Who says there’s just one way to live? Earn a living, raise a family and live happily ever after, right? But what if you face a break-up, you’re in a dead-end job and you lose the roof over your head? What’s left? Or will you finally have the time and space to find out who you truly are? 

If you would’ve asked me twelve years ago who I was, I would have answered: I’m 29 and I work for a large corporate. I live in Amsterdam with my boyfriend. In my free time I love sports and socializing with my friends. Oh, and I have been to fifty countries.  

But I learned I’m not my job, nor my relationship. Losing everything was a hard, but effective way to let go of who I was and become who I might be.  

Recently I went on a retreat at the Recovery College and some of the younger girls there reminded me of myself a decade ago. Not ready to give up the job I had worked so hard for all my life. Or not able to get over a relationship I grew up in. After eight years in a relationship, I didn’t know who I was anymore. Our lives were so intertwined. And after eight years at a large corporate I found it so hard to let go, I walked into my senior director’s office crying, saying I just didn’t want to do the job anymore. And she said: “It’s just a job”. But even though she was right, it didn’t feel like just a job at the time, it was my life. At least I thought it was. 

After this tremendous loss, I mourned and grieved and misbehaved, to a point where the whole wall came falling down. But maybe it was necessary to face some truths about myself: 

I now realize that all my (adult) life, I have been running. I thought I was running towards something; my dreams, a country, a company. But I have been running away; away from relationships and away from places that reminded me of those relationships. It’s time to stop running. It’s time to slow down and grow some roots. Running away from something is exhausting, especially when you have been doing it for over twenty years. And I am tired now. Every time something didn’t work out (the relationship, the job, or just life in general), I would leave and start over somewhere else.  

But: “You can go the whole world over, every city has its dawn, but everybody living has one place where he was born”.  

This is my life. Not tomorrow, not in five or ten years from now, all I have is today. And today was a fine Saturday.

 

Surfing Life to me is about:

• Chasing opportunities, without pushing 

• Leaving space for coincidence 

• Letting go when you have done all you can  

I graduated high school almost 24 years ago. Time sure flies. What if I was to give a commencement speech to the class of 2000, with the wisdom I have now? What would my advice be?

Keep on chasing your dreams. It will leave you with great experiences. And in the end, that’s the only thing you will remember. But know when to slow down, otherwise you will miss the flicks on the head and before you know it the whole wall will come falling down. Time is a non renewable resource, so spend it wisely. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. No need to compare yourself to others, you are never gonna be the best version of yourself if you’re being a copy cat. Practice self-compassion as if it were a way of life, don’t be too hard on yourself and others for that matter. You’re simply not gonna win all the time, you’re gonna lose some. You gotta get over the bad times. And remember, stop trying so hard, create space for coincidence.

I’m a nomad: ‘a person who does not stay long in the same place, a wanderer’. But lately I ask myself, where will I finally take root?

When I think about the next few years, as in: wandering around some more, being unemployed and single, I want to jump off a cliff and we don’t even have cliffs in the Netherlands. Game over. At least, that’s what it feels like. The only thought that makes it bearable is that there are larger forces at stake. I, my little self, can’t change my situation. It’s up to the Universe.

S U R R E N D E R 

Lessons learned: trying to find Leonardo by finding a house and a job is like ‘trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum’* [Wear Sunscreen]. Stop looking for Leonardo, actually, stop looking for anything at all. I have been looking for all the wrong things in all the wrong places over the past decade anyways.

And I keep running into walls. No flicks on the head or bricks in the face, just one wall after another. There must be something I don’t see. The job is not the point, the house is not the point. So what is the point then?

‘The rest of my life’ is just really far away in the future it seems. I keep wondering if I’m doing something wrong. I said goodbye to an eight year relationship at 29. I quit my career in International Business after ten years at age 35. And I moved in with my parents at 40, an age where one usually is supposed to have their ducks in a row.

It’s not the end goal that counts, but the journey, they say. The Quest, I call it. Maybe the point of living is not having it all and then starting your life. But trying to get there is the Life. Life is the road to making your dreams come true.

A nice introduction for those who have just started their Spiritual Journey:

https://youtu.be/1Gh2Nc9pCrA?si=PoRtSMLjSsuEZ6oN

1. You’re not ready

2. You are being redirected on a different path

3. The time hasn’t come

4. Better things are coming

This is the question that started my .com almost ten years ago. I was devastated by troubled parents, broken relationships and just diagnoses with Bipolar I Disorder. So I found myself a life coach to guide me through the mess called my life. She introduced me to a concept called the Vision Quest, which inspired me to go on my own quest, a Quest to ‘The rest of my life’.

A journey that took me from Holland to the end of the world, that made me move continents and landed me a job at Nike’s WHQ. But I was trying too hard and looked in all the wrong places. I wanted to ‘find my Leonardo’, but Surfing Life is about creating space for coincidence and letting people come to you, I learned on my Quest.

Now that I’m back on home soil I realize my dreams have come true and I have a sense of magic, what if I dream up something else, can I have that too? Just figure out what you want, and let it then become part of the flow. That’s what Surfing Life is all about.

Happy Surfing 🏄🏼‍♀️

What if you were given a year and a half off, with a roof over your head, food in your fridge, but you were not allowed to make any money, or leave the country.

Imagine. Would you sleep in and enjoy not having to get up early in the morning? But that gets old right? Or would you work out, to get super fit? But you can’t work out all day every day…

It’s like a never ending COVID lock down, but this time, you’re the only one in it. Those rules don’t apply to anyone else. No, the people around you move on with their lives, they go to work and raise their families.

This is what happened to me.

The first couple of months volunteerwork seemed like a useful way to spend my days. YouTube and Netflix filled the evening, until I went to bed. But deep down inside I was hungry for more. Except, I didn’t have any money, so going for dinner and a movie wasn’t an option.

To me, this time that was given to me, was a curse. I had to wait for yet another year before I could finally start living. Because living is whatever happens after you have a place of your own and a job, at least, that’s what I thought.

But then I spoke to my therapist and he’s like: you need something that tickles your mind. What interests you, what do you really care about? Find out what it is and write about it.

This is when my search really started.

I had been writing all my life, diary entries, school papers, I even had my own blog, which, except for a few friends and acquaintances, no one read. So that was safe ground. But now I had a new challenge: write a piece that would generate some real traffic, before the year and a half were over. And since the time I was given started two months ago, I have one year, three months and nineteen days left. Starting today.

A few years after I returned from the US, I got the unsettling feeling I was doing something wrong. Nothing went the way I wanted it to. I wasn’t so much on a quest to my self proclaimed ‘rest of my life’, but on a quest to finding myself it seemed. I moved around so much, I didn’t understand people anymore and they didn’t understand me. I was a foreigner in my own country. I didn’t belong anywhere. So I saw a psychic and she said: ‘You have to stop lying’, and by that she meant ‘Start telling the truth about how you feel’. Wow, how do I feel?

Today five years ago I started this blog. So I’m happy to announce it has reached people from Holland to the US and from China to the UK. On an annual basis it had 900 views and 305 unique visitors. It is a work in progress, but who knows where it will be in another five years.

Check out thesurfoflife.com