This past week, I was delighted to be an invited speaker at a small cross-cultural gathering in New York City, held at the Asian Cultural Club and sponsored by a local cross-cultural group called Women Beyond Borders (not, as far as I know, affiliated with an art exhibit by the same name). The group was meeting to celebrate Bastille Day (14th juillet/July) and the speakers (I was one of 3) would be talking about different aspects of French culture and language. My topic was Creating a 4-Star Life™, in Paris and Beyond.
Since the format of the evening was "casual cocktail party/round table discussion", I was prepared for pretty much anything. In the end, because the discussion portion was so fascinating and lively, we were running out of time for my presentation and I needed to abbreviate what I had originally planned. (This was not a problem for me, as I was really enjoying what the first two presenters had to offer!) But never wanting to waste a good bit of writing/speaking, I decided to post the original speech here as an article. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed putting it together!
Creating a 4-Star Life™, in Paris and Beyond
Our dreams start early in life. We all have dreams of what we want our lives to be like. We imagine what we’ll accomplish and where we’ll end up. We envision what we’ll see and experience, who we’ll become, and who we’ll meet along the way. In our dreams, we are living a “4-Star Life™” – a life where we are not only doing the things we imagine ourselves doing, but where we are also BEING the person we envision ourselves as, on our very best days.
My dreams started at about age 13. I had two big dreams at that age: to become a writer; and to travel a lot and live in Paris. I don’t know why I’ve always been attracted to Paris and to all things French. I chose to study French as my foreign language requirement when everyone else told me I should learn Spanish. I love the language, even though I am miles away from being fluent. But my attraction to France goes beyond a love of the language – it’s something more, something inexplicable.
I spent my life since then probably the way most of us did: growing up, figuring out who I was; going to school and going to school some more, figuring out who I was; getting out of school and getting a job, then a different job, then a different career altogether, and figuring out who I was; going out with friends, having fun and traveling a little, along with figuring out who I was; making money, spending money, overspending money, digging myself out from overspending money, and figuring out who I was; falling in love, then falling out of love, then falling in love again; and of course, figuring out who I was.
Behind all this, the vision of living in Paris was always present, but to be honest, much of the time it was one of those “I’m going to do it – SOMEDAY” things. After all, I was still young, I had a lot of things to distract me from Paris, and lots of very excellent “excuses” – no time; no money; no boyfriend to go with – because after all, you’re supposed to be in love, in Paris, right? And especially all of that “figuring out who I was” stuff – that took an AWFUL lot of energy. I was sure busy enough, but what I wasn’t busy doing was living a 4-Star Life™.
What IS a “4-Star Life™”?
I define a 4-Star Life™ as:
“Living Boldly® in a life where we are being, and doing, the things that most matter to us, with no regrets and no excuses, and where we have become the person we always imagined ourselves to be, on our very best day.”
So why do we settle for less? Most people are barely living a ONE-star life, let alone a 4-Star one.
The analogy I like to use is this: Think of the huge difference between a 1-star hotel, and a 4-star establishment.
A 1-star hotel gives you the bare minimum you need to get by to survive. It’s got 4 walls and a door, a bed and a bathroom. It may or may not be very clean. If you have a window, the view will probably be of a brick wall or a dirty alley. It’s probably not very attractive, peaceful or restful. The neighbors aren’t the nicest. The location won’t be the best, either. You can do your best to make it livable and functional, but it’s not a place you want to hang around in for very long. You resolve you’ll never stay there again, once you get OUT.
This is what it’s like living a 1-Star LIFE. You’re doing the best you can with what you know and what you’ve got to work with, but the focus is on SURVIVAL and just getting by, and not much else. You’re struggling to move on to something better, to ANYTHING better, and you almost don’t even care WHAT, as long as it gets you out of that lousy, mediocre 1-Star place. All your energy and focus goes into this struggle. It’s exhausting. When all you can dream about is how to feed the kids and pay the rent, is it any wonder there’s no energy left for pursuing your bigger dreams?
When you can move up to a 2-star hotel, things get a little better. You might have a window with a better view, one that lets in more light. It will be cleaner, with fresh towels daily, and in a better neighborhood. The staff is a bit more congenial and you are treated better. The neighborhood, although not the best, feels “decent”, safer and more secure. The space, although still very basic and looks like all the other rooms – there’s nothing special about it, is more attractive and more pleasant to be in, at least for a short time. There might even be a swimming pool or other amenities. You don’t mind a short stay here, but you really wouldn’t want to live there for any extended length of time.
