S6E4: Existential Crisis

It's been a rough week in my world - life, death, imposter syndrome, future stuff, and overall existential crisis.  This is a rumble in my mind of what I am seeing in my students, in my industry, in my world, and in my head.  It's okay to not be okay.  It's okay to shift in life. What's most important is your attitude about the shift.

Next week we return with our regularly scheduled competency series!

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Transcript

Hello, hello, my friends. It is episode 96, how insane is that? Just three more short episodes before we reach triple digits. That is crazy. Today I am talking to you, I am on the road, I have a travel mic, and I'm trying it out, we're gonna see how the quality goes.  I know last week, I just started talking about the competency series. And I've got a couple episodes already pre-recorded, pre-scheduled, I'm super excited, but I'm interrupting our regularly scheduled programming, to talk about the existential crisis that I'm having currently. 

It's one of those interesting times in life where you just sit back and you kind of look around you. And you just ask yourself, what am I doing? I love indie films. We have a theater here on campus that plays some indie films. They have two films at a time and they rotate them through, I think every two weeks. And the one thing about indie films that you should know is they always have the most cryptic endings or the worst endings. And I'm definitely a person who was raised as someone who loves the happy endings. And it's interesting to me that I love these indie films, because the endings are always really, really bad, you know, bad based on societal expectations of what a good movie is, but I find that the indie movies really make me think, and so I love going to see them. 

So the other day, I was celebrating Valentine's Day, and I wanted to go see an indie film. And the film was called Sundown, and it had Tim Roth in it. And when I went up to the movie theater, and I was ordering my tickets, the guy was like, can I help you - cause there's two movies right in this theater - and I said, yes, I would like two tickets for the existential crisis movie with Tim Roth, please. And he laughed and he gave me the tickets. And it was a really interesting movie. The reviews online, sum it up best. They say that every single person who walks into this movie is going to have a completely different experience than the person that's right next to them. I would agree with that completely, because the way that the director set up this movie was that very little details were given at the beginning and in the middle, and then they're kind of sprinkled in between the middle to the end. And you create the movie in your head based on your preconceived notions. It was really, really fascinating. And the person I was with we debriefed at the end, and I was like, what did you think of the movie, and it was a completely different movie experience for them than it was for me. It was really kind of interesting. 

I'm gonna be honest, I've had that movie in my head. And I've been thinking about life, and the escapism from life, and finding meaning in life. What is life all about? I also had a person very close to me, their dog recently passed away and it was tragic. And it also made me think of, like, what is life? What is the meaning of life, right, the age old question of what is the meaning of life? 

But it always makes you wonder, what is your purpose in life, and I have a very strong purpose for my life that I feel led to. And oftentimes, I often ask myself, is this it? Can I make more of an impact? Can I touch more lives? Is this podcast actually doing anything? Are people actually listening to it? Is it actually enacting change? Should I stop it? Should I switch? Should I go do something else? Is teaching right for me? Is events right for me? Is there something I could be doing with this skill set that will leave the world in a better place? 

And I think we all kind of have those moments. I truly believe that I am as good of a teacher as I am because of my event experience. And I truly believe I was as good of am event planner as I was because of my interior design degree and my design thinking and all of these things kind of lead, one on top of another on top of another, and actually, if you've never heard of Toastmasters, I'm in Toastmasters. And I was doing an impromptu speech. One of our speakers had to cancel. And I was asked to do a speech. So I stood up there. And I gave a whole speech on this existential crisis part of everybody switches their mind on what they want to do throughout their whole life. But the really important thing is your attitude about that switch. I've never thought that switching is a bad thing. I did my undergrad in interior design, and then I switched to event planning, and that was okay, it was just a natural progression of life. And then I decided to get my PhD. And that's awesome. That was a shift. But it wasn't bad. I didn't feel like I wasted four years of my life, getting an interior design degree, when I went into event planning. And when I went into event planning, and shifted to teaching, I didn't feel like I wasted all those years of event planning. And then when I went into teaching, and I was traditional faculty, and then I switched my job into extension, I didn't feel like I was wasting that time. 

I have very modern views on tenure and on higher education. And I think so often, the people get stuck in the mindset that they've been doing something for five years, or 10 years, or they've been with a company for 10 years, and that if they're leaving, somehow they're giving up or failing, or have no purpose in their life anymore. And it's just a really interesting mindset for me, because all of my unique lived experiences in my past have made me who I am, and have made me the person and as good as I am the things that I'm doing, because I don't see these as shifts, I see this as evolvement. If I was still in interior design, and I never learned new things, and I never evolved, I would have never gone into these different career fields. And experience design, in its current iteration with events, didn't even exist when I was going to college. It's so new, it literally wasn't even a degree back then. Now, of course, there was UX and, and other user experience areas coming on board at that time in higher education, but experience design in terms of live events didn’t even exist then. It's just a really fascinating mindset. And I think I'm really struggling with that. And I tell my students all the time, I say it's okay to not be okay, all of your feelings are valid and the most important thing is just to have some self awareness. And, of course, to be curious. Curiosity is the most important thing, it's so important to be curious to sit there and have a thought or have a feeling, and then to look at it, and look all the way around it 360 degrees and above and below and say, that's interesting. Why am I having this thought?

