The Sokanu Blog

Kara

What do you do?

I am a flight attendant for a US based, domestic airline. 

How did you get there?  

After graduating from University, I moved back in with my parents, while looking for a full-time job in marketing and advertising, and teaching Pilates on the side.  I had always excelled in school and whatever I chose to do, but the move from student to career person was a tough and challenging transition that left me depressed, confused, and lost.  During this time, I ended up having an opportunity to travel to Egypt with a friend that worked in the Airline industry.  On this trip, he advised me to apply for a job as a flight attendant. Even though I had grown up in a family with an aviation background; dad’s a corporate pilot, brother flies for a cargo company, and I had soloed a private plane when I was 16, I had always thought that I would HATE being a flight attendant.  I wanted to do something different, make my own way. 

Well, I took my friend’s advice, and applied to all of the airlines that I found to be hiring at the time.  I really had no idea what I was getting into, and although I was nervous for my interview, I felt like I had nothing to lose, so I displayed the bubble and outgoingness that is a signature of my personality.  And I got the job!  I was lucky enough to be based in Southern California, close enough to family, but far enough to be independent.  I’ve had the privilege of developing deep friendships with my colleagues, have a schedule that allows me to see many new places and meet incredible people all over the world, and been able to share that through a website that I started, chronicling the tales of a life as a flight attendant.

Why do you like it?

There are so many reasons that I love my job.  I love working as a flight attendant because the schedule is always different.  I have time to pursue interests outside of work, one being that I am IN LOVE with travel.  I like that I am not at a desk, and that I get to meet new people every day.  I even like the customer service part of flying, and the job has developed more patience, assertiveness, and communication skills within myself.  I have matured as a person, and although I feel that working as a flight attendant is not my life long dream career, as I hope to pursue more in the area of volunteer work writing, and learning languages, I believe that somehow, the universe landed me right where I needed to be, now, and that’s when I didn’t even know that I would like to fly!  Because, becoming a flight attendant has been the answer to my lostness, sometimes I promote it as the answer to everyone’s life direction solution, but it’s not for all.  It was, and is, my answer to opening a life that is better than I once ever dreamed, and if anyone asks me, I still bubble in delight that I love my job and gush that “I just spent twenty days in Vietnam and Thailand.”  

This job has made me dream on an entirely different scope, and I’ve been forever changed.  Traveling to Haiti, Costa Rica, Istanbul, Slovenia, Portugal, Guatemala, Czech Republic, and the list could go on for paragraphs and paragraphs, in the time span of less than four years, will do that to you.     

Follow Kara’s adventures on her blog The Flight Attendant Life

By Jocelyn McLean

I have never been big on New Year’s Resolutions. As Renee mentioned in her recent post, resolutions are monthly, weekly, or even daily occurrences – I make them when I feel that I need to.

For the last five years, I have been a student, so twice a year I would find myself making a truckload of resolutions: January and September. My first year of university was a shock for me. I was still applying the work ethic I had in high school – that is, pretty much no work ethic at all – and when grades from my first semester rolled in, they were not up to my standards. I quickly set resolutions for the following semester. I would go to every 8AM class! I would do all of my readings before discussion! I would meet with my professors in office hours! Similar to many New Years Resolutions, my behaviour changed for a week before I went back to my old habits. Another set of grades came in April, and again I was unhappy.

I repeated this pattern for two years before deciding to take a year off to figure some things out. Looking back on it, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made for myself. I knew something wasn’t working, I knew I was unhappy, but still I found myself unable to make the necessary changes to fix it. I took my time off to ask myself a lot of questions. Was university the right choice for me?

Three months into my gap year, I had the answer: yes, it was, and I had been taking it for granted for two years. I found myself missing school constantly. I missed learning. I missed surrounding myself with smart people who disagreed with me. And instead of setting relatively superficial goals about my behaviour, I tried to get to the root of my problem and change my perspective. Why was I in school? What did I want to get from the experience?

When I went back to school after my year off, I began to approach my classes from a truly groundbreaking perspective: I was in school to learn! For two years, I had perceived school as the means to an end: a degree. Suddenly, school became the end in itself. I started seeing my readings as learning opportunities, instead of words to study and memorize. As soon as I started caring about the material, I started actually learning the material. I thought about it outside of class, I talked about it with my friends, I started connecting it with all of my other subjects. I didn’t need to set an arbitrary goal of speaking to my professors during office hours; I was so engaged with the material that it became a natural thing to do.

