Listening to Jo Simpson and reading about presencing made me realize that I've already been following this framework.
After college, I spent a few years feeling pretty lost and confused about what I wanted to do with my life. I have so many different interests, but I've always known that I want to help people and make the world a better place. That's a pretty vague idea, so it took a while to figure out the path I should take. Simpson's questions- What is important to you? What do you enjoy? What frustrates you?- are essentially what led me to apply to graduate school for sustainable design. I was talking to someone about the things I'm passionate about and found myself speaking about textiles, pollution caused by dyes, and how sustainability is something I'm interested in and care about. That was when it clicked for me that sustainable design was what I should focus on.
That was the first step in a journey that was shaped by "listening to nudges." When I started looking into graduate programs, I was living in a town where I wasn't happy. It was a small mountain town with little diversity, few job opportunities, and I hadn't made any new friends. I enjoyed hiking and the other outdoor activities that were available, but realized that a few fun activities aren't not enough to make a place worth living in. My boyfriend felt the same way, so we found a few cities we were interested in, quit our jobs, and went on a road trip to find our new home. We drove all the way from North Carolina to Atlanta, then New Orleans, then Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and back through Memphis, stopping at a few other places along the way. In a way, this was our version of "Co-sensing:" going to the places of most potential and listening with our hearts and minds open. We decided to move to Atlanta. It felt a little like settling, but we felt like we could make it work and it seemed like the best option out of the places we had visited. It was a bigger city where we knew a few people, cost of living wasn't too high, there was more diversity and better job opportunities for our skill sets, and it wasn't too far from our families.
After the road trip, I moved in with my parents to work and save enough money to move. After a few months, I was offered a job at a vintage clothing store in Atlanta. It was in a cool neighborhood, the shop seemed interesting, and although it didn't pay much, I figured I could make it work. I was nervous about how the pay was based on sales, since I'm not interested in pushing people to buy things. But I ignored those worries and went to Atlanta to look for a home. It all happened so fast that I didn't have a moment to stop and think. But after I got to the city, I had a few hours before going to visit an apartment. I was sitting in the park, watching some friends have a picnic and I realized that I wouldn't be able to do that with my new job's hours. It would be full-time and barely pay enough for me to get by, especially if I didn't suddenly become a great salesperson. I'm still grateful for having that moment of stillness, being able to clear my mind and really see the situation for what it was. I started to cry, realizing that this wasn't my big chance to move, and I would have to keep searching. Like Jo Simpson said, a part of you always knows what to do in any given situation. I had doubts about taking the job and moving so quickly, but ignored them because I thought I had to leave my parents' home and get my life going again.
Because I chose to stay with my parents a while longer, I decided to look back into graduate school. I had given up on the idea when I realized I wouldn't be able to afford it, and decided to wait until I had a higher-paying job. At some point, I realized I probably won't have an extra few thousand dollars any time soon, so I might as well apply and just take out loans. I applied to MCAD at the last minute, got in, and was able to start in January 2018. If I had moved to Atlanta, I might not have felt the drive to do something, to make that move, to actually follow through with my plan and apply even when I wasn't financially prepared. Applying to MCAD was another time when I listened to that inner nudge and it worked out. I decided to put off any plans to move until the semester was over. All this time, my boyfriend was living with his parents in Virginia (I was in NC), working and saving and also applying to jobs in Atlanta.
As the end of the semester neared and I started my job search again, I decided to visit New York. I figured it was better to go when I was living a little closer (seeing as how NC is farther north than GA) and had a flexible job schedule. I also had a secret feeling inside that I was missing out by not living in New York, and hoped that visited would remind me that I didn't want to live there and I wasn't missing out by moving to Atlanta. So in May, my boyfriend and I went up there. I had a lot of friends from college living there, and it didn't seem impossibly expensive like I had believed. When we got on the bus to go home, we both were quietly thinking about how we wanted to live there. After all our planning for Atlanta, neither of us wanted to be the one to say New York seemed like the better option. I can't remember who said it first, but once we acknowledged that urge, everything fell into place. To us, Atlanta felt like a place we could make work for us if we tried hard enough. NY felt like we could just fall in and everything we were looking for was already there.
In the most personal way, these last couple of years have embodied the five Theory U steps. There were a few bumps, but taking time to stop and listen to those inner desires and nudges that don't seem like the most logical decisions has been incredibly helpful. I observed the places I wanted to live, listened to my inner self, acted upon it, and made a new life for myself by becoming part of a new place, a new system. I now hope to continue following this framework and use it for future decision-making. It is a useful tool for leadership, whether you are making decisions for a group, or just for yourself. We're all our own leaders, so these tools can be used for personal decisions just as much as decisions for design ideas or for organizations.