When you’re in the 2-Star level of your life, you feel better about yourself because you at least got out of where you were before. It’s a place where you can have a little breathing room, after having struggled so long and so hard. Some people stay here forever, because at this level, they’ve forgotten how to dream bigger for themselves – and they are so relieved to be out of the 1-star neighborhood that they settle for a little bit of extra security and get stuck in being comfortable right where they are. They decide to “settle” right where they are, because they believe this is as good as it gets for them.
But some, the ones who are a more bold and more hungry for something better, after a time will start to look around and become more aware that “well, this is OK, but maybe I can do even better”. When you know better, you DO better. So you aspire to keep moving forward, to create something different for yourself. This is often the stage, by the way, where we focus on attaining the outward look of “success” by acquiring the bigger house, car, or wardrobe, the more prestigious job title and salary, and the envy of our friends and neighbors. As we plan to move from 2-star to 3-star Living, we believe that if we have all of the external trappings of success, we will BE successful – and finally be happy.
So, we get down to business, do the work and we get to move up to 3-Star accommodations, where things improve dramatically. In the 3-star hotel, the rooms are more spacious, better decorated, with more attractive fixtures. There’s a concierge and a nice lobby with live plants, which makes a great first impression. The towels are fluffier, the bathrooms may have marble tiles. They turn down your bed at night and there’s a mint on the pillow, along with internet access, 60 channels of TV and pay-per-view. The view is quite nice. The community is more to your liking. There are interesting things to do and see, and for the most part, nicer people to interact with. The services are excellent. In fact, it’s so nice that you think, “I could practically LIVE here!” There’s really nothing wrong with it, and nothing to complain about. We can allow ourselves to feel very good about being here, and can pat ourselves on the back for having “made it”.
At the 3-star level of LIFE, life is actually pretty darn good, and we are reaching a lot of our goals for “success”. Those goals are focused primarily on the stuff that feels like living the GOOD life: getting the right job, finding the right life partner, living in the right home in the right neighborhood; having kids and raising them the right way and sending them to the right schools; and doing the stuff of everyday life. This is probably where many of us in this room are at, right now – and there is nothing wrong with being here. It’s a good place to be, a place were you can feel proud of all you have accomplished. You worked hard to get here. If this is where you are, and you are entirely content, then enjoy the rewards of your hard work and enjoy living that life to the fullest!
But you know what? There’s another level out there. One that’s not just about how much you HAVE or about ATTAINING MORE STUFF, but that is about being and doing that “little something extra”. It’s the place we can go to when we’ve done a great job with the 3-star level, but still feel like “isn’t there something MORE now? Where do I go from here?”
Where you go from here, is Creating a 4-Star Life™. In the same way a 4-Star hotel represents something “extra”, something special, something beyond the norm – the stuff of which dreams are made - 4-Star Living is about reconnecting with that something extra in yourself. It’s about remembering what YOUR dreams were, finding them again, and then living them.
How do we get off track from living our dreams?
How do we get back there again?
Somehow, from the point where we first HAVE our dreams, we get lost en route to FULFILLING them. I believe that as babies and young children, we are born with very specific gifts, talents and a special purpose. Our souls know exactly what all of those things are – but because we’re so young, we have no way of expressing that to anyone, no way of giving our families the necessary clues to “who we really are”. So, we grow up in our families and in our communities and in our respective cultures, and because we’re young and don’t know any better, we automatically adapt ourselves to our environment… and while we may have our dreams, we often forget them in the process of adapting.
We have to adapt ourselves to survive, because as children we have no other choice. On one end of the pendulum, some people are born into “4-Star” environments that are nurturing, where they are encouraged to be creative and imaginative, where their dreams are encouraged and unconditionally supported. On the other end of the pendulum are those who are born into “1-Star” lives, with very hostile environments, where there is little nurturing or stability of any kind, and where life is harsh, scary and even abusive. And then there is the middle zone of the pendulum, where life is neither as idyllic or as horrific as the extremes… but where we are raised among people who are probably living a 2 or even 3-star lives, where they have their own fears, their own insecurities, and their own lost dreams.
When you are a child and the people raising you have lost their ability to dream big, then they won’t be able to help you nurture your own dreams. With the best of intentions, what they pass on to you instead is their fears and insecurities about the world. When you, the young dreamer, say “When I grow up, I want to join NASA and fly the space shuttle into space”, you are told “That’s nice, dear, but it won’t ever happen. You should go to college and study something more secure, like computers or accounting!”
