Ep #64: My Uncommon Story: Sex, Drugs and Flamenco

Episode Summary

Jenna shares stories of her early adulthood, partying and living vibrantly on the beach in Formentera, Spain.

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Show Notes

In this episode, we continue My Uncommon Story series to give you some context on how I developed my current perspective toward life and entrepreneurship. Today, we jump back into my early 20s where I was finding my way post-college, exploring rebellion, and more.

After graduating from college, I zipped back to Spain, partied, and enjoyed the summer season in Formentera. Discover the moments of this time that have really stuck with me, why exploration is so important, and why I am so excited for young entrepreneurs today.

Enjoy this salacious tail battling the beauty and dark moments of youth. Learn how this time helped me to identify strengths and interests and ultimately, how la buena vida, the good life, forced me to claim my values and goals.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• How to identify work environments that work for you.

• Why it takes time to find your path.

• How to notice identity curiosity and shifts.

• How I won over my Spanish mother-in-law.

• How I found my values and goals.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

Hey, this is a new series where I'm giving you the context behind what I share in this podcast; i.e. what went on in my life to get me here. Think of this as part entrepreneurial mindset building told through stories, part historical nonfiction, and part audacious, salacious, beach read. I hope you enjoy.

You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach, and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.

Hey there, and welcome back to The Uncommon Way. I am going to take you today through one of my favorite periods of life, and one that I get asked about most often. So, it's what you might have seen on the About Me page of my website, or I’ve mentioned having run away to Spain after college to be a hippie and working on a nudist beach.

Again, what I mentioned when I first began this series, is that what you hear in these episodes, they may not jive exactly with the perception that you have of me, which might be a good or bad thing. But it definitely is more fully me in all of my human complexities.

So, last episode, we left off when I was halfway through college. I left my temporary summer home of Formentera, Spain, after having fallen head over heels for a Spanish man. He, Paco, had just pulled off his miraculous feat on my very last day there. He spontaneously bought an airplane ticket in Ibiza’s airport, and then flew to Madrid with me to stay overnight.

It filled me with hope that somehow we would defy the odds, and we would make this work. So, I landed back at school for my junior year just like a lovesick puppy. I was missing him and the sun and the Spanish lifestyle.

I can't remember if I mentioned this earlier, but you might be familiar with this song by The Mamas and the Papas called “California Dreamin’.” It says, “All the leaves were brown, and the sky was gray. I went for a walk on a winter's day.” It's all about how just dreaming of the sunshine in California, this California lifestyle, and they're stuck in all this gray rain.

Well, that was actually written at my college, at Swarthmore, by Mama Cass. So, this is the exact same environment that I'm returning to after being in Spain. And, what's truly ironic, is that right now, we're living in Pennsylvania and it's a very cold, gray, rainy, fall day. So, it's bringing me back.

On top of that, I hadn't been able to choose my roommates for the year because I'd been gone the year before, and I had a super heavy Course Load making up for the year that I'd spent in Spain. I now know about myself that I really get hit by seasonal affective disorder.

I don't think I noticed that the first time when I moved from Washington State to Pennsylvania, because it's drizzly in Washington all the time. But when I'm in a place that’s sunny and then I go somewhere dark, it hits me. Like, when I moved from Florida to Germany. It's just like ouch, especially that first year. Ouch.

So, there I was missing him, feeling sorry for myself. But even though Paco was in sunny Spain, he was also feeling the separation. So, we hatched a plan where he would come and live in the States for a few months. Swarthmore is right outside of Philadelphia, so we got him a really cheap studio apartment in West Philly. The poor guy. Remember, he does not speak English, so he was just so bored the whole time.

Now, at this point, my parents still had not met him, and they were convinced that he was just with me for the U.S. Green Card, which was insulting to both of us, but I guess they were being protective. But the thing is, he was like, “I hate this. I don't like it here. Spain is amazing. Why aren't we living in Spain?” That was my first awareness that he really wouldn't be happy in the States.

There was also such a divide between the conversations that I could have with my college friends, versus the ones that I could have with him. Now remember, a few months before, when I had met him in Seville, my Spanish wasn't that hot either. But during those months in Formentera when I couldn't speak English, it vastly improved.

That also improved our communication. I could start to pick out subtleties. We could have more in-depth conversations. And, I could see where we weren't able to have conversations, things that we couldn't converse about.

All of those things probably started to form the belief for me that this isn't going to work. I didn't have the tools, or the awareness, to even question that. This just points to the life changing aspect of this work, of life coaching. I mean, what is the value of it? Well, what's the value of one decision? Like, a life partner, of being able to stay with someone or leave, or the value of not second guessing that decision for the rest of your life.

Learning how to become aware of your brain, question your thoughts, and then get to a point where you can make clean decisions, or at least the cleanest decisions possible, that's everything. This is what we should be taught in school. But I didn't have that, and I felt myself withdrawing emotionally.

So, through the rest of my college years, we dated other people. Now, in between my junior and senior year I won a scholarship to start my MBA at the University of Chicago. This was a pilot program. They were known as a very quantitative heavy school, and they were looking to round out their student body with students from liberal arts colleges.

