gratitude: day one

i accept the nomination by my cousin suzette to share three things i'm grateful for every day for seven days. this is in keeping with one of my goals this year to find happiness through gratitude. this is a pass-it-on, chain letter type of facebook challenge so popular in these post-ice bucket challenge days. the rules of engagement are:

• every day for one week, i post three things i'm grateful for
• every day i nominate three people to do the same
• if one of the people i nominate accepts my challenge, they have to post three things daily for one week and nominate three people each day, too

today i am grateful for:

• my friends: each and every person who remembered this was a big week for me and made me feel special and loved in some small way.
• my husband, who has as much troubling sleeping as i do, which comforts me.
• my job! i'm so lucky to have one, especially such a great one.

today i nominate my brother joey (getting him back for nominating me for the ice bucket challenge), the recent birthday girl anne and my oldest friend lauren. yay for gratitude! i feel better already.

learning to embrace the sweat stains in life

over at the blog i've been writing this summer, i've been keeping pretty busy tracking all my travels and travails since june. but i haven't had much desire or need to produce deep thoughts. and what's the point of blogging if you're not producing deep thoughts about something? it's just a run down of stuff i've done next to some pictures of my dog. so recently i had cause to write something i'm actually pretty proud of, and i thought i would publish it here as well. 

here is my post entitled "Day 81: Embrace the Sweat Stains of Life":

I'm hard on myself. I expect nothing less than perfection -- I always want myself to be happy, fulfilled, loved and skinny; to look chic and put together; to live up to my potential; and to make the most of the gifts that have been given to me. It's exhausting. And the standards I set for myself are impossible. So if I expect the impossible of myself, then I am setting myself up for failure. Every. Day.

So, now that I've diagnosed the problem, I'm halfway to finding a solution, right? No, I think that is yet another lie I tell myself. Changing my thinking and outlook on life has been a long process and is something I will probably be working on forever. I am an imperfect being; now I have to accept that about myself and cut myself some slack.

If I could stick to my goal of meditating daily (there I go again, beating myself up again for not following through with something) I would use the mantra that my therapist gave me four years ago: I am good. But since I don't repeat this mantra as often as I should, sometimes I need something to remind me to be nicer to myself.

Today, that reminder came in the form of a sweat stain.

I was en route to meet a friend for happy hour drinks. Once again, I had been hard on myself while getting dressed -- nothing fit me right, I felt fat and dumpy -- but I had tried to lighten my mood by wearing a favorite new shirt. As I got off the subway -- feeling slightly sticky in the early evening heat and humidity -- I spotted a woman walking in front of me. She looked impossibly put together in a royal blue shift dress, cork pumps and a big leather purse. I saw her and instantly kicked myself -- she was obviously still dressed up from a day at the office, but on my best days at the office I never look that good. Especially after sitting at a desk all day, my clothes and hair are rumpled and I'm most likely ditching the heels for flats before walking out the door. Why wasn't I brave enough to traverse the cobblestones of Soho in three inch cork heels?

Somehow -- probably because I was in flats and she was teetering along on the cobblestones of Soho in heels -- I managed to catch up to my style icon as we waited to cross Houston. As I approached her, I saw a flaw in her perfect dress. Right around the zipper on her lower back, I saw a sweat stain that was in various stages of drying and leaving a nice salty ring on the back of her dress. Suddenly, the image of my perfect day-to-night office girl came crashing down. This woman wasn't perfect. She may look more dressed up than me, and braver to wear heels, but she was human, too. She was sweating, or had been at some point during the day, just like me.

The message from the universe came through loud and clear: accept yourself as imperfectly human. And when life throws you sweat stains, just put on a pair of heels to distract everyone.

---

Read more about my post-mba summer here.

the post-mba life

so, i have the summer off (for the most part). i have three whole months to what i want before i start the big girl full time job. since one of my goals this year has been to write more, i've started a blog. follow my summer adventures here: three years to real life.

follow my journey and let me know what you think.

coming to the end.

me: i think i have been so sick recently because i've been stressed out and it has compromised my immune system.
boss: why are you so stressed? you have a job and your grades don't matter.

here's the truth that everyone tells you: the hardest part of business school is getting into business school. this is, by all intents and purposes, true. once you have paid your deposit and agreed to attend your ivy league institution that bars you from disclosing your grades to any employer until you have signed a full time offer, it doesn't really matter whether you come to class, hand in assignments or get straight LPs (my school's equivalent of Ds).

but here's the truth that no one tells you: even though it doesn't matter, you are likely so type a that not handing in an assignment hurts your soul. and all those clubs and leadership positions you committed to (whether for personal or professional reasons) require most of the extra time you have left over after classes, assignments, review sessions and group meetings.

having juggled planning a wedding during my first year and working two days a week my second year, i missed out on that part of school they call "fun" and "a vacation from full time work." in short, business school was no picnic for me. i'm glad i did it, because now i have a great job and i feel smarter and more empowered, but the stress it incurred definitely took several years off my life. come to think of it, it took over years of my life.

