During the last days, I cleaned my apartment of all my personal belongings and bringing it to friends and family to be able to sub-rent my apartment.
It is crazy what happens when you take big steps. I have lived in Munich for over 10 years, and over 4 years in that very apartment where I now move out of.
I did not not feel at home anymore. Friends met their partners and decided to have kids, they moved out of the city and I stayed. But the longer I stayed, the loneliner I felt.
And the city felt dull, dead, mainly focused on families, building their nests for their family, being focused on small unit of man, woman, kids and work to suppor ttheir family. Which is a great lifestyle in a city like Munich where you have the mountains and lakes directly in front of you, where you have short commuting ways and beautiful landscapes. You can go skiing, hiking, swimming, all great for that.
And yet, for me it felt like restrictive, like “getting a job here”, “building a business here” here like binding myself to that city, which does not feel like home anymore.
But I did not know where else to go. And it felt like a daunting big step.
Two months ago, I was in New York and again I fell in love with that city. And I decided: here is where I want to live, here is where I want to build a life, where I feel motivation coming back, inspiration.
Well, months later, someone told me, it is just New York, it is not you, everyone feels that.
Nevertheless, it is the city I was born in and I felt like coming home. I took a leap of faith and booked a flight and apartment and fixed my move. Why waiting did I ask myself? Life here in Munich won’t be getting better. There is a guy I love who now enters a new relationship with someone else, there are friends thta i like, but most of them have families and live an entirely different lifestyle, some others are disparate within Germany and beyond anyways, jobs are available all around the world, remote if necessary, and I knowsome people in New York, I have been there before, why not just take that step?
Well. Now I sub-rented my apartment for 3 months. One month New York is booked. The other 2 months? No idea yet.
And guess what. Man, is that frightning. I thought I would be super excited, and yes, I am. But I realized that transition is also anxious-inducing, I ruminate about past failures each morning, I feel overwhelm and tend to move back to old daily structures, while my current normal routine right now falls apart and is filled with other activities, that bring me away from my normal pleasures. It is a transition. And while there is the positive of it for me to know that I take a step into something I love, new adventures and the unknown to be unfolded, it also has the component of leaving behind.
And this “leaving behind” gets to me. It wakes me up in the middle of the night and asks, “Why did you not tell that guy, that you love him? Why did you not fight enough for him and now just let him go and wih him all the best with his new girl friend?”, it wakes up in the morning and asks: “Why did you leave that company where you were a director and had so many opportunities, where growing that much, why did you left it in a blink of a moment while having your menstruation cycle and being emotonally shaky because of it?”, it asks questions of “Why do you throw away that much money?”, “Why could you even believe that this will be successful?”, “Why did you fail to show this other friend that you like him and not act weirdly out of being insecure?”, “Why are you unable to find a constant in your life, build it up, do things?”. It is a constant thinking. It feels like, my mind loves to bring up now every weapon it can find to make the transition more painful, by bringing up all the things and elements that I regret, that I feel like I should have done more, that I was a failure.
And I know that this is not true. I know that I learned many things last year, that I started building a company which is no easy feat to do and it is ok to change directions, and I know it is tough in that market condition, and I know that I wrote a book, buil an online course, started to learn programming, and tech, met interesting people, had freelance projects and more. Many good things happened.
And yet, my mind now decided to focus on those things it feels it lost, we lost, the regret in the past and the worrying about the future.
I guess that is normal. It is the phase of transition. It is what happens when we re-wire. When we choose and move towards a new path, a change. Will this change bring anything new? Will it do what we want it to do? Will it lead us to something more beautiful? Or simply new learnings, new experiences, new friendships and new excitements?
It is a big black box. A new endeavor. That apparently can be very frightning for my mind. And I learn the accept it. And to listen to what it want to tell me. The few things it regrets the most are leaving that company as a Director, Customer Success and the regret of not having told that guy how much I like him and that it hurts that I moved away at one point in time, and that he is now going different paths. And the regret of not having made more out of my last year.
These are all regrets where I acted against my own wishes, feelings and hunches. I made myself small, I made a decision because I could not say no, and I listened more to others instead of myself.
Why not take these and see them not as stressful thoughts, but as motivators for something new. As those things that trouble me and that show me where my growth lies. Seeing them as chances and reminders of what most frustrated me can become my biggest possibilities.
And so in transition. It is the thoughts that are running. But we have the chance to acknowledge them, accept them, listen into them, looking to understand them and where they are coming from and then turning them around and seeing them as a chance to outgrow what disturbs us and find new paths that lead to us regretting less of what is to come from now on.
And accepting that these thoughts may be normal. There is a lot of change going on. Transitions. Moving into the unknown. Our mind loves clarity and comfort and the sameness it knows. When we shake that up big time, it is not too happy about it and that new transition phase can be daunting, overwhelming and chaotic.
But after each transition comes a new phase, anew morning, a new day. And with each day, when the thoughts are there in the moring, it is still our actions that define how we look back to that day, and the next day, and the day after.
We can decide to despite the thoughts, take these actions towards our dreams, towards the unkown and let it unfold in ways we may now not even dream about.