Big Life Vision – To Thrive in Life

BigLive Profile:  Teri Didjurgis

TD thriving photo journal

At the age of 40, I disassembled the life I had built for the last 22 years of my life and took off to travel through Europe without much explanation to anyone.

Mid-life Crisis… perhaps… but I choose to NOW look at it as a Mid-Life Reassessment.

At the encouragement of my family (especially my Aunt), I started posting pictures of my European travels on Facebook. At first this was great way to keep my family updated on my travels and reconnect with people that love travel. But as I moved from country to country, my travel started to prompt lots of questions: Did you get a new job? Are you ever coming home? Even, are you dying?  I honestly did not know how to reply as the disassembling of my life was not of my own conscious choosing and I was not sure I was ready to go back through the negative that brought me here. So, I simply answered the questions “Nope”, “Maybe”, “No” and kept the story to myself.

Then along came a friend from long ago, Kimberly, with an inspiring outlook on life (BigLifeVision.com) and a question “How did you make this happen?” and this gave me quite a pause in thinking.  She was not asking me a Yes/No point about my life, but HOW did I have this vision.

I was on the arc of my trip where I had shook off the negative and I was happier than I had been in a very long time. I think I can now explain my vision – To Thrive in Life.

How did I make this happen?  A lot of leaps of faith in myself and a push from God.

First, I am a cancer survivor and this has defined me in life.  It is something that I have not talked about often until recently. I was diagnosed with leukemia at age 17 precisely 56 days before my high school graduation and it completely changed my plans for college and life. It certainly changed my perspective; I am both more serious and more willing to try anything.

Consider this pivotal time number one that instilled in me to thrive in life, because it’s short.

2008-2013 was pivotal time number two. I “felt” like I was just surviving, just putting one foot in front of the other and the hits kept coming. I can look back now and know this time helped me get here. But at the time it was a challenging 5 years where many of the major pillars in my life  (Family, Relationships, Friendships, Home, Career) were really wobbly, falling down or less desirable.

Through this though, I further developed skills To Thrive in Life: Part of that was finding Independence!

• Financial Independence: In late 2008, I made a big decision to quit my job and start my own company… at the beginning of the recession. I was tired of working in corporate where I felt very “used up”. There isn’t much of a future when everyone was just trying to survive today. My boss said I would be back begging for my job. Well, I created and then sold my company a few years later. I learned that I don’t need corporate America to define my worth or my identity. I learned that I don’t want to be in a work environment that operates on the “survivor “mentality. I want to create and work with people with vision, an open-mind, and inspire positive change. Thriving

• Things Independence: In 2011 I lost my home. I lost it due to others bad behavior and problems stemming back to 2008. My community and the legal system flat out failed me and it ended very badly. I was given 48 hours to put all of my belongings in storage. Due to the amount of traveling I was doing for work, I started traveling constantly. I have been traveling ever since. First to all 50 US states and now in Europe. As I search for where I want to put down roots I learned that you really don’t need many possessions in life, that I value experiences more than things and I can create home anywhere.

• Being Independent: Your parent’s mortality is terrifying. In 2009, my Dad received a kidney transplant, from my Mom… on their 41st anniversary… what an act of true love. I faced losing both my parents and spent considerable time with them at home.  It took a few years of recovery but they are both doing great.

Also at this time, I had many friendships and my relationship falling apart. For a variety of reasons including different paths, too much to handle and pure betrayal significant relationships ended. I felt enormously let down. But it made me value true relationships and stand on my own two feet. I now know you see a person’s true character in difficult times. I am looking for people who thrive.

• Adapt to change: So, with all of the above happening and some more that is a bit unexplainable in a post, I really had to learn how to adapt to change. All of my built up security systems were stripped away except my ability to count on myself. The more I fought to keep life the same… the harder it was. Resolution came and in 2013 as did my ability to roll with the punches and think of alternative solutions.  I learned that you thrive in life by your ability to adapt to change.

It took until the last day of 2013 to finish all the disassembling and be completely free to do whatever I wanted. I took a deep breath and started re-creating a life.  My past, the good and bad, was helping me define what I really wanted. I started with what really made me happy, which was travel and experiencing new people, places and cultures. A plan to travel in Europe in 2014 was born.

I am not one to think that “everything happens for a reason”, but rather things happen and the way you

TD thriving photo journal

react is the reason you are where you are.  Looking back, I knew I was not on the right path for my happiness. My choices today are more inline with the vision of how I want to life my life: daily and long-term.

I am halfway through the 2014 year of traveling. Who knows if I will stop with Europe…. there are more

continents.  I am working on building my life and my relationships with people who live with a similar vision: To Thrive in Life