my road to columbia started in 2010, when i decided to take the gmats. thinking back now, i can't believe how long ago that was. four years is a long time but these four years have been a lifetime. i started officially studying in august and took the test on december 5. three and a half months later i got ginger. a few months after that i met shawn. i remember in our first meeting telling him i was planning to apply to business school in a few months. fast forward to september 2011 and i realized the due date for early decision at columbia business school was just a few weeks away. oops! thankfully someone cool and collected in my life (shawn obvs) helped me edit my essays and get them in on time. i submitted everything on the day applications were due. four weeks later, i was in.

last week was my last day of class, ever. to celebrate, shawn and i went back to the place where we celebrated the night i was accepted into columbia. it seemed appropriate. and sitting before me was a guy who could have cut and run the moment i told him i had been accepted. he could have decided it was all too difficult and would ruin our relationship. he could have been insecure and certain i would meet someone else. instead, he suggested we move in together.

look at us now.

i can't wrap up this phase in my life without feeling immense gratitude for shawn and everything he has done for me. i couldn't have done it without you, babe!

2014 - a year for peace and gratitude

in the past, i have tried take some time around new year's and my birthday to look back on the year that had just passed and think about what i would like to achieve in the year ahead.

last year was undoubtedly one of the best years of my life -- if not the best. i married the love of my life and my best friend, and accomplished the incredible task of planning a party (aka the wedding) for 160+ people while juggling business school, two internships (spring and summer) and demanding positions on school club boards. then we went on the most incredible vacation of my life (aka the honeymoon).

honeymooning in capri - august 2013

things came together for me professionally as i started the year case prepping for consulting interviews that disappointed and ended the year with a full time job offer in a position and at a company that just feels right. what a year.

yet i also faced tough challenges. but i am proud of the fact that i didn't let these difficulties defeat me. i reached out to others for their advice and support. i looked inward for strength i didn't know i possessed. and i grew in ways i didn't know i could or should. in the end, i closed out the year with a greater sense of what is important to me and what is not worth caring or worrying about.

it's with that in mind that i set my goals for 2014. i decided that with my professional life and love life under control it was time to turn inward. i wanted to improve myself inside and out. i started by going to the gym more and determining to eat better. shawn has gotten into the act, too.

part of my self improvement goal was to take a class at school called personal leadership and success. the class has pushed me to find my purpose, work on increasing my happiness through gratitude and grow emotionally, among other things. i worked with a small group of classmates to discuss challenges i've faced in the past -- particularly why i stopped writing and blogging years ago after pretty much just burning out. they encouraged me to start writing again. as i continue to find my purpose, i think writing will play a role, whether it's writing here in a somewhat public forum or more privately in a journal.

another way i have been trying to improve myself is through my new night time routine. before bed, i meditate for five minutes. after quieting my mind for a little bit, i floss and brush my teeth (starting better habits!). then, i spend a few minutes playing with an app on my ipad that is helping me to learn italian. after going through this new routine pretty much every night for the last couple weeks i have started to sleep better and longer -- which is a real feat for me!

so i'm trying to be healthier, meditate, start healthy habits and sleep better. i'm also trying to get into the rhythm of writing about myself and my progress as i pursue my self improvement goals. writing again on a regular basis will be a real challenge for me. but i have to stop overthinking it. and. just. press. publish.

and because i know you want it: more honeymoon photos here

2013

here it is another new years day -- my 30th one! -- and i feel compelled to look back on the year that was and ahead to the next chapter. 2012 was a confusing, contradictory year full of so much love and loss, new beginnings and sad goodbyes. i have had tough years in the past but i have never ended a sad year with such a feeling of happiness and hope for the future. if you're wondering why, ahem:

i'm getting married! all at once, amidst a year shadowed by the loss of my aunt, who was like another mother to both me and my own mother, after a long illness and all the challenges of leaving my career behind to become a full time student, i'm struck by an overwhelming feeling of lightness and joy and optimism that only love and happiness can bring.

my hope for 2013 is that it will bring more of this feeling to me and my family and friends. i see so many doors opening, so many possibilities ahead. professionally, i see countless opportunities available where i once felt stuck at work and in my career path. and personally, i see a future and a family with the love of my life, and i look forward to continuing our amazing life and growing our family from the three of us (including ginger!) in the years ahead.

happy new year!

dog shaming

another thanksgiving has passed and i have again taken some time to think on all the things that i'm thankful for in 2012. besides shawn and ginger, my family and all my dear friends near and far, i am truly thankful to have the opportunity to attend a top business school (no matter what businessweek says). i have learned so much, met so many super smart, driven and amazing people and have had so many doors open for me that i can't even do the experience justice with words. when people ask me how school is going, i complain that i don't sleep or don't get to see my dog and my boyfriend has forgotten what i look like. i mention the classes are hard and the finals are harder. and recruiting...don't even get me started. but what falls between the cracks is what gets me out of bed after so few hours of precious sleep: the thrill of learning and being challenged every day and ending up somewhere even better than where i was before, making smarter career and business decisions and having an impact on the world.

after all that serious talk, here's a picture of ginger just for fun:

dog shaming! i love it.

guess what, now that i've regained my urge to blog, i have a 5-week winter break coming up! expect more updates from me soon.