One Woman’s Story of Rediscovering the Dream
I once coached a young woman who was working for a division of the Martha Stewart companies. When I first met her in one of my three-part career seminars, she sounded very enthusiastic about her new job at the company, and apparently it was something she had planned for and studied for her entire college life – a career in finance – and she had only been in the job for about a year. But when she came back for the second class, she was actually very emotional – because she realized that she really WASN’T that happy with the job. In fact she had “connected the dots” after the first class and remembered that what she had always LOVED to do was to paint. She was in love with art from the time she was a little girl. Her loving parents had always encouraged her artistic talents – as long as it was as a creative HOBBY. But when she began expressing an interest in pursuing art at the college level and in focusing on art as a profession, her parents – who were born in a different era and were probably influenced by their own 1 and 2-Star life experiences – first encouraged and later pressured her into giving that dream up for something “more financially secure”. Because she trusted and loved her parents, because she was a typical teenager without the life skills or experience to be able to think entirely for herself, and because no one ever told her she really COULD dream big and do anything she really wanted to with HER life… she followed her parents’ advice and wishes. By the time we met in my seminar, she had spent 6 years of her life preparing for and beginning a career that gave her the outward “look of success” (3-Star thinking, remember?) but where her heart and soul really wasn’t in it. She was very upset about what she saw as the “wasted time”.
By the third and final class in the seminar, she was a changed person! With encouragement from me and the entire seminar group, after the second class she had dug out her old painting supplies and easel and had started painting again. She had painted nearly every day during that week, and she already felt, as she said, “1000% better” about herself and her life. She said it was like rediscovering a lost friend, like something had really been missing from her life for a long time and she hadn’t known what it was – but it was her need to create through her painting. She didn’t know exactly what she would be doing with it professionally at that early stage, but she knew that, one way or another, she was going to take active steps to look for ways to introduce art back into her life again, and not just as a hobby.
This woman’s story makes a very important point – that when we have a dream that is really part of our SOUL’s PURPOSE for being here, ignoring it doesn’t work. You can tell yourself “it’s nothing” and you can distract yourself from it by building a life for yourself that looks good “on paper”, but where something feels like it’s missing. Other people can tell you “That won’t work” or “That’s just stupid” – but that dream will still be calling out to you, nagging at you, coming back to haunt you again and again.
Of course, some dreams ARE fleeting, “pie-in-the-sky” kind of dreams, things we think would be fun or nice if we could have them, but things we truly aren’t committed to doing anything about. Like becoming a concert pianist or famous singer, a major league baseball player, or President of the United States (although that one doesn’t have as much caché as it used to, does it?) Or maybe our dreams are of one day living in a beach house, owning a Bed & Breakfast, or writing a great novel. Most of our bigger, most outlandish dreams are, in theory, POSSIBLE, but if they are of the more fleeting variety, the “nice to have but I’m not really that serious about it” type of dreams, then we’ll probably not attain them – and we’ll be perfectly OK about that.
“Soul Purpose Dreams”: How do you tell the difference…
How do you tell the difference between a “nice to have” kind of dream, and the dreams that are really a part of your soul that is crying out to be expressed in some way? Those “soul purpose dreams” (the dreams that lead you to your soul’s purpose) are the ones that simply will not leave you alone, no matter how much stuff you pile up on top of it or how many walls you build around yourself to hide from it. It’s not going to go away.
Living in Paris, and becoming a professional writer and published author, is that kind of “soul purpose dream” for me. It’s “the dream that wouldn’t die”, despite nearly 30 years of life clutter trying to suffocate it. I lived a 1-and-2-Star Life early on, and worked my way up to a 3-star life, with a prestigious career in I.T. and web design, a home of my own, had great friends, dated nice men who treated me fine, had lots of social activity and the freedom to do as I pleased. I thought: what more could I really want?
My self-created life clutter kept me from even VISITING Paris until 1998 – and even then, the most I could manage was a weekend there, while on a 2-week business trip in Frankfurt. But I made the most of it, and although I had to deal with the April rains the entire time, it didn’t dampen my joy and enthusiasm at finally being there, and once again, I resolved that I would move there, “someday soon”.
By that time, I had actually gone through a few major life changes: I was in the process of changing careers, moving from a corporate career in I.T. and web design to creating a whole new life as a self-employed, career/life coach. I had resolved that I wanted a different kind of lifestyle with more flexibility, autonomy, creativity and freedom, and I was ready to take some drastic steps to create it.
Defining life moments that catalyze us
In 1996 I had one of those defining life moments, one that would change the course of my life. For some people, the catalyst for change comes in the form of an illness or personal tragedy – I’m happy to say I got off easy, because my wake-up call was as simple as falling in my living room and breaking my leg in three places. I call this my “lucky break” because what I got during those 3 months of recovery was the first major step into a 4-Star Life.
