Journey To The Soul

Rethinking Success, Redefining Home

• Jacenda Villa

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Discovering a slower, more intentional way of living wasn't something I planned—it found me in a tiny village in southern Italy. After growing up in the outskirts of Los Angeles, where success was measured by prestigious schools, expensive cars, and designer clothes, I always felt slightly out of alignment. Something deep inside told me there was more to life than the superficial values that seemed to dominate California culture.

That feeling led me on a winding path. First to Tennessee, which became home for nine years, and then—unexpectedly—to this small Italian town where my husband and I now own a home. The moment I first arrived here three years ago, my body responded with an unmistakable sense of rightness that I couldn't ignore. The Italians have a beautiful concept they live by called "Il Dolce Far Niente"—the sweetness of doing nothing. It's not about laziness but about the profound joy found in simply being present without the constant pressure to produce, achieve, or accumulate.

What I've discovered through this journey is how powerfully our environment shapes us. The places we live, the cultures we immerse ourselves in, and the values they prioritize can either nurture or hinder the life we truly want to create. As my husband and I prepare to split our time between Italy and Dubai (yes, another adventure awaits!), I invite you to consider your own environment. What do you genuinely value? How do you want to live? Does where you currently call home support those values? There's no need to make dramatic changes all at once, but staying open to possibilities—whether they're across town or across oceans—might lead to a life more aligned and fulfilling than you can currently imagine. After all, we have freedoms previous generations couldn't dream of. Why not explore them?

If something in this resonates, I'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you're curious about life in Italy or our upcoming adventures abroad, you can follow my Substack below where I share more detailed reflections about living between cultures and the lessons they continue to teach me.

Mentioned in this episode:

Substack Post: The Life I’m Still Learning to Live

Podcast: A Voyage Through Pages and Places

Subscribe to my Substack HERE

Follow me on Instagram HERE


Speaker 1:

Hello, loves, welcome to this week's episode. I'm so happy to be here with you this week. I am still saying hello to you from this little town in Italy that I mentioned in my last episode. I actually wanted to talk a little bit more about that with you because it's a very real change that's happening in my life, or that has been happening in the background for the last couple of months almost a few years now actually and it's that we have a home here, a small home in the southern part of Italy, and I wanted to share with you kind of how that happened and how that came into fruition, because it was something that we weren't actually planning on doing, but it kind of just happened planning on doing, but it kind of just happened. And, yeah, it's officially happened. So we shipped our furniture from the US here, from our home in the US, to our home in Italy, which we've had for the last year and we've been renovating and such. So I wanted to talk about how that happened.

Speaker 1:

Maybe it inspires some of you to think about other places that you might have been wanting to explore or live in. There are so many places out in the world and I feel like sometimes getting out of the place that we call home. What we've grown up in and around. You know our family and just our kind of day-to-day life can be really hard for some of us to step away from. But there is such a whole big world out there that we're not even aware of and there can actually be places that might even be more supportive for you, that you don't even know of. And for me it's kind of funny because I've always known, since I was very young, that I didn't want to live my whole life in the US.

Speaker 1:

I grew up just outside of LA, in California, and for anyone that has ever been to California, or particularly to Los Angeles, you'll know that that's a world within itself. It's such a big city, there's always something going on, but it wasn't always for me and I felt that pretty early on when I was getting out of high school and getting into college. It's kind of when I felt it the most of knowing that I didn't want to be there. I was just always pretty aware that what people valued in California particularly in LA and the people that maybe I was surrounded by, but it's just very prevalent in LA it's that the values that I had didn't really align with the world around me. So I didn't want to be in that superficial mentality of oh, what school did you go to, or what car do you drive, or what you wear, you know, that's kind of what people look at and care about, it's. You know, oh, I went to USC or UCLA and those are very great things, but there's also so much more to life than the city that we live in. You know the clothes that we wear, the car that we drive, if we went to a prestigious school or not. So I felt that a lot growing up and I just knew that it wasn't for me.