And so, they went to all the best liberal arts colleges in the country, and they set up a special scholarship for one student from each college to come and take their first quarter of work, of their MBA, in between the junior and senior year, totally paid for. Then they'd be guaranteed admission to come back after their senior year of college to complete the work. So, it was a fantastic opportunity, and I won the spot from Swarthmore.

A couple of important things happened there. One is, that I truly came to understand what it means when people say ‘your MBA is so much about the connections.’ Because compared to the academic rigor of Swarthmore, and to be fair, I was not enrolling in any of the quantitative classes. Yet, at Chicago, I was doing business law and marketing and things like that, some of the softer subjects, and yet, the rigor wasn't there. I didn't feel challenged.

So, I realized that really, I was potentially going to pay all of this money, for my MBA, for courses that didn't feel challenging to me, in order to gain some connections. But the even more formative memory, and some of you who have been with me for a while might have heard this story before.

But because we were in this pilot program, and it was very interesting, we were being recruited by some of the “top companies” at that time; the Goldman's and the McKinsey's. I remember we had an event at the top of the Sears Tower, which is what it was then called, and Goldman was hosting it. They were having people from their organization stand up and talk about why they loved working for Goldman so much

A woman stood up, and she, after working as an investment banker for several years, had become pregnant and ended up piloting their daycare program for employees, throughout Goldman globally. She was talking about that work being fulfilling. And then, she kind of paused.

She mentioned how it was so different than when they would be pulling those all-nighters, and she just have a change of shirt that she'd have to put on for the next day, after working so hard on a project. She kind of paused for a moment, her fingers grazed the pearl necklace that she was wearing, and she looked sidelong at a coworker of hers. Let's just call him Larry. I don't remember his name.

But she's like, “You remember that Larry?” There was so much longing in that, that it felt almost sexual in nature. The thing is, you all, I resonated with it. I resonated with the hit of that adrenaline, of working all night, of pushing yourself, of being the best.

That exact same second, when I felt that hit of adrenaline, I also felt a deep resistance to that. Like a deep warning within. A warning bell going off within me saying, “Jenna, this is the path that you will go down if you're not careful. Where you're thinking back on the glory days of how fun that used to be, that kind of lifestyle of pushing yourself that hard.”

And so, even though I felt the call… Of course, I'd been in competitive spaces my whole life and I wanted to be the best of the best. And, even though I felt that call to take on one of those coveted jobs, there was that little bit of doubt that I'm so grateful for; it was inserted at that moment.

That might have formed some of my decisions about what kind of classes to take when I got back, because my senior year was amazing. For the first time, I really got to experience the true beauty of a liberal arts education. Where you can just take a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

My first year had been filled with a lot of required introductory classes. Then, of course, I was in Spain. My junior year was filled with all of the requirements for my major, my economics major. Which, why I was an economics major, I have no idea.

It seemed like the only decision at the time. I believed that that was the career track, and the only way to go if I were going to work in corporate coming from a liberal arts school.

Otherwise, they'd say, “We don't want someone that majored in art history. We want someone with more of a business background.” I think that companies are a lot more open nowadays. Maybe they were then, but I just didn't have the mentorship to know that.

This was the year I could truly just take whatever I wanted. I took an amazing Spanish and Latin American literature course. I took Feminist Critical Theory. There was a class called Wisdom in the Healing Arts, which was all about non-western medicine modalities for healing illness, that completely opened my mind and just helped me start questioning things.

I just have to throw in. I actually took this my first year of school, but my very favorite class was called Physics for Poets. It was all about how modern physics, modern at the time; chaos theory and quantum electrodynamics; how those realms contain so much mystery.

Now, in the second half of the year, of course, I was still in communication with Goldman and McKinsey. I was still potentially thinking about working for USAID (United States Agency for International Development). I can't remember how it happened, but somehow, somewhere, in my senior year, Paco and I, still in contact, we started floating the idea of getting back together and really making a go of it in Spain.

This was a huge decision for me. Everyone was saying, “You have got to jump on these prestigious jobs right after college, if you want to set yourself up for future success. You have to work at McKinsey when you get out of college, and then go back for your grad school. Then do… That's the only way you'll make partner,” and I mean, all the things.

I knew my parents had sacrificed for this expensive college with the expectation that I would get a “good job.” But I very much saw myself as the heroine of my own novel, wondering what the next chapter would be. Thinking about what I would want to read. Like, what is the book that I would want to read?

Again, I'd grown up among deaths at any moment in the pilot community, so I wanted to live a life well lived. I didn't want to have regrets. Probably highlighted by this story I told you about when I was in Chicago, a very deep part of me rejected that way of living and wanted to find a different way, my own uncommon way.

And so, I asked myself the granddaughter question, which I've shared here before. Imagine some day, when you're sitting with your granddaughter telling her about this exact moment in time what you decided and why, what would your answer be?

As soon as I asked myself that question, I knew I was going back to Spain. I just had two words for myself, “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. I'm really going to do this.”

Our first stop was Barcelona, otherwise known as “Barna” back in those days. But I thought that would be a fresh start for us. It's a vibrant city, and maybe there would be more work opportunities for me. And so, when we first got there, we just crashed with friends that we knew from Formentera until we could get some cash accumulated.

