On the morning of the 19th December 2014 I had a sudden gutting feeling and a horrible realisation; “I was WASTING my life!” In what sense I meant that, or felt that I really couldn’t define it, but I can tell you that my realisation was sudden, the feelings and what got me there were most definitely NOT! I felt completely out of my depth on everything, I didn’t want anything and I thought the only solution was to quit EVERYTHING! So what happened, what was I thinking and what did I do about it?
Work had been tough, I had moved back to the UK after 7 years abroad and found myself with a new daunting task and a BIG realisation that what i thought should be a quick and easy transition could in fact be the end of my company as I knew it. Panic struck! The problem at the time was, I couldn’t see what my life looked like without my company, and without it growing and developing in the way I had “always” imagined it.
We tell ourselves things in life that quite often aren’t true. The worst thing is we believe ourselves. We don’t often question ourselves. A friend of mine wrote an article recently titled “The Guest Speaker”. it’s a great article that not only made me chuckle but made me realise how little I question the voice inside my head (also known as myself).
So my issue really wasn’t that I was going to lose my company, it was actually that I didn’t want that vision of my company anymore. (It sounds really easy as I re-read that sentence, truth be told it took me a lot of deep reflection to process and accept this). So what was the new vision and what did I want?
This is a question that used to rub me the wrong way, in SO many ways. What do you want? What is it you want in life? I really thought this was something that you needed to have a definite answer to and a plan or roadmap of some sort to make sure you got there, it turns out you don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need the initial heading, the general direction, a rough idea, that’s all it takes to move forward.
My first step was I knew exactly where I didn’t want to be and where I didn’t want to go. A lot of people will tell you that if you focus on the negative too much, you can subconsciously make it happen. I have done this before and I really can’t tell you enough how true it is, but as a place to start, knowing what you don’t want is a great stepping stone.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
Lao Tzu
So off I went, getting involved with a couple of coaches, business mentors, reading books and making a big decision. On the 23rd December 2014 I had changed EVERYTHING! Not on my own, with help from some great people, but the most important part of this transformation was my DECISION. It took me 4 days to finally realise what the first step in my 1000 mile journey was, it was taking the decision that “I would never allow myself to feel like that again FULL STOP. NO “Ifs”, NO “excuses”, NO NOTHING!”
“You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.”
Tony Robbins
And so I set about making some definitive changes, small things that I could implement and do every day that would change the way I thought, felt and behaved and what a change it made. I’m writing this on Friday 6th March 2015 and it has been an EPIC year so far. Not everything has worked out exactly to plan, however, that’s ok. It’s all moving towards what I want in life, and that people is Essential!
This year I was introduced to James Altulcher, someone I had never heard of before, but I decided to read some of his stuff, watch some of his talks and look in to him. When close friends, that you respect, recommend something, invest the time in it, 99% of the time it’s worth it. So after watching and reading a fair amount there was something that really resonated with me, and I realised I was in fact doing it already by the time I found James. It’s not about making MASSIVE changes in life, it’s about taking ACTION. The action can be as small as to say “improve by 1% every day”.
Check out the video for yourself:
There is also a reason why I didn’t write this blog post on the 1st January, or even on the 7th January a week in to the “New Me” and that ladies and gents is simply because SO MANY people make commitments to the New Year, the resolutions that they never keep to, and I didn’t want this to get lost as one of those. This is ME, 65 days in to feeling appreciative of the life I have and not grieving over the life I thought I wanted.
I plan on detailing, publicly here on the site, some of the experiments that I have embarked upon and of course the results. It’s been a busy 2 months and the next few months are going to be even busier. If you are interested in the journey, get in touch, I would be happy to chat.