Speaker 1:

So I actually thought about doing lots of different things and all of them kind of involved moving to some degree. I knew that I wanted to experience something else. I wanted to experience the world. I wanted to go explore different places, countries. I didn't get the opportunity when I was younger to really travel, so I was so thirsty for that to learn about the world. I'm such a curious person and I knew that travel was going to be something that was important to me in my life. So I was thinking about, like, all the different things that could bring that experience into my life at that point. So I thought about joining the Peace Corps. I thought about going to school in the UK or somewhere else abroad. I was looking at, you know, going to Oxford or even a school in France, or I even thought about doing culinary school in France as well. That was something else that I was really interested in. So that deep desire to want to explore a different country, a different culture, have new life experiences, that was always very much there.

Speaker 1:

Now, at that age, when I was younger, it didn't really end up playing out that way. I did end up moving, but not across the world. It was to Tennessee, which has been my home for the last nine years or so, and that's also changing and that's a story for another time. And this is part of that story. This is one of the two pieces. So when this opportunity came up to buy something here, it was a very easy yes, because this place that we found this tiny little city, it's really a village in the southern part of Italy felt more like home to me than almost any other place that I had lived in my life. It was just something that I immediately felt. Being here, this felt more comfortable to me, it was the pace of life. You know what people valued. It was the quaintness of it. It was so many different things. It was a richness of the culture and you know, thankfully, this was something that my husband and I both shared and felt.

Speaker 1:

You know equally strongly about and I've talked about this in other episodes but the space that you live in, I've talked about environment, and environment can look like the home that you live in, the city that you live in, the people that you surround yourself with with. But environment as a whole has so much power over our life. It can either support you to live a life that is more aligned with you and your values, or it can make it harder for you, it can deter you away from you actually living a life that is more fulfilling for you. So environment is so important and I'm very conscious about that. So when we came to visit this place for the first time almost three years ago four years ago actually it immediately stood out to me. I just felt it in my body. My body felt so different being here. It felt so calm, centered, aligned. It felt so many things that it didn't necessarily feel 100% being in Tennessee, even though that's still a very different way of life, and I've talked about in another episode, too, why I love Italy so much, and this place has become more and more important. It's a place that I've fallen in love with more as time has gone on. There's so many reasons why it holds a special place in my heart. It holds a special place in my heart, but one of them is this more softer and slower way of life that the Italians seem to have and that's something that I have been consciously making an effort to do in my life is to live my life in this way, and I've discussed that as well.

Speaker 1:

You know in the past of how this is a journey that I am continuously on, and it's something that you just see so much here. You know, no one is rushing through their life or worried about the material things that ultimately don't matter. Everyone is very much living day-to-day in the moment, focused on what they're doing, the people that are with what's going on around them and just enjoying their life and living it so fully and with intention. They're finding joy in their every day. They're finding time for connection, for their family and work, unlike so many other countries around the world, especially the US, where it can shadow every other aspect of our life. It's only one aspect of life here. It is not the main thing. That is, on the contrary, just enjoying life and spending time with people that you enjoy and spending time doing things that you enjoy. That's actually more important here than what you do for work and what you do as a living. Life is really the main character here, every aspect of it. It's just as equally important. I think even here, just having work that is slightly more fulfilling is more important.

Speaker 1:

Feeling like you have a sense of purpose important Feeling like you have a sense of purpose and doing something that you love, even if it doesn't make you loads amount of money or you only work a couple of hours a week, something that still contributes to your overall well-being. These are very real differences to so many places and cultures around the world that we know. So what's really highlighted here is that slowness, that presence, that ease that the Italians are always striving to live with, and they don't really strive, they kind of just do it. It is so embedded in them. I feel especially more in the South. I mean, if you go anywhere in Italy you are so going to feel it, but in the South, I feel like life is even slower.

Speaker 1:

They have a name for it too it's called Il Dolce Farniente, dolce far niente, which kind of means the sweetness of doing nothing, and they just learn how to enjoy and indulge in just being and not worrying so much about doing. It's literally about enjoying those moments in your life of just not doing anything at all and not being afraid to do anything at all, and I actually wrote a Substack post about this that I'm going to link below if you want to follow me there. I'm starting to write on Substack, and a lot of it is going to be about my life abroad, between living in Italy and soon, our life in Dubai, but also just travels and how that teaches me things all the time. So I am going to leave a link to the Substack that I just published about this, particularly talking about y dulce forniente and just some reflections that I've had about that. But they truly have a word for it, because it is such a central part of their being, of their culture, and it's so amazing to see.