But there were challenges. Like maybe in any big city, there were people who would prey on the less advantaged, on people who needed money, on people who didn't have the work permit. And so, I ran into lots of shady schemes.

Several friends suggested that I put up fliers for teaching English. But I got a lot of weirdos, I have to say, who were taking me up on that offer. I also was kind of the resident English speaker for an English social club where everyone would get together and speak English, and I would just be one of the native English speakers floating around for them to talk to. So, that was one of my gigs.

I also was selling English courses at one point, and this was where I've had several, as we all have I'm sure, several different moments that stand out in our mind that have moved us towards wanting businesses of integrity. This is definitely one of mine.

We were given this very regimented sales script to follow. It included all of these… You would sit down with a person, person to person, and there would be all of these hand movements and things that you would be drawing on a piece of paper as you were talking to them, that somehow added legitimacy.

Places that you would have them say yes throughout the conversation, to get them more willing to say yes at the end of the conversation. It was all very much about how to manipulate a person into making this decision.

The people who were applying or were interested in these courses, the way of selling them was always about ‘how it would help you get a better job.’ And so, they tended to be very down and out. I don't know if they were going to get results from this study-at-home course. I think there were, I can't even remember, CDs, cassette tapes, I don't even know back then.

It was something like that.

They were going to kind of try and learn English in a vacuum. I had, of course, spent years studying Spanish in school before I came to Spain to study, and realized I really couldn't converse in the language. It took immersion. It took me being on an island where no one spoke English for me to really learn it.

So, I felt terrible about these courses, or this job. And, I felt even worse when someone bought from me. So, that quickly came to an end. I just couldn't stomach it anymore.

I worked as a jewelry model at one point. I started to work… There were all of these ads in the paper for young women, I forget the exact wording, but basically what it turned out to be, is that they wanted us to basically put on these bathing suits and have wet t-shirt contests or something, modeling contests at bars.

I really think I went into my fawn response there, because I was there throughout the whole morning rehearsing the stupid dance number or something; it wasn't dancing.

But it was how you move around the stage. I went home at lunch and I was just like, there is no way I'm going back to that, and I just didn't ever return. It just amazes me that I even stayed through the beginning part. I think it was because I was just too shy or speechless to leave.

There were just all sorts of different schemes where young women were promised money if they only did this, and things where it turned out it was porno, or everything; all the things.

My favorite job by far, while we were in Barcelona, was that of peona. Peona is like when you play chess and there's the peon, well, the peona is the person who is an assistant in a construction project. They're the peon, they're the lowest person. They're the ones that are told to go fetch bags of cement or mix this manner; just the gopher.

But Paco was very… He'd worked in construction for many, many years as well, in Formentera. That's what people do in the winters as they get ready for the tourist industry again in the summer. And so, he had a lot of experience and he would manage to get himself gigs or get hired out for renovation projects.

Then he would get to hire a peona, a peon, and of course, he would hire me. So, I was the peona in these jobs. It was so much fun. I loved it. I loved working with my hands.

There was this place we used to go to, it was called Piolindo. I'm going to post some pics on Instagram of this timeframe. But they would serve… You’d walk into this long, skinny restaurant, and it was only workers. It was only workers in this restaurant, and me. I, of course, was one of the workers.

It was this long bar, you'd sit up on bar stools with all these gruff workers there, and all they served was rotisserie chicken, french fries, and champagne. And, Cava, which is the Spanish sparkling wine from the Barcelona region.

And so, for 3 euro… Well, no, it wasn't euro, it was pesetas back then. So, for 350 pesetas, which is about $3.50, you'd get a quarter chicken, some french fries, a glass of Cava, and I think some bread. It was just so fulfilling. It was so fun.

We were also so poor. We were, in between jobs, scrounging for coins in our sofa so that we could buy bread that day. Pasta with salt was a normal dinner that we ate, because it was so cheap and filling. I really very much entered into a dark night of the soul during this time, and really for the next years. Which you wouldn't expect from this fun, lighthearted story of bravery and adventure.

But I think I'd always had an idea that I would just get through college, and then somehow, in college, I would know what I wanted to do. That hadn't happened for me, so I very much questioned, what am I here to do? What am I doing with my life? And, I entered into some depression.

But there were a few bright spots. One, of course, being with Paco. Another, being an adult. Now, that is fucking fun, right? When you first come out of college, and you are getting to live your own life and walk around like an adult rather than a student, I found it very liberating.

We also got a dog during this time. She was a Border Collie from the Pyrenees region. I just really wanted a puppy, a little mascot, and she was so sweet. You might have seen her in a picture on my website, on the About Me page, from this time in my life. She was a little ray of light.

It was also really fun living a cool life. I know that may sound strange, but I had never lived in a place like Barcelona before, that just had so much going on with art and culture. I was like a sponge for coolness. These people were so cool, doing cool things, with cool looking bars, and cool art galleries. I loved it.

Everything there was a speakeasy at that time, you needed to know the secret knock to get into the fill in the blank, the club or the bar. I remember there was one club buried deep in a metro station, in the outskirts of Barcelona, that we would go to. Inside, it was just wild.

I was also fascinated by this other culture, kind of the counterculture there. There was a very strong anarchist movement. They were kind of like rockers as well, where they had decided that they just weren't going to participate in the capitalist system.

