How To Create The Life You Desire

A short story of how I went from brokenness to abundance — and how you can do the same

I woke up early in the morning on January 1st, 2021 with a broken wrist, an empty bank account, and a face full of tears. It was only a handful of hours into the new year and I had already sworn off its potential. 

It was my first time back in California since I made the cross-country move to NYC. And if there’s one thing us fellow NYC transplants can agree on — it’s that the first year chews you up and spits you out. Only the strong survive. At least that’s what I thought. Prior to my trip back home, I hadn’t lived in the city for very long — but long enough to know that I hated it. I hated the chaos. I hate the cold. I hated being away from my community. And more than anything — I hated how much I hated it. My distaste for NYC made me feel weak. It made me question myself and my ability to persevere.

During my first few months of big city living, I wasn’t really living at all. I was “living” off unemployment and quarantined to my closet-sized bedroom (for reference — my bed touched three walls). I had lost my job waiting tables after the beloved pandemic decided to make her debut. I was barely getting by — emotionally, physically, and mentally. By the end of 2020, I had applied to over 100 jobs, trying to get my foot in the door somewhere — anywhere. But alas, not even a callback for an interview came my way. Not even a rejection email — just crickets.

On top of the financial stress — I had just started a graduate program in Global Affairs at NYU — via Zoom. And despite the comfort of tuning into class from my bedroom, I still somehow felt like the stupidest person in the room. All my peers had fancy degrees in international relations, economics, or political science. They had interned with the United Nations, shadowed diplomats through war-torn countries, built their own non-profit organizations from the ground up. At the time, my most notable professional output was my four-year term serving at The Cheesecake Factory. That place is a warn zone in its own right. On most days, I turned off my camera for a majority of class in fear that someone would see through me. They would recognize that I was a phony, they would sniff out my insecurities and expose them.

My confidence was quickly draining out of me. The tenacious girl that had moved to NYC was dissolving with each passing day. I had never felt more unsure of myself and my abilities. I was emotionally volatile, reactive, negative, insecure. By the very end of 2020, my emotional state was so bad that I had a designated crying corner nestled right behind my bedroom door. It became both my morning and night routine to sit in that corner and sob for hours at a time. I never missed a night, I never missed a beat. At least I still had my discipline. I had utterly convinced myself that I would fail out of school, that I would never make new friends, that I would never find a job — that I would never be happy.

By the time I made my way back home to California for the holidays — I was inching towards rock bottom. And then just one day prior to the heavily anticipated end of 2020 — I actually hit rock bottom after shattering my wrist on an icy mountain in Big Bear. Great — now I have to navigate NYC with a broken fucking wrist.

So when I woke up early in the morning on January 1st, 2021 — it really wasn’t just my wrist that was broken — I was broken. I didn’t want to start a new year, with new goals, new possibilities, and new mindsets. I wanted to melt into my sleep and wake up when life hopefully got better. 

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Exactly a year later, I woke up early in the morning on January 1st, 2022, sipping warm coffee on a terrace in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with a panoramic ocean view. I was approaching my final semester at NYU. I had managed to maintain a 4.0 GPA throughout my prior three semesters, which landed me a part-time job working as a graduate assistant to one of my program’s most respected professors. I had recently been awarded a $15,000 scholarship for an essay I wrote on international development and cultural competence.

I had one self-published book of poetry & prose, that was peaking in sales and became the #1 Release in Poetry by Women on Amazon. Only a couple months after the release of my first book, I was offered a book deal from Thought Catalog Books (a publishing house I had been submitting my work to for years) to begin working on my next book. And just a week after I had signed my book contract, I was offered a full-time position working remotely as a data analyst contractor — which accompanied a hourly rate that doubled what I had been making at my last job.

In just one year my life had dramatically turned around.

So on that New Years Day morning of 2022, I sat on the terrace and allowed warm tears to stream down my face. But this time, not from a place of brokenness, but from a place of gratitude. How did this happen? What changed over the past year? Was this all by a stroke of luck? How did I get here?

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I think the pressing question many of us are asking ourselves is — how? How do we get from where we are now to where we want to be? What do we need to do? What steps do we need to take? How long do we need to wait? We look at where we are now, and compare it to where we want to be, and immediately become discouraged by the disparity.

So we work harder, we plan more, we strategize deeper. We apply, we rush, we push, we chase, we pursue. We do all of the things that we think we need to do.

But in doing this, we exhaust ourselves. We expend all our energy on the external. We constantly spin our wheels, yet stay in the same place. And eventually, we become discouraged all over again. We become bitter, angry, frustrated, negative, insecure. We succumb to the belief that this life is not working for us — but against us. And once we’ve eventually become bored with our own pity party, we get up and try again — yet we continue on the same cycle of drive and disappointment. 

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Since experiencing a series of open doors throughout the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time digging into that pressing question — how? How did my life transform so much in one year? What did I do differently? And when attempting to answer those questions, I’ve realized that my outputs and actions didn’t change much at all. I was always working towards my goals, I was always focused on what I wanted. 

So what did change? 

My mindset. My beliefs. My internal world. At some point, I decided to finally step out of my victim mentality and step into my agency. I shifted my focus from the external to the internal. I put my attention on all the things I did have, rather than focusing on the things I didn’t. I was intentional with my thought patterns, I made gratitude lists every day. I cultivated a deep trust in the unknown, and reaffirmed that trust through my daily practices. I was thankful for my present moment. I fully enjoyed my life. 

That is what changed. And that is what transformed my life. 

Oftentimes, when we overwork and exhaust ourselves — we are operating out of a place of fear. Deep down we either don’t believe that our dreams are possible, or we don’t feel worthy of them. So our brains tell us to work more, to try harder, to push, to force, to pursue. We think that more output will create more opportunity. And in some cases that may be true. But it’s not as black and white as we’d like to think. 

We are both physical and spiritual beings. We operate through our actions and our energy. So when our tangible and intangible efforts are not in alignment — we often feel stuck. And because we live in a physical world, we assume that we need to change our actions in order to see progress. But really — it’s our energy that needs to change. We need to raise our internal vibration to match our external output. We need to change our beliefs, our perspectives, our mindset. 

Our actions and energy should always be balanced by one another. If we have an undying belief in our abilities, yet make no tangible progress in the physical — we will feel stagnant. Or, if we work endlessly towards our goals, but don’t take time to fix our limiting beliefs — we will feel stagnant. 

When I look back on my life, I realize that my biggest blessings came in times of deep trust. They came in times of flow, rather than in times of force — in times of rest, rather than in times of rush. When I operated from a place of trust and authenticity, everything I desired rushed towards me. 

My friends,  your desires are there for a reason. Your skills, your interests, your abilities, were all given to you for a divine purpose. Please remember —where you are right now is not indicative of where you will be in the future. Ask yourself what’s really holding you back. 

Start from the internal and your external will naturally reflect everything you believe.

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 If this topic resonated with you, you can pre-order my upcoming book Come Home to Yourself, coming out November 1st!