Courage emerges from the depths of your fear

Three years ago I left my job, I actually left my whole career behind to go into the complete unknown.

I want to say I didn’t have a plan and that people didn’t call me mad but neither of those things is true. There was definitely a plan and people definitely called me mad, bonkers and brave. On a side note, I think brave is the polite way of saying “You’re mad”, or maybe, “You’re mad but you inspire me anyway!” All I knew was something had to change because I was so stressed. My whole body was like; “No more! No, thank you, this is just not working out and you can’t ignore me anymore. What you’re experiencing and have experienced is making you unwell and you are definitely not being how you want to be in your life so you’ve got to change something!”

It wasn’t about changing jobs because the problem would have followed me. It wasn’t about the job, the people or even the career that was the problem, although they were in a small way, the problem I was experiencing was I wasn’t aspiring to that career anymore. It simply wasn’t fulfilling me and when something doesn’t fill you up you’re going to find it hard to be how you truly know you can be in your life.

That decision was not taken lightly, it might have appeared drastic and spontaneous but it wasn’t.

All I had as a plan was;

Make the decision to resign or not, set a date and use my 3-month notice period to figure the rest out. Literally, that was it, that was my plan. So yea, maybe I was bonkers.

I resigned a week early because I had this feeling that “it’s now, this is the time” and then the 3-months of figuring things out began. Me figuring things out was me asking myself; what do I want? what is the ideal scenario here? Even though I have no idea how this can possibly happen or how it would look. So, I wrote this all down.

I wrote:

Working for myself, sustaining my lifestyle, more time and freedom, a few days a week consultancy work and the rest of the week to figure things out.

Funny how part of my plan is always to figure things out. Perhaps it makes sense for me to have an element of freedom within my plan when my plan is to create more freedom in my life. I needed some structure to follow but an element of flow to see where things would take me and that’s what I wanted those three days to give me; time to potter, ponder and explore, trying things out and putting myself in different situations, having conversations and meeting new people.

My plan on a practical level was: Creating an opportunity could apply my existing skills and experience that would pay the bills and cover my basic needs and lifestyle expectations. On a spiritual level, the intention was to create space in my week to think, experience, and explore new things, allowing my new career to take shape naturally and intuitively.

Once I had written this and felt very clear on what I wanted in an ideal scenario, I had my intention and the start of a plan. What I did then had conservations with people I knew who might need or know someone who needed my skills and experience on a freelance basis. I still had 2 months of my notice period left an opportunity exactly as I had hoped for presented itself to me. I got clear on what I wanted, I set the intention and I wrote it down. Then I had the conversations and I discovered new opportunities.

Change is scary.

Changing your life is brave.

Bravery requires courage but courage is what emerges from the depths of your fear.

Fear + Courage = Change. Never forget that my friend.

Big love,
Becki