They would live as squatters in different buildings until they’d eventually get kicked out of that building, then they'd move into a different building. Those just happened to be some of our friends from Formentera, some of Paco’s friends.

And so, I was sitting down and having lunch in these environments. It was fascinating to me. It was so funny, because later on, when I moved to New York City, I was looking for a place to rent and one of them was a place in the East Village. The young boy, I guess, man, came out to interview me, he's like, “You know that we share bathrooms here, right?” I don't know if he thought I was from the Midwest or something, but he alluded to something like it’s not like the little, pristine living arrangements that you're used to. I just had the laugh.

I've always had this effect on people, where they look at me and I can definitely pass as the good girl, I pass as the responsible person. I'm like, you don't even know that I've been living with anarchists in Spain. In buildings that didn't even have toilets, necessarily. We'd have to go out, and all sorts of things. Never judge a book by its cover.

Another bright spot there, I have to say, were the drugs and nightlife. We partied like rockstars, but on the cheap, of course. Often, people would be inviting us. Until some money came in for us, and then maybe we'd invite our friends.

Later on, I met people in the military who were in their 20s. Their only vice was alcohol, because of course, there are drug tests in the military. I remember thinking, “Oh, you're going to be able to remember your 20s. That’s going to be a trip.”

But in my 20s, I mean, if someone in the group had money, we would be doing “lines,” that's lines of cocaine, for those of you who are uninitiated. And if we got too high, then we would smoke hash, or we'd smoke lines of coke on the top of our cigarette to come back down. That's how you could maintain the perfect buzz.

If we were poor, we would be doing “Molly,” because then you wouldn't need to pay for alcohol, you'd be fine with just the pill all night. We called Molly “X” back then, we didn't call it Molly.

If we were really, really poor, we'd buy a couple of pills of Molly and then we'd smash them up and snort them like cocaine. Obviously, I’m not recommending that to any of you, ever; keep your brain cells intact. But I'm just sharing the full picture of life there.

We'd come back, we'd sleep, we'd be very hungover, and Paco would make us, and I say us, the whole group of friends, he’d invite everyone back over and make us an amazing chicken soup for the hangover. This would be at maybe 4pm, 5pm.

Then, invariably, somebody… this didn't happen all the time, but frequently, somebody would start being the instigator for the “hair of the dog.” “Let's just have a beer, that will make us feel better.” Things would escalate, and we'd end up partying again the whole next night.

Now, what I didn't know until much later, is that what I loved most was actually the music and dancing in the clubs; it wasn't the drugs. Later, in my 30s, when I was living in South Beach, in Miami, I could dance all night without anything. Even alcohol, sometimes.

I love to dance; I have language for it now. It's such a deeply embodied somatic experience, where you're out of your head and you're into your body. It's amplified by the energy of everybody else around you, all these other bodies around you.

For me, it really is a spiritual practice. It's as if something moves through me. I don't know where or how my body's going to move next. But I didn't know that them, all I knew was that I really liked it.

I liked shifting, if I'm honest, I liked shifting myself concept towards being bad, or at least rebellious, after growing up as the good girl, top of her class, always doing everything right. With that identity shift comes a feeling of ungrounding that can be uncomfortable, as my clients know very well.

Because if I'm not this, who am I exactly? What is inherently me? What has just been conditioning? How can I make clean decisions about who I want to be and what I want to believe, and then build back towards that intentionally? Create that intentionally. So, there was definitely some ungrounding there. Then, for me, really the overriding question of, what do I want to do with my life?

Well, in the early winter, a month came along where we ran out of money. We were trying to make rent for the next month. My parents were not interested in providing a loan. His parents said they couldn't give us a loan, but why didn't we come down there, to Seville? They were in Seville. Why didn't we come down there and work the Semana Santa? Which is a two-week period, I think, yeah, two weeks total.

It's a period of extreme in the restaurant industry, where people are just up all night. It's a very, very busy time, and they needed some extra help. Now, those of you who heard my last story, about the first time I went to Formentera, may remember how the mom really didn't like me. She told Paco, “If you walk through that door with her, if you walk out with her, you're never coming back into this family.”

I realized I forgot to follow up with an important point there, which is that by the end of summer, Paco really was trying to get a reconnection going. And of course, his mom adored him and couldn't actually disown him.

One of those reconciliation attempts was when we were going back to their house for a meal. Paco had tried to tell his mom that I just didn't know the norms there in Spain, and so of course, I'd be willing to help in the kitchen or help serve or help clean up, all the things, but I just didn't know what I didn't know.

So she was, again, trying to make an effort. She was going to teach me some Spanish dishes, so I was in there in the kitchen with her, learning. It came time to make the mayonnaise. Now, supposedly, comes from one of the other Balearic islands, Menorca. It comes from their main town of Mahón; Mahón-aise was the…

Anyway, it's made with egg, olive oil, some salt, and maybe some lemon juice. You would just beat it by hand with a fork. As you beat this fast enough, it will finally coalesce into mayonnaise.

Well, as she's there showing me this, she starts beating, and she looks at me. She says, “Do you know, that if the cook has a troubled heart, the mayonnaise will never turn out.” I guess curdle is the word or something. It'll cut, it'll separate, it won't come together. She's like, if the cook has a heavy heart, meaning if people have given her a heavy heart, or something, or are taxing her.