This ties in with the Triad of Change: that to fix a problem in your life, you need to make a change to your behavior, your perspective, or your structure. In changing one, the others should more easily follow. Semester after semester, I found myself unable to change my behavior. When I reflected on this, I realized this applied to almost every area of my life: my health, my relationships, my education. The only thing that has worked for me is to change my perspective on each of these areas, and my behavior and life structure followed quickly. I have friends who can snap their fingers and change their behavior: for them, it may be better for them to start by setting behavioral goals, such as creating a study schedule or meeting regularly with professors. Structural changes may include changing your school schedule entirely: taking fewer classes, or starting class later in the day. A lot of change comes from trial and error: but goals are meaningless if you abandon them, so start by making the changes you know are within your capacity.

By Renee Masur 

Make a resolution. Don’t make a resolution.  

These are the two attitudes that come up like clockwork every time a new year is celebrated. To me, there seems to be two camps of people that verbalize how they feel about the annual word “resolution.” Those who feel that the time has come back around when we can reflect on choices we’ve made and decide upon a new goal to reach, and those that feel that first of January is as significant a day to make a goal as April 13th, November 25th, or any pick of the 365 days we get in a year. 

I recently read an article from zenhabits called “The New Rules of Fitness for 2013.”  We live most of our lives online; which means that much of the day is spent moving from app, to website, to text, to email. It’s fast, it’s now, and rarely a lengthy process.  

Personally, I know that gearing up for a jog is not a habit that will stick with me in the long run (pun delightfully unintended).  If you can exercise in a way that works in bursts, just like the way your day moves, that’s a more sustainable way to fit exercise into your life. 

Let’s apply this way of goal setting to the everyday. It’s usually expected that New Years resolutions will be dropped.

Not surprisingly, the spikes in the google trends for “resolution” always peak in January. 

For some people, it may be a habit to create a beautifully optimistic goal in the New Year only to be dropped by the time Valentine’s chocolates hit the shelves. 

Make a goal right now. Just for the day. Hell, maybe even for the next minute. If you create a day full of goal-making, your habits will eventually begin to take over and you won’t know how to stop making goals. 

Here are some ideas:

Daily goals

Strike up a conversation with a stranger
Organize that junk drawer
Floss 
Call that friend 
Make a To-Do List 

Hourly goals

Drink 2 glasses of water
Make someone laugh
Walk around somewhere new
Complete this blog post you’ve started 

Minute goals

Sprint to the bus/car
Take the stairs over the elevator
Help that person with all the bags 
Jump as high as you can to reach that thing hanging just out of your reach

(As you can see these are all spur-of-the-moment and completely situational)

Make you own lists. Surround your life in post-its (I love ‘em) and make every day the first day of your New Year.

Rachael Pontillo 

What do you do?

I am am award-winning board certified holistic health practitioner and wellness educator. I work with clients individually and in groups in the Philadelphia area, and nationwide via telephone or video conferencing. I am also a holistic aesthetician and I make all-natural skincare products. I teach natural skin care classes in the Philadelphia area, hold free monthly webinars on various health and wellness topics, and write the popular blog www.holisticallyhaute.com. I also write for a well respected aesthetics trade journal, as well as other online publications, and speak at national aesthetics and health-related conferences.

How did you get there?

It’s been a long and winding road—I began my college education as a design major and ultimately graduated from Philadelphia University with a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies with a minor in Humanities. I liked architecture, but I realized that my interest was more in the history and theory behind it rather than the actual design work. I had a sales background from working years of retail jobs through high school and college which helped me land my first job after graduation as an advertising sales rep for a healthcare publishing company.

I moved from sales into marketing and copywriting, and from then I moved more into editorial writing and editing. I continued my writing and editing work on a freelance basis for several years (and still continue) for one of the best known medical publishers in the world. I became a mom in 2004 and again in 2007 and continued to freelance while staying home with my kids. Skincare and makeup were always strong interests of mine (much of the retail sales I did was in the beauty industry), so I decided to go back to school for aesthetics. I realized I needed to set myself apart in the job market to try to find the perfect part-time job, so I used my writing and editorial skills and began writing www.holisticallyhaute.com. My focus within the realm of aesthetics leaned more towards the holistic and more natural approach.

Personally and professionally, I began to see the connection between a healthy diet and having great skin. I decided to go back to school again for nutrition, to enhance my education in this area and open more doors for my career. I started taking health coaching clients and quickly realized that the importance really lies more with overall health and wellness rather than just having healthy skin—but great skin is a bonus you get from taking care of yourself on the inside. I had no idea I’d be doing the work I do now because of it.

Why do you like it?

I love my work for SO many reasons. I help people improve their overall level of health which greatly improves their overall happiness and quality of life. I help people feel great about themselves. I empower people to take control of their own health and their own lives and become educated consumers. I spread the message about the importance of making healthier diet and lifestyle choices as well as choosing skincare products with safe ingredients. My work is incredibly rewarding and I feel that I make a difference in the lives of individual people, and help to broaden the minds of larger audiences with my writing and public speaking.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A model or a performing artist on a Broadway stage…maybe in my next life :)

Follow Rachael Pontillo on Twitter