Listen to your gut

Or two book quotes when you are on the verge of change

I was about to say au revoir to Paris and leave it for good two times. A tough decision, watered by salty drops of tears. Two times, I packed my meager belongings. And only once did I leave the city of light for real.

I screamed the roaring “au revoir,” even if everyone – and I mean it – thought that I was a fruitcake and had lost a marble or two on my journey of becoming French.

I mean, if I had left Paris when this absurd idea came to me for the first time, everyone would have got it and nodded approvingly. But when the idea came back a year later and I followed it, well, that was beyond everyone’s comprehension.

But let’s start from the beginning.

And the beginning was desperate. All the dreams of my Parisian life that I had nurtured during my university years, reading everything and anything in French and about France I could get my hands on, shattered into thousands of icy shards.

In Paris, all alone, toiling at a job I despised with every frail fiber of my heart, and having completely forgotten what it was all for, I was gasping for changes that would help me pull myself out of the tiny box of opportunities I had put myself in in the first place.

So, one day, I opened my laptop, sitting in McDonald’s – I had no Internet in those ten square meters of mine I had to call home – and, in a very go-everything-to-hell gesture, clicked the first site with plane tickets to get one that would bring me to my parents and the comfort of their hearth.

The decision was made. Paris was not for me. I was not for Paris. It was time to say goodbye.

And there, my Parisian story may have ended if I hadn’t listened to my gut. And my gut was whispering. No, it was shouting, “Give Paris a second chance!”

But why? Said my parents.

Why? Said my friends.

Why? I said to myself.

Why?

To meet my now-husband, that's why.

A month after the day I was supposed to return to my home country, we had our first date. It does sound like a perfect happy ending, right? But, of course, it wasn't.

It was actually just the beginning. The beginning of a journey of finding myself. Because even if I met my future husband, I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and how I could pay my bills without selling my soul to the work I hated.

And that’s when the idea of leaving Paris knocked on my door for the second time. My then-boyfriend – who is now my husband – was about to go to study and work abroad for one year.

“Good! You’ll stay in Paris and wait for him,” said my parents.

“No, I will get back to my hometown and look for my vocation,” I answered.

(Now, let me squeeze in a short side note that will partly explain why everyone thought I was out of my mind. It was easy – well, relatively easy – to get back to the place I used to call home. The problems would start if I wanted to leave it again and resume my Parisian life, for it was – and still is – a whole adventure, demanding thousands of sheets of paper and translated copies of translated copies, to get a visa.)

Why not look for your vocation in Paris? Everyone asked. And rolled their eyes. This gesture is crucial when one happens to speak to an insane person who has gone nuts.

Because I felt stuck and trapped. I didn’t say it out loud but thought. And because sometimes moving back is also moving forward. Sometimes, you need to get to square one – even if life is a circle and not a straight line – to gather back all the marbles you’ve lost and prepare yourself for the next f(l)ight.

Trusting my gut wasn’t a big deal at that time, almost seven years ago. The only thing I had to say goodbye to was a burst balloon of my Parisian dreams, but when you are only twenty-five, it’s not such a big loss that you won’t ever be able to overcome.

And what about your then-boyfriend? Well, it wasn’t I who left Paris in the first place. And then my twenty-five-year-old naivety made me think that if it was true love, it would surmount all obstacles.

(Another side note of mine: and it actually did, but that’s not what my post is about.)

Listen to your heart.

Listen to your gut.

In retrospect, I can say that it is easy when you have nothing to lose. Or when you have already lost everything and achieved that infamous bottom, and the only way is up.

But what to do with these husky little whispers crawling into your cold, sleepless three o'clock in the morning when you believe that you already have everything you used to dream about? What to do with this itchy nagging feeling that you want some changes in your life? Not that you want them. You crave them. You feel stuck, and the stale air of stability is suffocating you.

An ungrateful brat

A spoilt bitch

And yet the whispers don’t go away. They tire you out, draining every drop of energy you managed to accumulate during your last vacation. When you come across another philosophical and thus deep Instagram quote that

“Life is not tiring. Wanting life to be a certain way but not having the confidence to make it that way, that is tiring.”

– Steven Bartlett

You just nod. It is tiring. And scary. Because your hungry past has been following you ever since. Because you really love what you already have. And to lose it just because of these barely audible whispers? That’s insane!

And where to find the courage to trust your gut again and set off on a new journey?

Well, as you are reading this post in my Solace in Books section, you may guess my answer. Two books that I recommend to myself – I’m going to read them both for the second time – and to you if you are also shifting from one foot to the other instead of jumping into the cold waters of change are

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey:

“I was a successful actor, a celebrity, and a movie star. I didn’t have to worry about putting food on the table or paying rent, but my career path and the characters and films I was getting offered and doing were not satisfying me anymore.

My life was full. Wild. Dangerous. Essential. Consequential. Lively. I laughed louder, cried harder, loved bigger, loathed deeper, and felt more as the man in my life than in the characters I was playing in the movies.

Those roles and stories I was looking for? The ones that would compete with the life I was livin? They weren’t coming my way, and again, I wasn’t sleeping well with the ones that were. It was time to make a change, to pivot, to make a new commitment.

It was a risky bet I was making. In Hollywood, if you pass on too many projects, they may quit asking. If you step out of your lane, and turn your back on what you're successful at, the industry can turn its back on you. They don’t mind seeing you miss the bus because there’s plenty of people to take your seat.

I knew my existential dilemma was going to cost me, monetarily sure, but even more so emotionally. The fatigue of not knowing if and when I would come out of it was going to be a test. I prepared for the worst and hoped for the best.”

The Lemon Tree Mindset by Veronica Llorca-Smith:

“I used to look at my skills and my passions as two parallel universes that never converged. It never occurred to me that what I love doing could be leveraged as skills that could be transferable in the business world and be monetized. By changing my mindset and finding the convergence area between skills and passions, I was able to identify my superpowers and start to unlock them. The scary part of my circles was that what I love doing was not reflected in the types of jobs I was doing in the past.”

And the last thing I want to say here.

There are two types of fear:

The fear of losing what you already have.

And the fear of never getting what you dream of.

The first one does its best to muffle your gut feelings. The second one ignites them. And all it takes is to decide which fear defines your life.