And so, as she is whipping this, she's looking at me, and I'm praying, “Please, make the mayonnaise turn out. Please, make the mayonnaise turn out.” It did! It was like divination, the clouds opened, and everything will be well between us now because the mayonnaise turned out.

That is why, because of the successful mayonnaise, a couple years later, we were so easily invited to come down and work with them for Semana Santa in Sevilla, which is around Easter.

Now, it is difficult work, working day and night and serving people. There was an interesting experience there, where we were taking a break and talking to a worker from the next-door restaurant, who was complaining about his boss. He was saying that the boss wasn't even buying them cocaine to keep them going. He just expected them to be doing this. Like, with their own humanity.

Again, I found that just so fascinating, that this would be a normal expectation of a worker, that your boss would buy you cocaine. It really speaks to what I talked about in the last episode about how drugs were prolific there, but also really crossed class barriers. It wasn't something that only the degenerates do, or only the super rich do.

So, after Semana Santa, we decided to go back to Formentera for the summer season. We knew that we could at least make money there, there was plenty of work. Paco got a job as a cook in a restaurant, and I got a job as a server in the restaurant bar of a friend of his. He was kind of very quiet and mellow.

It was attached to a condo building where tourists would rent out these apartments. And so, it wasn't super, super busy. Although, it was maybe 10 tables, or so, at night. I had never worked as a server before, so it was a leap. But I was down for it, of course, and I was happy to be earning money again. Even though some of the patrons weren't necessarily happy that I didn't have experience.

In Spain at that time, they were very particular about, for instance, what glass you use with what kind of beverage, and exactly how things have to be done, and have always been done. So, I got scolded a couple times by my glass choice.

But I loved my boss. She was really my first initiation into the “woo.” She gave me a book called The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which is still one of my favorites. I think it's such a beautiful story of clarity and the clarity journey. If you want to read that it's very short read. And so, I really credit her with that.

The other point that was really driven home while I was working there, was the very kind of open and sharing culture in Spain. Of course, they're a socialist country, as well. I would get into conversations where people would tell me yeah, they would rather pay higher taxes than to live in a place where there are homeless people. Or where there are people that don't have access to medical treatment.

I think that idea is more kind of common and talked about nowadays, but it felt different to me that people would willingly pay money just to live in a better and more equitable society. Maybe that philosophy, or that way of thinking, really filtered down on the individual level as well.

One of the only times that I was kind of chastised by my boss is because I would work the evening shift, which, like I said, was the busiest, it’s when we had all the tables. I'd be running around, the only server there for all the tables, and I would collect tips.

Now, tips in Spain aren't that big, but they'd be like, $1, $2; it added up. It turns out, at the end of the night, I would take it home. Because those were my tips, those were the tips I earned. Meanwhile, there was another woman who worked in the morning and she'd have smaller tips, far fewer tips, but she'd been putting that in the tip jar. So, apparently, all tips get shared even if you're working at a different time of day. That's the fair thing to do.

So, again, you don't know what you don't know, but it’s a different way of thinking about things. I remember back when we were in Barcelona, sometimes we would celebrate and we'd buy ourselves a bottle of expensive rum, for instance. I would want to hide that because that's our rum, right? We're only going to have a little bit on special occasions, and it's going to be an extra special treat.

Well, invariably, in these times where we’d have everybody over, one of Pacos friends would wander into the kitchen or something, and be like, “Hey, you have Cacique! You have that. Great, let's bring it out!” I would just glare daggers at Paco, being like, “Tell your friends to back off. Tell them to get their hands off our stuff.”

ut he was like, “Why wouldn't we share the best of the best with our friends? Of course, I want them to feel at home.” So again, just some major perspective shifts and mind openings going on here, in that summer.

At that point, we lived in a house. We weren't living up on the Mola anymore, on the plateau. We were living down near town where we were working. But we did still live in a house with no running water. We had a well, and we would go pull the water out of the well each morning for everything we were having to do.

Later, we moved into a beautiful country house, which Paco remodeled and made even more beautiful. A traditional, little stone whitewashed house; so pretty. Even though it was so beautiful, we had this view of Es Vedrà; which is this very unique, gorgeous, huge rock formation off the coast of Ibiza. It is so striking.

It's kind of like the Bermuda Triangle of that area, where people say that it has very strong, spiritual activation and things like that; boats will go missing. There's just this very potent energy around this rock. So, I had that as my view. It was a gorgeous countryside.

But we were getting into winter, and winters are very hard, it turns out, in this beautiful island. It clears out. All of the people that are there working in the tourist industry for the summer leave, all of the tourists leave, and there's only a few hundred people left on this island. It's cold and it's windy.

In fact, they have a saying that people go crazy living in Formentera just because of these long winters, long, windy winters, and the sound of the wind coming through cracks in these old stone buildings. My job really, during the winter, during this time, was housewife. Which triggered all of my demons.

In the morning I would need to go buy the food, and then I’d make the food for lunch because Paco was the one paying all the bills, and he was working in construction jobs. Which again, is what the men do in the winters there. And so, he would come home ravenous. He couldn't just grab a bite to eat, he wanted, he was craving really substantial hearty stews, right? Things like that.