For the first time in my life, I was literally forced to sit still (having no other real choice) and some days I had nothing much to do other than to think. I started realizing maybe my life wasn’t as fabulous as I had been leading myself to believe. It wasn’t bad, but something was definitely missing. Over the coming months, as my body healed and I went back to work, I continued to invest time in myself through reading about other career options and doing some journaling, as well as researching my options online. And one day as I was on the web, I literally ‘stumbled’ upon my next career: Life Coaching.
I was so damned excited I couldn’t see straight.
Within a month I had enrolled in a coach training program while still keeping my day job (and even got my boss to agree to pay for it!) That was in March 1997. In June 1998 I graduated from the training program. In July I decided I was ready for the next big leap – quitting my job to become self-employed as a full-time coach. I took another bold step and sold my high-cost-high-maintenance condo, which gave me some “seed money” for my new venture. And by October I left the corporate world behind for good.
I have never had a single regret about that decision. I still know it was the right thing for me to do.
The years between 1998 and 2001 were learning years for me, and also years of financial struggle. Business wasn’t always the best, although I had good months from time to time. I took part-time jobs to supplement my income, and a coach friend convinced me I should use my web design talents by building web sites for other coaches to help them get established – a ‘side business’ that has served me very profitably ever since.
Paris was never far from my mind, although most of my time and energy was again wrapped up in “survival” as I struggled to build a coaching business. One of the smaller dreams I had always had for myself was that I would celebrate my 40th birthday in Paris. In May 2001, I made THAT dream come true, with a short trip that included not one but two celebratory dinners with friends and family in Paris, and my first (and hopefully last) experience in being pick-pocketed in the Paris metro. I came home older, wiser, and more resolved than ever to make Paris my home, and to stop putting off my dreams.
On September 10th, 2001 (note the date), I resurrected another small dream by buying a piano keyboard. I played piano as a child and teen, and then dropped it for over 20 years, but always longed to have music in my life again. Although I was never very good, I always enjoyed it, and decided to stop procrastinating about it. I felt like I was building momentum with this new habit of following through on making my dreams a reality. But I had no idea what was about to happen next, and the unexpected impact it would eventually have on my life.
I was enjoying playing that piano from the moment I woke up on September 11th, and so didn’t even bother turning on the news or even eating breakfast until about 10:32am – when I sat down with a bowl of cereal and flipped on the TV, just moments after the second tower fell. What I saw, I thought was a scene from a movie. Then I thought it had to be some OTHER Twin Towers there were talking about, because that couldn’t possibly be OUR Twin Towers. Then I knew it was for real. I find it ironic that I came so late into the events of that day because I was enjoying the fulfillment of a long-ignored dream.
I’m not going to talk about the losses suffered that day. Instead I want to talk about what I gained. In the weeks that followed, as I coached and supported others as well as dealing with my own emotions, a recurring theme emerged: What I, and nearly everyone I talked to, seem to be feeling, was a sense of wondering “where do I go from here? What is MY life about? What do I want to do next with my life?”
I realized that what I most wanted my life to stand for was Living Boldly® - that I wanted to be someone who knew what mattered for myself and then acted on it, rather than always wishing it would happen or only talking about doing it “someday”. THAT was what I wanted to be known for and remembered for –
“She lived her life boldly and with no regrets, and inspired us to do the same.”
I can think of no more meaningful purpose for my life.
As 2001 melted into 2002, and then into 2003, I continued working in/struggling with my coaching practice. Living Boldly® was now a theme in my business and a trademark I owned in the coaching work I was doing, but I was having a harder time living it myself. I don’t think this is unusual – it often takes us time from the moment when we have a pivotal realization to the time when we are ready to really do something about it.
One evening in late 2003, I had a “light bulb moment” – maybe the reason my coaching practice had not, after 6 years, become profitable and sustainable (i.e., financially successful by my terms) was because – GASP! – it wasn’t where I was really MEANT to be, after all. Maybe there was… something else I was supposed to be doing instead.
Once I crossed over this line in my own mind, it wasn’t a far leap to ask the next big, scary, dangerous question. “If I didn’t do THIS (coaching), what would I most want to do instead?” I had asked myself that same question on a number of occasions during the years I was struggling to make ends meet as a coach, but each time the answer was that I couldn’t think of anything else I would RATHER be doing other than coaching – so I just kept plowing ahead with trying to build a financially successful coaching practice. I now realize, I wasn’t ready yet to hear the REAL answer.
