Wonder why your dreams aren’t progressing the way you’d like? Wonder whether you should quit your job and take the leap? Here is helpful perspective to guide you to success.
Stop, right here and right now, and ask yourself thiscritical question about your dream: Do you really believeyou can have what you want?
Or do you tend to operate with your feet in two camps -- onethat says, 'I'm going out there and pursue my dream' andanother that says, 'I'll also hedge my bets by doingsomething I don't love that much, just in case the dreamthing doesn't work out.' This is what Persephone Zill, acoach I've worked with, would call 'indirectness' and I'mhere to say that it doesn't work.
I've spent a lot of time in life hedging my bets under themistaken illusion that this is mature, business-likebehavior. The real irony is that seldom have thesesupposedly businesslike ideas ever produced income or otherresults that I thought for sure they would.
The urge to hedge your bets often runs contrary toeverything your gut instincts scream at you to do. Forinstance, say you want to be a teacher. Your instinct says'Quit the job! Go get licensed! Be a teacher kids neverforget!' Meanwhile, you hedge your bets by dedicating mostof your energy to work that doesn't feed your soul, andtaking a course here and there that never really moves youany closer to the dream. You justify your lack of action byinsisting you can't afford to quit or alter your job, ordeciding you don't want to change your lifestyle and live ona teacher's salary.
And yet ... what do you want?
Do you want the excuses, or do you want the results? Do youwant a life that's halfway, but never all the way, to thedream? For a lot of us, the excuses, and the half-baked lifeare all we think we deserve.
We don't focus on getting what we want because somewherealong the way, we decided we don't deserve that muchhappiness and fulfillment. I trace my own inclination tothink that way back to a pivotal lunch with my mother backin my senior year in high school, when she asked me what Iwanted to do with my life. As I was about to answer, 'Be asinger or a writer,' she pointed a finger at me andannounced triumphantly, 'Communications! You're going to beGREAT in communications!' Whereupon I promptly burst intotears, and went on to spend 18 years in advertising,'communicating' and hating myself all the while.
Seeds get planted that should not have been allowed to grow;ideas get listened to that should have been ignored. We castabout looking for anyone else but ourselves to give usdirection -- and yet, WE are the only ones who can give usthe permission to really, truly, honestly create what wewant in life.
We can do what we want, but only if we are brave enough toseize the initiative -- even if it means not listening toMom and going it alone. The urge not to provide ourselveswith what we need in life is a sort of creative anorexia,deprivation that is all about a distorted picture of who weare and what we deserve. The real irony is that seldom dothe contingency plans and hedged bets work out. During myentire career in advertising I never made half the salarythat my other, more eager co-workers made. The simple factwas that I didn't want to be there, nor should I have been.Consequently, I couldn't produce the results that wereexpected of me.
(As a footnote to this, however, I will say that Spiritalways has a plan -- for now I use what I learned all thoseyears in advertising in my work helping coaches, speakersand consultants brand themselves and build platform. And nowthat I'm promoting something I actually care about ... Ilove it.)
Perhaps the road to getting what you want won't be fast,easy or lined with gold, but it will be one hundred percenthonest. And that provides riches you can't even begin tocount. So get out there, make a transitional plan you canstick to, and begin to do what you want.
I'm here to say that you do, indeed, deserve it.
© 2006 Suzanne Falter-Barns LLC
For information on how to find the time, energy, money to live your purpose in life, check out Suzanne’s free ezine, The Joy Letter. Sign up at http://www.howmuchjoy.com/joyletter.html and receive our valuable report, 35 Guaranteed Time Savers. And get a daily blast of joyful tips from the Blast o’ Joy blog at http://selfhelpsalon.typepad.com/blast_o_joy/
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