In January I quit my job, but I had no idea what I wanted to pursue afterward. Fed up with the daily grind, all I knew was that I wanted to try something new.
With that in mind, I asked on Facebook:
Friends, what things have you done in your life that were life-changing? I’m looking for ways I can nudge my life in interesting directions :)
27 people responded to my question directly. They all had various ways of interpreting the question, and most gave multiple answers. Many of their answers overlap or intersect with one another, but have a different focus or viewpoint that motivated their separation. I’m not saying that any or all of these will encourage change in your life, but there will most likely be tidbits in here that you can keep in mind and apply when the time’s right.
I’ve tried my best to compile and categorize everyone’s thoughts (including a few of my own) into four main ideas: specific activities, lifestyle changes, contextual life experience, and mindset.
1. Traveling / Taking off long periods from work
“Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable” — Steal Like An Artist
Many friends really enjoyed solo travel or hiking because it allows you to regroup and take time for yourself. Very specifically, people have travelled to Japan, hiked the JMT, road tripped from Chicago to New York, biked across Cambodia, and Amtraked through the Sierra Nevada.
Those examples seem exotic and perhaps difficult for people to budget the time and money for that kind of travel, but one friend suggested weekend travel.
Weekend retreats / travel…realizing that there are so many beautiful places in California / within a 2 hr flight that are amenable to a weekend vacation brought so much more color into my life without needing to take significant time off — Diane Wu
2. Moving to a city where no one knows you
Travel for days or weeks is one thing, but moving and creating a new base is another adjustment entirely.
starting from a clean slate, I believe, allowed me to more easily become who I wanted to be without having to live up to the expectations of friends
Another take on it was moving back again to spend your time with loved ones.
I’m going to take a slightly different tact. Moving across the country to be closer to family/friends. You (and they) have a finite amount of time on this earth, so pay attention to who you share it with. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html — Eric Summers
3. Burning man
4. Drugs
LSD and pot seemed to allowed me to rapidly and drastically evolve the span of my consciousness by learning like a child again
Others also said that drugs helped them to be able to dance and sing in public.
5. Taking an improv class
The token “Yes, and…” of improv makes you think about accepting any situation and then giving something to make it new a novel. It’s a way to respond to any interaction or situation in life, not just the stage.
6. Art museums
[Art] activates some emotion and brain centers that nothing else does…art museums are a good test for how someone else thinks and feels — Vivian Chang
Watching Netflix’s Chef’s Table, I was struck by Massimo Bottura’s experience at the MOMA. One exhibit had the power to change his approach to his food and how he wanted to impact on the Italian culinary world.
7. Taking Experimental Sculpture
This is a class I took at SFAI in 2016 with Marshall Elliot. The class helped me think of art and other activities as a process to enjoy rather than a means to an end. The act of doing is so different than just thinking of doing. The act of doing changes your ideas in a way that thought experiments cannot. Let the medium tell you what to do. We may not be able to change the the hands we’re dealt, so make something interesting with what you have.
8. Telling someone your life story
the freeing experience that you can be accepted in spite of shame you may feel about the past. It was an extremely powerful experience when I did this for the first time in college! In a safe space, it’s one of the most growth-oriented activities I’ve ever experienced.
9. Bungie jumping in Minakami
Bungie gave me a strange sense of optimism that I wasn’t expecting. I think that’s directly a result of, when immediately facing it, you’re looking at what your mind and body naturally perceive as an immediate and obvious death scenario — Tristan Pott
10. Going to Sundance
Sundance once seemed glamorous and posh, but actually going made my friend realize that it’s not really that exciting. In fact, the reality of a lot of ideas or situations usually fall short of expectations.
11. Attending The People’s Summit
…seeing thousands of community/grassroots organizers who’ve relentlessly fought for, protected, and won so much social and political good over the years, talking 1-on-1 with organizing leaders in Chicago, and attending trainings with / joining a profoundly visionary, strategic, and effective political organizing group, The People’s Lobby. I do not often use the formulation “it changed my life,” but all this, especially the trainings, did — I am taking risks, responsibility, and leadership roles I never imagined for myself— Seong Cho
12. Visiting relatives in China
for Chinese New Year and realizing I hate the PRC and don’t feel close to my relatives at all
Coming to terms with reality after a lifetime of expectations gives you space to challenge your assumptions and realize what’s important or not important.
13. Adopt a husky
having a high energy friend around all the time made me change my lifestyle drastically — Xuexia Jiang
The lifestyle changes include: keeping a tighter schedule, cleaning more often, and running daily.
14. Vipassana
10 days of silent meditation with just you and your brain makes you smooth out the kinks in your thoughts.
15. Interchange counseling
16. Find real friends
Stop making an effort with “friends” who rub you the wrong way but you keep hanging out with them because of habit, mutual friends etc… — Dian Xiao
Put in other words:
You are the average of who you spend time with. If you spend time with admirable, compassionate, and fascinating people, you will come to embody those traits. The opposite is also true!— Lars Aquinonez
17. Find inspirational figures to inspire and challenge
[They] educate me and challenge me to be more than myself (most recently Leor Pantilat) — AJ Kaufmann
Along those lines, Lars said:
…actively seek a mentor or mentors for everything you’re inspired to do (even things where mentors are uncommon)— Lars Aquinonez
18. Find Jesus
For Jason Shen, the process of finding Jesus changed unhealthy mental cycles for a more positive outlook. In this case, it changed the way he loved and thought of love from one of toxic obsession to one of unconditional warmth.
19. Switch careers
This should be self-explanatory, but changing how you spend 40+ hours per week is bound to change your life.