Speaker 1:

I feel like there is so much that we can learn by watching people live in this way, because you come to realize that the things that you thought that truly mattered don't, and you also just learn to lean into that. So I'm super excited to share this journey that I am on with my life here, but also just the transition that my husband and I are making right now, which is ultimately spending more time in our home in Italy, here, but also the move that we are making in the next couple of months to Dubai, so the US will no longer be our home, and I am so freaking excited about that. I can't even tell you we will be coming and visiting family and all of those things, but I'm so excited to go on another adventure and go learn. You know, being with other cultures, another way of being. There is so much that we can learn about ourselves, about other people. I feel like that is one sure way to build compassion is to expose yourself to other people and other ways of life. Even though we think that we're doing it right, that's actually not true. There is no one way to do life. So opening yourself up to that, to be a student of the universe, to learn from those around you, even if they live life a different way. I think that if we actually did that more, everyone, our world would be a bit more peaceful because there's space for everyone and more or less everyone's beliefs, as long as they're not harming anyone. So it's just a way to open that door up to compassion and being more open to everyone else in the world. So I'm really excited to share that all with you.

Speaker 1:

But for today, I just want you to think about what do you value in your life? This is something that I constantly come back to because it, honestly, is the anchor to every other aspect of your life. How do you want to live your life and do you feel like the place that you're living in, the place that you called home? Is that actually supporting those two questions what you value and how you want to live your life? And if not, is there another place that can possibly best support that and you can make slow progress with that? It doesn't have to be so drastic like moving to another country, but it could simply be you living in another city. In the state that you live in, it can be moving to a completely different country. If that feels good to you, you can make baby steps towards something like this if you feel like your environment is not aligned with whatever it is that you want? And if you do want to move, do a bigger move if that is to another country or to another state within your country. How can you do that slowly, in a more grounded way that maybe isn't as scary as moving in the next month or two, even though that's going to work for some of us.

Speaker 1:

I know when I made the decision to move to Tennessee, it was, I think, like a month between coming back home from visiting Tennessee for the first time and making the move. It was very quick for me, but that doesn't mean that's how it needs to be. Sometimes the more gradual approach is what works and just being open and really honest with yourself If you feel like you desire something else for yourself in this realm, if you want to actually live another life. You know we don't need to be tied to one place. That's a very old way of thinking. Maybe our previous generations they very much did have to do that. You know mom, dad, grandparents were more tied, but us more than ever. I'm talking about my generation. You know the millennials, or Gen Z, gen X, you know all future generations to come, but I think millennials really changed that and it's that we don't need to be tied into one place to work or to be or to live, and that really should be something that fills us with so much joy and the thought and the ability that we can call some other place that maybe wasn't as easily accessible before home now. It should fill us with just so much joy and elation that we get to experience that if we want to.

Speaker 1:

So if there has been a place that you have been wanting to explore whether it is a whole other city, a whole other state, a whole other country write down, just journal after this episode, why you feel called to that place. What do you think that place can offer you that wherever you are right now might not be offering you? What do you think that that place is going to allow you to experience and just sit with that for a while? You don't need to make any decisions, but know that those things that come up and that you write about and that you think about, that you dream about, they're not by accident. So if there is something that maybe came up that you're like, whoa, this is very big, I can't imagine ever doing something like that, don't limit yourself A. You don't have to make a decision right now, but just be open to the possibility, even if you're not making any decisions right now, because life can truly blow you away in ways that you could not even imagine.

Speaker 1:

And what if your life in another state or another country was exactly what you needed? And it could be even more incredible than your life where you are now. And it's just about us being open to those possibilities, to that potential. So be open. Life is so incredible. There are so many places that you can experience in the world. It really is such an incredible time to be alive, to be able to do these things, to just get on a plane and, if you are in Europe, to, in two hours, be in a completely different place, immersed in a completely different culture, and there is so much that we can learn from all of these places, and I'm excited to share that part of my journey with you here in Italy and all the other places that I am so thankful that I get to experience, and our life in the UAE too. So I look forward to talking to you all in my next episode. I am sending you so much love Until then.