My Story
FAOLAN
SUGARMAN
LASH
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My story
At 19 years old, I found myself in the midst of a quarter life crisis. Before you laugh and ask how a 19 year old could be going through a “crisis,” hear me out. It was late at night and I was having a panic attack, sitting on top of some monkey bars at my college campus. This thought kept coming into my head: “Why am I alive?” Over an over again it came to me and over and over again I didn’t have a good answer. I didn’t know. All I knew was that I’d been doing what I’d been told to do, what I thought would make people happy, what society expected me to do… what I should do. In that moment, I realized that I wasn’t happy with my life. “If this is it, what’s the point?” That was the thought that got me started.
About a month later I was lying in my hammock finishing a book called The Happiness of Pursuit about how humans go on big quests to find fulfillment. I started to sob. At the time, I was living a life entirely based around “shoulds.” I was an RA because I was supposed to be responsible, I was taking seven classes because I was supposed to be high-achieving, I drank and hooked up with people I didn’t know because society told me that was “cool.” In every way, I was living a life that had been built for me, not BY ME. In that moment, I decided to quit my job, withdraw from school, and backpack to Southeast Asia. I decided to create my own life, follow my own dreams, and live the way I wanted to.
Over the next FIVE years (note: it takes a LONG time to change everything about the way you live, and that’s okay because life is long!) I went through the lowest lows yet, facing the desire to die, and the highest highs, which surprisingly came not from the grand achievements:
~ Publishing a book ~
~ Traveling the world ~
~ Signing $20,000 clients ~
But from the little things and the impact:
~ Witnessing wind and sun dance with leaves ~
~ My book give someone words to describe their life experience ~
~ Helping clients let go of negative lives to embrace their majesty ~
I’ve realized that the real joys of life don’t come from what society tells us they do. It’s not about how much money you make, how big your house is, how attractive you or significant other is. It’s not about making your parents proud. It’s not about having a “good” job. it’s not about being productive or efficient.
It’s about being you!! It’s about being here with what is. It’s about serving the world in ways that only you can. It’s about loving your life, the pain and the joy. It’s about being real and honest. It’s about feeling; feeling alive, feeling emotion, feeling at all. It’s about living each moment the way you’d want to if you were looking back from your death bed.
My personal adventure has taken me has taken me all around the world, from luncheons with models in Paris to ecstatic dances in the jungles of Costa Rica, and from regimented morning-dark writing sessions in snowy Massachusetts to star-filled nights of dreams in costal Morocco.
The path is eclectic, like it’s being written by the hand of a mad God, vindictive in his wildness and gracious in his forgiving tune. I have played music in the crowded alleys of Sevilla and I’ve danced naked on rooftops in the pouring summer rains of Florida. I’ve paraglided from mountain tops in Rio de Janeiro and Scuba Dived in the cenotes of Tulum. I’ve started a successful business to teach the magic of life, and I’ve published a book.
I’m twenty five. I did this not because I’m different, not because I received a million dollars rom my family, not because I had some special genetic mutation that made me come alive in a different way. No, I did this because I chose to; because when I took a cold hard look at my life, I realized that I didn’t want the life I was living, and I was ready to kill myself to end it. That... that shook me up, it made me take charge, it made me live with intention. And there, I have found the power to make manifest each and every vision I have ever had.
So, if you take nothing else away from me, remember that dreams aren’t meant for someone else; they’re meant for you. If you have a dream, you’ve dreamt it for a reason, and the world needs you to live that dream, because you’re the only one who can.
I’m currently traveling the world, writing, coaching, and doing my best to leave this earth better than I found it.
With love and in service,
Faolan