On this one night, I was brave enough to ask the question one more time. I got very quiet and took a deep breath, and asked it. This time, I got an immediate and very different answer, almost as if it was someone else saying it to me:
“What you need to be doing is living in Paris, and WRITING about it. You are a writer.”
I think we all recognize the truth when we see it, and once it’s OUT THERE, there’s no turning back or hiding from it. I sat straight up in bed as the impact of this statement hit me. I thought about it again, and realized that it felt right. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the signs had been pointing there for over 30 years, but I just hadn’t seen them. In fact, this was the first time I could remember admitting to myself or to anyone that I really wanted to be a writer – that writing was more than just a special skill or that writing a book meant more to me than just a way to get professional recognition as a coach.
Thinking back, I realized I had ALWAYS been a writer and someone who has a talent with words and the craft of language. I started talking at the age of 9 months; I wrote silly short stories and kept journals as a child; I excelled in any subject that required me to write something (although I developed a lazy habit of leaving my term papers until the last minute, then writing my way to an “A” grade with very little research or effort). Writing was always present to me as a “skill”, something that I did really well and it had value, as a skill. No one ever suggested that I might be able to make a good living at it – in fact, I was told quite the opposite, by people who “meant well” and wanted to “spare me” from disappointment and the “starving writer” label, I suppose. So, I embraced it as a skill and added it to my résumé, and it served me well.
In the business world, although ‘writing’ was never in my job description, the writing parts of any job or project would fall to me. On any project team, I was usually the best writer, and I enjoyed it. In fact, at my last corporate job, my boss once told me I should quit that job to go and write a book about the internet because I knew so much about it and was such a good writer (he was basing the “good writer” judgment solely on having seen me write business memos and technical documentation). He didn’t know it, but he planted a seed that day.
Preparing for my 4-Star life, in Paris and Beyond!
So… here I am now, and that seed has sprouted and taken root. No, I am not yet living in Paris… but I am preparing and I am on my way. I have been brushing up on my French through weekly lessons. I have been reading everything I can get my hands on to learn about French culture, history and practical things I will need to know about in order to make a life in France. I have made some dramatic lifestyle changes in the past year that allow me to put aside the funds to cover expenses for at least the first year in Paris. And most importantly, I am now making a very nice living as a freelance writer, in addition to maintaining a small coaching practice and continuing to create web sites for small businesses.
Things are flowing, falling into place more easily and with no feeling of STRUGGLE – and that is how I know I am on the right track to the 4-star life I am creating.
To sum up, let me leave you with what I feel are the most important things I have learned about creating your own 4-Star Life:
- Dream Big. If the dream you are dreaming for your life doesn’t scare you, then it’s not big enough. Dream it BIGGER and BOLDER. When it feels scary but at the same time it’s something you feel you MUST do, then you’ll know it’s big enough.
- Do the work. Don’t do the struggle. Dreaming about your 4-Star Life™ is only the first step. You can’t have your dream if you aren’t willing to put some action behind it. Be willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. Be aware: if it feels like STRUGGLE, take a step back and regroup. Assess what the struggle is about and make adjustments to your approach as needed.
- Create a plan and back it up with consistent action. Figure out what steps you need to take to make your version of a 4-Star Life a reality.
- Get support. No one succeeds alone. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for help. Figure out who needs to be on your support team and what kind of help you need.
- Be committed – and patient. Your dream will take time to plan and to manifest. There WILL be delays and obstacles – you can count on it. If you aren’t committed to it, then you will want to quit when it gets rough and it will become just another thing you wish for, but never do. With the commitment you will need patience and the ability to stick to this long enough to see it through to the finish line.
I am already beginning to live my dream – I’m creating my 4-Star Life. It’s unfolding before me, not by luck or chance, but by choice and design. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, either, because it’s about a journey rather than a destination.
Because my dream of writing in Paris is not really just about PARIS – this goes far BEYOND Paris, and I am not just talking about geography. It’s about what it represents to me – the idea of Living Boldly… of being the kind of person I envision myself as being on my very best day. For me, that person is someone who will overcome their fears, their obstacles and even their own past mistakes to LISTEN to their “soul purpose”, to step out, take the bold path, and really LIVE.
Your idea of Living Boldly might look radically different than mine. Maybe your 4-Star Life involves marriage, a family, or owning that beachfront property. Maybe it involves jogging on the Great Wall of China or running the New York Marathon for the first time. Maybe it’s about overcoming certain fears or obstacles that have been holding YOU back from doing things you enjoy.
Whatever your dreams, whatever your vision, I hope you will each be inspired to take the next step in creating your own 4-star Life. Go forth and LIVE – Boldly!