The thing about him is, he never asked me. I mean, he would ask me if I would do something, but he would never, of course, tell me to do anything or expect me to do anything. But if I didn't do it, because he was so hyper efficient, he would just go do it himself.

So, when he'd come home at the very end of the day exhausted, he would then be going to buy the fresh ingredients, and then making himself the stew for the next day. Which, of course, I didn't want him to do. So, I ended up, yes, buying groceries and cooking meals for lunch.

After lunch, after he'd leave, that's when I would clean the house. That wind brings in all of this dust. It's an arid island so there's just all this dust and dirt that comes in. Again, if I didn't clean it up, Paco would come home, grab the broom, and start cleaning, because this is just the daily ritual of how they live there. It was second nature to him.

Finally, there would be one point… Of course, I had the make whatever we were having for dinner, as well. But there would be one point in between there where I would grab my book, grab a book for an hour, and read. That felt so luxurious.

But mostly, in between, as I'm doing all of the rest of these things, I'm left with the thoughts in my head of what the fuck am I doing with my life? Right? What would I even want to do with my life?

Again, dark night of the soul. It was one of my most difficult periods ever. Because in our society, of course, we buffer away our emotions. We find ways to not feel them so deeply, and to not think our thoughts so deeply, often. We go to the movies theater, we go to the mall, we watch TV, we get together with friends. I didn't have any of that. It was just me, alone with my crazy, or not so crazy, thoughts, and the wind.

Until finally, it was spring, and then late spring, and then summer. We got a great gig running a restaurant together, being our own bosses. Yes, on a nudist beach. Although, really, any beach on Formentera could be a nudist beach. People were fine if you wanted to take your clothes off. There was very much a ‘you do you’ type of attitude for everything.

It was such a beautiful, beautiful cove. It was such a privilege to be able to work there every day and see that gorgeous, crystalline water. Now, in order to get this gig, we had to get married. Yeah. Because the person who was renting us, who owned the restaurant and was kind of renting it to us for the season, he just didn't want any problems with the law.

And so, we decided we really wanted to see what this is like, where we're both earning money while together, working together. The whole point of this was to really give it a shot, and so, we're not going to let this piece of paper stand in the way.

So, we went down to the justice of the peace. I'm now entered in the Old Town Hall of Formentera. My name is there in their official books. Then we could proceed with our life, which was pretty glorious in summer. We would get up, we'd buy the groceries for the restaurant, and we'd open it up.

Our dog, Johnny, she would just wander the dunes keeping an eye on the flock. She's a Border Collie, so she just loved to sit up there watching everybody coming and going. I would take the food orders and the payments, and Paco would cook. No, we did not work in the nude; only when we took breaks for a dip in the ocean.

When it was my time for a break, I’d just whistled for Johnny, and she'd come running from wherever she'd been. We’d just go for a swim together. And then, at night, we'd hang out with friends. Sometimes we'd take the ferry to Ibiza to dance all night.

Which, by the way, can I just rant about this just really quickly, about the pronunciation? So, in the dialect of the language, and when you come into the airport there, you'll see that it's actually spelled E-I-V-I-S-S-A. There's none of this Ibitha stuff that people like to use.

I think what happened there, is that when so many Brits were coming to the island, they heard people that spoke Castilian Spanish, which is from Madrid; but of course, it spread throughout the country.

They heard people with that way of speaking, where they do make a lisp, a TH sound with their SS and C's, and with some of their sounds. They must have heard them saying the name of the island and thought that was how it was pronounced. So, instead of saying E-B, I don't know, they said E-Y-E-biza, because that's how they would say it.

I really would love for us all to make a choice. Say the name of the place the way that the locals say the name of it. Or just read it phonetically as we would in our own language. For instance, when we say Paris, that's the phonetic reading. We don't walk around in normal conversation, here in America, talking about Paree, right? We just say Paris.

So, just say, Ibiza, the way it’s spelled. Or if you want to get really local about it, then at least use the real way that they pronounce it there, which is Eivissa. Okay. Off my soapbox, little pet peeve of mine, that’s so unimportant for your daily life, but I’m compelled to bring it up.

So, Eivissa in the 90s was amazing. It was a boho, beautiful; there was this deep joie de vivre. We would always come in, to Eivissa town, the main port, main town of Eivissa. This is different than what you might have seen in some of the areas that were kind of colonized by people from England. Where they have these flat sandy beaches on the other side of the island.

But what I'm talking about was the area that has the hills and the sweet, little winding streets leading up to the castle. It's more well-to-do. It's the biggest harbor, where all the yachts are. So, we would come in at about midnight after we'd closed down our restaurant, because people eat very late in Spain.

We'd grab some dinner, because midnight is a completely normal time to eat dinner in Spain, especially during the summer. After that, there's what they call a “bar de copas.” That's a cocktail bar. That would be where you would go from maybe 2am to 3am or 4am. Which is when you would then go to the clubs, the nightclubs.

Then, there were after-hours clubs that might open at around 7am. Finally, a place like Space would open at noon for the revelry to continue. Of course, there are the famous sunset bars where a lot of the, if you've heard of the chill Ibiza music, that's where all of that was going down, in the sunset bars.

