If any of you are considering – or have found yourselves thrust into – a life shift, congratulations!

It’s a gift of enormous proportions. As scary and exciting as stepping out of your “normal” life is or can be, it is the first step into your own quest.  There is nothing like leaving your comfort zone to explore beyond the boundaries of what you’ve been taught, beyond what you think you know, and beyond who you think you are, to open the door to entire new paradigms.

It’s soul expanding, mind bending—simultaneously terrifying-joyful-thrilling-surprising.

I’ve done it a few times, at different stages of life. I’m not talking about “travel,” which—in itself—is mind expanding.  I’m talking about stepping outside the circle of “what you know,” to inhabit a life immersed in a new language, cultural rules, and radically different living conditions. It cannot help but change you in some essential way.  I recommend it for its transformative potential, even if you decide to jump back nto your previous life.

That “stepping out” will give you new insights, deepen your understanding of yourself and others, and enlarge the pool in which you swim.  

In my  early twenties,  post-divorce, I joined a crew of three men  for the couple of weeks it took to ferry a large sailboat from Florida to Galveston. In my twenties, that was way out of my comfort zone.

A couple of years later, I took a bigger leap— quit my job as a diagnostic- audiologist,  sold my meager possessions, and took off for North Africa.  I walked away from the comfort and relative innocence  of the roles of daughter, student, wife, and employee  and traveled alone and untethered. Living for a short time with family and friends in Carthage, Tunisia allowed more revelations to accrue.

The year I turned 30,  I quit a high-level administrative job and set sail aboard a 29-foot sailboat with my new husband.  We left from Galveston, Texas after hurricane season, but just in time for a steady march of violent cold-fronts tearing across the Gulf of Mexico. Having our behinds kicked often was humbling, but we emerged as better sailors and stronger, more resilient people when we returned to terra-firma to start a family.

Each departure provided the insights and flexibility for the next evolution of normal life: raising kids, growing businesses, spiritual awakenings, and navigating exiting relationships.

Mid-life ushered in a radical new chapter of becoming: divorcee, single mom of teenage boys, and budding entrepreneur.  Slowly-by-slowly (as the Ugandans would say), I built a thriving consulting business, which I shuttered after fifteen years to go to AFRICA – and Peace Corps, the greatest adventure by far.  

That tale is the subject of my latest book, I Miss the Rain in Africa: Peace Corps as a Third Act.

Stepping out and giving back—regardless of where, for how long, or how—is transformative in unpredictable ways. It can be thought of as both “an investment in self and an investment in the future.” because of the huge returns in  redefining life, shifting priorities and greater wisdom.  We return profoundly changed in some essential way.

If you’re considering it, or have already taken the leap,  I’d love to hear how it impacted you. Are you glad you did it?

I’d love to hear from you!