20. Incorporating a greeting card company
…along with actually following through and making the cards
this was [really] expensive and [definitely] runs at a loss and isn’t even functioning now, but I have a business credit card with the company name on it and feel like a bad ass
21. Create a community around something you’re passionate about
Or be heavily involved in one. Specific communities people listed included Lindy Hop / Balboa, joining or starting a community living situation, and improv.
Joining outside of work clubs — running clubs, improv clubs, anything that interests you where you can also get a social outlet outside of work.— Zach Cole
22. Rock Climbing
It turned me into an athletic person. It was one of the only forms of exercise I took a liking to, and now I have a hunger for other types of physical fitness including yoga, running, biking, etc. Also, with the help of friends it introduced me to camping and the outdoors.
23. Biking
It’s literally the cheapest and fastest way to travel in SF. It opened me up to explore the Sunset and Richmond, which have the best Chinese pastries and dim sum a girl could ask for.
24. Do what you would you do if you had no expectations or constraints on time, money, energy
take some time to let go of everything you think you’re expected to do or what other people think is fun or worthy
More concretely:
Think about dreams/goals you had when you were young. Anything unfinished you still want to do? Think about fears you have, especially the “when I’m old I’ll have missed not doing/being x” kind of fear. Which of those can you do or make progress toward right now? Think about people who you think are amazing, or you wish you had their lives. What are they doing that you could do too? Hopefully you now have a short list :) — Ashley Lorden
25. Teaching
The experience makes you rethink the how and why that you may have taken for granted. For me, teaching decreased my imposter syndrome and gave the incredible sense of meaning and purpose for the energy spent.
26. Reading books as a habit
I recall a HONY quote: “So how would you define a good poem?” “It’s a good poem if I’m a different person when I’m finished reading it.” That goes for all reading! — Lars Aquinonez
This has undeniably been one of the most common and rewarding habits. Reading list will come in a separate post!
27. Living on $12,000 a year
It’s 90% of the poverty line and helps you really empathize with the 13.5% of Americans living below the line (as of 2015).
That was my AmeriCorps stipend…they do that so we’re eligible for all assistance programs (food stamps, medicaid, childcare assistance, TANF) . People definitely discount how much you learn (or fail to learn) from actually experiencing something, not just postulating about it. — Vivian Chang
28. No added sugar for 2 months
doing it taught me a lot about food and the choices I was making / that were available to me at the supermarket. — Diane Wu
29. Blue Apron
This seems like product endorsement but I know it was a big deal for some of my married/busy friends. I did it for two months with my sister and it was fun. Another single friend of mine just invites people over for cooking/dinner rather than going out, which I think is kind of brilliant.— Diane Wu
30. Imodium & Metamucil
The light and dark forces to calm your colon. See Ben Mann’s When eating a burrito is a terrible idea.
31. Find a way to service the world
Volunteering for a political group that got me into hosting events and forced me to get used to public speaking — Jen Johnson
…while these [experiences] were life changing, I think I can only share them with a positive feeling because by the grace of the universe, things worked out to where I am today. If it had gone differently after this, I might’ve looked back with hella regret.
32. Abandoning grad school 10 days before orientation
For my friend, this was about realizing how much he needed to sacrifice for his current life trajectory. Becoming an architect would require years of grad school, uninteresting projects, and sucking it up as an “intern slave” that he wasn’t ready to commit to. It helped him put into perspective the career he had idealized.
33. Freaking out about life
WTF did I just do with my life and what am I going to do now and how did I just blow through all my savings and did I fuck up my life already.
There’s nothing like a good personal wake-up call to light a fire to and force you to move in a different direction.
34. Get cancer
[or] be hit in the face with the reality that I’m Going To Die & there’s no reason to not live a dope life in the meantime
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
honestly though, garnering a true awareness of death changed my life & made me more brave than anything else. — Jen Byers
35. Becoming a parent
36. Getting married
37. Getting divorced
38. Watching family members die
39. Telling all of social media you’re working on stories
40. Quitting
A job, a relationship, a friendship, or an addiction/habit. Saying “no” to something you enjoy, but that you know you ultimately have to let go, forces you to adapt to become stronger and overcome the hurt of quitting.
41. Do something scary / confronting
Arguably most things in this list are about doing something intrinsically uncomfortable, but in case you missed that memo, #41 makes it explicit.
Any time I’ve done the things that truly terrified me, I’ve ended up in totally unexpected and delightful places. — Katie Austin
42. Giving a second chance
I think it was a School of Life video that talked about how people don’t give second chances who make a bad first impression, so you pursue the amazing people, then get disappointed because they can’t sustain [their amazing-ness] — Vivian Chang
43. Making extreme eye contact (like the New York Times article)
My friends and I began playing a game where we would hold prolonged eye contact (5+ minutes) while playing silly games. It became easier to control seemingly inconsequential non-verbals and understand how they shape the quality of an interaction.
44. Phrasing assertions as questions
…fundamentally if you ask more questions you learn more, you get people to challenge your views more, and instead of just stating opinions, you start more conversations that lead to new information— Vivian Chang
45. Be kind, open, vulnerable
46. Face yourself, you know what you want
This is going to sound hella cliche: face yourself. You already know what will be life-changing for you; accept that. If it sounds scary or confronting, do it.
— Hyun Lim
There are people who believe that life-changing experiences follow some kind of formula: a touch of inspiration multiplied by new adventures and experiences, with optional (but usually recommended) subtraction of emotional weights like abusive relationships and cookie-cutter 9-to-5 careers. For me, I did not purposely seek out these experiences or intentionally follow a formula. It seemed, rather, that these things found me and presented to me two options: pretend like nothing happened after all, or keep going down the rabbit’s hole
— Jason Shen
Huge thanks to everyone who responded! Let me know what you’ve found to be life-changing.