So, there was never a time where there wasn't a time for you to find the exact vibe and the exact level of fun that you wanted. There were foam parties at Amnesia. There was a place called Coup, that then became Privilege, but it was just this huge mega club. It was wild. They had boutiques inside. They had a bakery inside for when it was breakfast time. They had restaurants, all sorts of different things.

But we were regulars at Pacha because it was closer to the ferry. So, you'd see me there on many nights. I'd be one of the ones up on the pillars in the spotlight. It was very easy for me to claim the spotlight when dancing. In a way that it was not easy for me to do, and still isn't really easy for me to do, years later, when it comes to business.

Now, Formentera had a scene of its own. I mentioned last time about how there were all sorts of different people partying together; the people coming off the yachts, to the restaurant workers like us, to the tourists, of course. It was also, in a way, kind of more exclusive because there's no airport on Formentera.

So, people with yachts would tend to sail over and have special parties on beaches or different areas of Formentera. There was one really famous one where everyone was dancing, it was getting near sunrise, the music was building to a crescendo, and we're just out on this plateau that leads right to the cliffs in the middle of nowhere.

Then, right as the sun breaks and then the music breaks, this helicopter surfaces from below the cliffs, by the ocean, and just rises up above everyone. I mean, these parties were just beyond; with animals and dancers, and like I said, foam or bubbles, and all sorts of things. It was just a beautiful hedonism.

As I mentioned last time, there was an absence of middle-class morality. Everything was ‘do what you want.’ Don't hurt others, do what you want, and don’t cast stones. By then, I really wasn't surprised by, for instance, an older man hitting on me. Or some man that I wouldn't have normally have expected to hit on me was then hitting on me. That didn't surprise me.

But I remember the first time an older man and his wife hit on me, that was new. I certainly had the opportunity to liberate myself fully, sexually. Because it was all free love. No hard feelings, want to come over on Thursday for an orgy?

In fact, there's a Spanish movie called La Isla, which is really bad. Don't look it up. Don't bother watching it. But it's all about the special spiritual energy and people on Formentera, and the island’s ability to liberate and change you. But it didn't fully liberate me, I guess, if you want to describe it that way. Because while I did try kissing and fooling around, it always just felt awkward and weird to me to kiss girls. So, it wasn't my thing.

In the fall, it was the best time. Things start to slow down. It's not so crazy for us, but we can still enjoy the warm weather and warm water. That's when it really makes sense to maybe close one day a week.

I remember, once, we were sitting for lunch with a big group of friends at this very famous restaurant called Juan y Andrea, where they serve very fresh fish from that day. Normally, there wouldn't have been a spot for us in the summer. But in the fall, we were able to get in.

Everyone, as is the way, orders in kind of a sequence. For instance, you'd always have an aperitif before you begin the meal. Then, you would order different appetizers, and you'd have maybe a first and second plate. And after your meal, you're going to have a coffee.

Specifically, a coffee with maybe a little bit of brandy in it. It is so delicious. It's called Carajillo. What they do, if it's done right, is they put the brandy on a spoon and they light it so it burns the alcohol off, but you still have that wonderful brandy taste. You put that in the espresso, with a little rind of a lemon just for a tiny, little bit of flavor. It is delicious.

So, you'd have a Carajillo, and after that you would have something for the digestion. Which is a shot, of course, a shot of alcohol. Often, herbal, usually a local one. But it could be whatever; Schnapps or Jaeger Meister. But you need to digest your food, so you must have this, because this is what is done. Finally, only after that, do you order something like a Rum and Coke or some sort of copa, some sort of cocktail.

So, we're going around the table each time ordering in sequence, and it's just like, “Carajillo, Carajillo, Carajillo, Carajillo.” The waiter walked away, and one of the people smiled. Well, the thing is, I remember, he had a girlfriend who was French, who did not want Carajillo or didn't think to order it. I think she ordered an herbal tea or something.

Which I know nowadays, because as we continue as hippies, the hippie/boho contingent is just so much more health conscious. So, it was an odd experience that a couple of the people did not order the Carajillo; didn't do the thing.

He looked around and he said, “Wow, you can really, definitely, tell who the locals are.” I just remember feeling so pleased by that. I felt so local. I knew everyone. I spoke Spanish, of course. I knew the way that things get ordered. But also I felt it in my bones.

I had such a relaxed nervous system, even after doing the work seven days a week, for months on end. Usually it's about a six-month period, and only in the final month are we starting to close certain days a week. But it was like healthy work. It was good work. Active.

I was moving my body, I was on my feet, I was talking to different people from all different countries around the world. And, I never felt in a rush. It didn't matter if we opened a little late. It didn't matter if we got to the restaurant a little late. Nothing ever mattered.

There was no social climbing, there was just the good life, la buena vida, or you might know the Italian, La Dolce Vita. It was all about what really mattered, right? Being with friends and family, breaking bread, loving the land and the natural beauty, and being in love. Isn't that what life is about?

All of this was set to the beautiful background music of Paco’s flamenco guitar. Every spare minute he'd be strumming and practicing chords. It was so beautiful. How the music would just float through him was so beautiful. He was completely self-taught, and he would rarely play any songs that were known. He would just riff the entire time.