And then just being curious about your thoughts, and what that thought says. And then you can make that decision of whether you want to keep that thought, or you want to let that thought go because it doesn't serve you. It's a very interesting way to kind of think about self awareness. And I've really been thinking about this a lot. And I always strive - it's in our core values at extraordinary events - if you go to our website at extraordinaryeventsinitiative.com. And you go to the About Us section, you'll see our purpose, and you'll see our mission, and you'll see our core values. And one of our core values is just to always be honest, and to talk about the failures and the successes, but just to be super truthful. And I think oftentimes on podcasts that are about business or careers, they're always talking about the success and believing what's possible and million dollars and it's awesome. But no one ever talks about the questionable feelings or the imposter syndrome that maybe you have in your head, and that it's okay to shift careers. And it's okay to not know what you want. And we're all kind of muddling through life based on informed decisions that we've had up until this point. 

I was talking about this, actually, a couple months ago, I think with Janet Spersad, who if I'd have had on the podcast before, about how she really opened my eyes to a lot of things. You only know what you know, at a particular moment of time. And that's what you base your decisions on. It's really important to keep an open mind to let new information in and to help evolve those choices. So back when I started in events, I was convinced it should be in hospitality, because that's where it was at the school that I went to. Janet has always been such a strong advocate that events should be in business or events should be on its own, of course, every career should be on its own, but in higher education settings, you kind of have to belong to a college. And Janet was always a huge advocate, that event should be in business and I was like, no, no, no, no, no. And then as my education evolved, and my experience evolved, and all of my input from all of these different sources, I was like, oh my gosh, no, it's so true events should be in business, it makes total sense. Like eight of our 12 core competencies are in business, we should be in business. 

And I feel like that process is also the same throughout life. I actually gave a speech on this at Ignite Lincoln on a stage in front of 400 people, just about the importance of unlearning yourself. We were all raised by parents who had the best intention, and by society, who may or may not have had the best intention, depending on where you live, and who you were surrounded by. And you have to sit there at some point and say, does this belief serve me, and I did that a lot, when I had married David, he was a huge gun - I wouldn't say supporter - but he grew up hunting and his family owned guns, and he had learned to shoot, and he was a huge gun person. And then you had me, and it's not that I was pro gun or anti gun, I had zero experience with guns. My family weren't gun owning people, I'm from the northeast, there was no real ranges. I mean, I think my mom did archery in high school, but that was about it. That was long before I was born. So I had no opinion on it, except maybe the news or the shootings, or whatnot. And I really had to sit there and say, Okay, I know what I've read in the news, and I know what society has told me, and I know what my very well intentioned family has told me, but what do I honestly believe? I need to research this thought - 360 degrees around and say, okay, unbiased, what's the research on this and what is my actual opinion? And that's how we grow and that's how we evolve. 

But there's always this element of uncertainty when it comes to the future, because we don't know. Where am I going to be in five years? What country am I going to live in? What job am I going to have? Am I still going to be teaching in higher ed? Am I still going to be in events? Is it going to be called something else? What does my life look like? And even though I have such a strong purpose, and I know the impact that I have, it doesn't mean that these thoughts don't exist. 

I am so often around students who just feel so uncertain with their life. They graduate at a bad time in the middle of COVID, or they graduate in December, which is the slowest month in events to get hired in. And there's just so much uncertainty and then I have these incredible students who have such incredible resumes and experience and the level of imposter syndrome that they have just because they just graduated with a degree. And to sit there and say, well, I have imposter syndrome too - all the time. Do I think I should be doing this? Do I think I should be consulting with this? Do I think that I deserve to be the co-author of the most popularly used intro to events textbook in the world? I have these thoughts all the time. But I think there's power in saying it out loud. And even though I might say them in one on one or small group or an enclosed class discussion, I think there's a lot of power in saying it out loud. And I wanted to go public, I wanted to say, I have a lot of thoughts and existential crisis going through my head of what my life looks like. 

I'm in my mid 30s, my life is far from over. If you were to draw a timeline, from zero to 100, or whatever age you think you might live to, and you put the little dot on where you are right now, I would almost guarantee you that your life is less than half over. And so often we think that when we're 25 or 30 or 35, that our life is pretty much over, we're halfway to retirement. But if you look at life overall, it's only one small piece. And that thing I tell myself all the time is times gonna pass anyway. So when people are like Kristin, why did you apply to finish your MBA? Or Kristin, why did you take the LSAT for fun. Or Kristin, why did you do this stuff? Because I've done all these things. Like okay, well, the time is gonna pass anyway. If I'm gonna wake up every day, and I'm going to breathe in and out every day, and I have the same 24 hours in the day as anybody else, I'm going to do the things that I care about that I'm passionate about that I want to go for. I'm not going to live my life in a day of regrets of what has, or I've lost my time, my time for that is over. No, you have the same time as everybody else. So just go out and do it and take an improv class, which I highly recommend. 

Go do the things you want to do, go get another degree, go do some continuing education. And don't feel like you are stuck in a career, or that you have to have your life figured out. Because goodness knows. This whole past week, I've been all up in my head trying to figure out my life, where I want to live, what I want to do, and just looking at what life holds for me. And knowing that it's not static, there's always the opportunity for growth. 

So if this has helped anybody, then I've made my impact with this episode and that's all I'm trying to do. Trying to just impact one life at a time and let you know, we're all going through it, and it's totally okay. Everything is gonna work out. It might not be the straight and narrow to what you thought your life would look like, but you're going to end up exactly where you should be. 

With that I never take your time for granted. Thank you for rumbling with me. Thank you for going through the murkiness with me. I just value so your time and you and your interactions with me so so much. Shoot me a note. Go to socials, follow me on social, send me an email. Let me know how you liked this episode. Don't forget to subscribe and rate and all the other things that my intern makes me say sometimes on the podcast. And thank you so much for taking the time to make the time. I'll talk with you soon.