about. One of the universal concepts that has recently been revealed to me is self love.

The phrase that I had struggled to interpret is “happiness is a decision”. Happiness is, as a matter of fact a decision. I have recently realized that in order to decide to be happy, I should start acknowledging what doesn’t make me happy. I have been in a relationship for 5 years. From age 18 to 23. The amount of experiences that carve a person’s character at this time is brutal. How could I not know that!? Spending time with just a select few people, kept me from viewing, enjoying and appreciating so many other beautiful perspectives of life and probably would have helped me understand myself more. To me, meeting people is kind of like feeding my soul. But for the past few months I felt like I was always looking out the window, savoring meals from the inside. I am a curious, easily intrigued person. I cannot hold small talk conversations, instead of talking about the weather, I find myself talking to strangers about weird thoughts and feelings and end up having interesting conversations. Like once at the airport, I was holding Thomas Freedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem, and a Lebanese girl happened to be right across from me. When I saw her passport, I showed her my book and asked her about her perspective of some random issue I was reading about. The fact that I asked her about her country made her happy enough to befriend me instantly on social media. We’re best friends now. JK. But that is just the type of person I am. Do you know how it feels to be about to act on something, and all of a sudden feeling restrained by an unknown force? Well, at some point you realize what this force is, and for me it was fear of hurting and of getting hurt.

It all comes down to being young and not knowing how to handle all these thoughts and situations. In order to get a sense of clarity, I had to take it slow and easy. I questioned my feelings. I had to think Is this what I want? five thousand times a day. Even now that I made the decision, I have to keep telling myself this is not just what you wanted, but what you needed. So yes, happiness is a decision, but you can’t decide to be happy if you don’t put yourself first. Listen to those files stored in your brain. Before you can love anybody else, you need to love yourself. Get to know yourself. Date yourself. This is the beginning of my journey of deciding to be happy.