At that point in my life, I think that because I didn't have “a thing,” I would always find men that had some very unique and apparent genius, and I would be a kind of muse to further their careers.

I remember, in college, my boyfriend was a physicist. I really got all into the physics world. Of course, here was Paco with his flamenco guitar, and I was encouraging him to practice and telling him you could do it. Maybe thinking about going to attend a conservatory. But he really didn't have any ambitions for that; those were mine. He just enjoyed art for art's sake. He had such deep artistic taste.

We would watch movies, and it just amazed me how anything that I could analyze from the left brain, that had really great character development and had themes and interesting visual motifs, he wouldn't have language for any of that. But he'd just be like, “Oh, yeah, that's a great movie. No, this other movie, I don't like that.”

Nine times out of ten, the movies he didn't like were the American movies. There's a word, I've mentioned this before as well, but it's called an Americanada, which meant something that had an unduly happy ending, like an unrealistically happy ending. They call it like an Americanism. So, those weren't the movies. He really loved these deep arthouse movies.

He wasn't alone. I noticed this from so many of the people there. They were all just like Projectors walking around; if you're familiar with Human Design. They all just know things.

Someone would say something so profound, and I would say, “What book was that from? Who said that?” They'd be like, “I don't know, it's just the truth. It's just the way it is.” I know that knowingness of clarity. That is the kind of clarity that I want to help my clients find.

Where it's just like, “I just know this to be true. I don't need to support it. I don't need to back it up. This is truth, this is my truth, or this is the truth.” But there's a moment where you just don't analyze, you know. I love and respect that so much.

This is why, if the timing had been different, I think I would have stayed forever. But you know what a few years out of the rat race had finally taught me? Living amongst people that did not value upward mobility in any way? Who thought that the job of postal worker was the pinnacle of all you could achieve, because you'd get the most time off?

You know what it taught me? That it tore at my soul not to do work that I found meaningful. It turns out that, for me at least, working in a restaurant on a nudist beach isn't that much different than working as an investment banker for Goldman or a consultant for McKinsey. All of those things are just trading my time for money. They're not truly me. And, that was something I deeply cared about; was finding out about me.

There were no opportunities in the island. Maybe I could have gotten a job as a clerk, or a secretary in an office. I definitely could have continued to run restaurants. I don't know, even if we'd moved to a city, the educational system is so different in Spain. They actually train you in school to be proficient in your job. Whereas in the States, of course, they train you how to think and then expect you to get on the job training in your company.

So, I really wasn't qualified, or wouldn't have been invited, to join a corporation in Spain. That's why, when I meet women that have the call towards digital entrepreneurship, a career that they can make into whatever they want, and take with them anywhere in the world, and they hit some speed bump and say, “Aww, this is too hard. Maybe I don't want to do it.” I'm like, “Are you serious?”

This flexibility and autonomy changes lives, right? Not to mention generational paradigms. But here I was, in a time when the love of my life and I couldn't find fulfillment and be together. I couldn't work in Spain in a fulfilling way for me. There wasn't the internet, yet. I mean, it existed, but no one used it or knew what it was going to become.

And, he was miserable when he was in the States. But that would never need to happen nowadays. We are living in an amazing, amazing time. Again, like when I was talking earlier about what is the value of being able to make clean decisions?

Well, what is the value of building a business? A business that's aligned to you, that expresses your gifts, and what you are here to express in the world. It goes so far beyond the income that you'll earn in that business, although that is, of course, limitless and fun.

I had a recent client who decided to invest on the private client level with me because she thought that the intensive nature of that program would yield results more quickly. She suggested that one of the questions I could ask people in the future, to help them clarify their decision, is, how quickly do you think you'll create a financial return in one program versus the other?

I have to smile, because she has no fucking idea how much her life is about to change. Yes, a few dollars, or a few hundreds of thousands of dollars, or whatever, that's nice. But the value of being able to create life on your terms? Having that, and that life outside of your business, that matters so much. To step into that kind of power is truly invaluable. It just might be the difference between being able to be with the love of your life, or not.

Alright, that might sound a little melodramatic to some of you. But again, this is just me sharing the context, behind all the things I say on the podcast; all of my stories, and why I think the way I do.

Somehow, I must have known all of that back then. Or at least, I was brave enough to hope. Because I did end up leaving Formentera that winter. We came home to see my parents for the holidays, and I stayed. At the time, I was hoping to get clarity in a couple of years, or try some different types of things out. Get established in something and then be able to transfer back to Spain.

But it was scary. It was jumping from something I knew I didn't like, and there being no promise of return. There was no business course to join that said, “Hey, you can start a digital nomad business. You could be a life coach,” none of that. I just had to believe in myself that I would figure it out, and that all of this, and these hard decisions, would be worth it for me.

That quest for clarity, and all the twists and turns that I went through in finding it, is what we can talk about next time.

Have a great week, my friends. Remember, deep down, you know who you are, and each day you're stepping further into what you're here to create.

Hey, if you want true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business, and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you, so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.

Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to TheUncommonWay.com/schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach.

Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the Clarity First Strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit TheUncommonWay.com. See you next time.

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