The Journey Begins: Starting up The Changing Booth

After 2.5 years of ideas, brainstorming and post-it notes, the site is finally live. It's both exciting and scary to share this creation with the world to see if it resonates.

The main idea behind The Changing Booth is that I want to create a space where you can go for inspiration and practical ideas if you want to do something different in your life. There have been countless times in my life where I've sat in front of Google and wondered what I should do with my life. Many times I have also had the energy and motivation to do something different, but had no idea where to start. And when you ask big questions on the internet, you usually get vague, generic and uninteresting suggestions that don't get you far. I want to change that. So my job now is to find interesting, personally curated things for all of you to do and experience off the beaten path of the Internet.

It is definitely an interesting experience to start a company that focuses on change and taking action whilst personally going through a massive professional change that requires resilience, new ideas and massive amounts of action, daily. I really have to practice what I preach - which is empowering in many ways. Yet, I also have empathy and compassion for how difficult and tiring it is to shift your life in a new direction.

The idea of TCB came to me in 2021 in Lanzarote, Spain

I have been working on this idea in my mind since the summer of 2021. I have given up on it a few times, but then returned when a new solution has presented itself. In April of 2023 I decided to figure out a way to fully go for it and after brainstorming and weighing different options I finally found a way forward that worked specifically for me, specifically at this moment - the best kind of solution. So as of 1st of January 2024, I have taken the big leap and left my full-time employment in order to focus on this big idea.

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I want to take the opportunity to share my intention with this site. The point of The Changing Booth isn't to shame people into doing more, just for the sake of doing more. It is to equip people with the tools, skills and opportunities to do what they want to do in life and to make the changes they want to make.

We all have different circumstances in life in terms of time, money, support, ability and so on. What is easy and accessible to some it frankly impossible for others. We sadly live in an unfair world with uneven distribution of resources on a systemic level. Unfortunately, I alone cannot change how the world operates in that regard, but I can try to create a small haven for creativity, change, dreams, encouragement, innovation and inspiration for you to share in. I invite people who want to live by doing, to join this community to share and support each other with ideas and encouragement. Both of which are free.

The Changing Booth's values are: accountability, self-compassion, agency, confidence, support and above all, action.

The road to change is very long. Typically it looks like this...

• You are fed up

• You start to think about change

• You start browsing for change

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• You find something interesting

• You consider if it's for you

• You research the opportunity further

• You deliberate if you want to go for it

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• You half-decide that you want to go for it

• You convince yourself to not back out

• You get an overwhelming feeling of anxiety and think "what am I doing?"

• You convince yourself again not to back out

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• You DO IT!

• You process your impressions and emotions about what happened

• You form an opinion about your experience

• You express your opinion: celebrate, sit in disappointment, talk through your mixed feelings

In the bigger picture, it doesn't matter if what you do is a success or a failure. Regardless of the outcome, you have gotten yourself through 15 (!) above-mentioned action points that required a significant amount of courage, resilience, confidence and agency. You have actively added an experience to your life that you can be proud of. Congratulations!

The more things you go after, the more life experience you gain, the more fully you live your life and contribute to your own story. But again, the point is not to do more for the sake of doing more. The point is that YOU are doing more of what YOU want to do with YOUR life. Maybe you need to scale down, maybe you need to dream bigger, maybe you need to restart a resting project, maybe you need to create some peace and quiet to think, maybe you need to keep going. All of these things are incredibly difficult to do, but may ultimately be rewarding if they enable you to live your life how you want to live it. Being excited about life is a great force of change.

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On a final note, the Change blog will re-tell some of the "change" stories from my life - what happened, how I dealt with it and how the situation contributed to my life. I have about 13 years of experience worth of stories to share with you. And the cool thing is, that when I catch up to 2024 I will probably be able to share about the obstacles I am currently facing as I am writing this blog. Life really is a full-circle adventure if you actively live your life.

So once again, I welcome you to this site! I hope that my blog posts, social media content, and recommended opportunities will in some way open your mind to different possibilities in your own life and inspire you to take action. Thanks for visiting and be sure to join our community of Doers if you want to tag along on our journey.

Until next time, happy doing!