Have you ever had a time in your life when you felt stuck. A time when you longed for more…when you were ready to move forward, but weren’t sure how. If this is how you’re feeling right now, you are not alone. I’ve experienced this feeling at different times in my life. It often comes after navigating a difficult life circumstance or in the midst of change. I felt like this after navigating a cancer diagnosis and losing people I loved. This is when I’ve decided to ask for help.
I believe in all of our lives, the decisions we make, will keep us stuck or move us forward. This belief fuels my passion to empower others to make decisions that support them to find new purpose and satisfaction in their lives.
This spring after being in pandemic lock-down for almost 2 years, I noticed I was starting to feel a little stuck, and this caused me to make a “seemingly small” decision. On May 1st I decided to join a cycling event that had been advertised on “meet-up.” Soon after reserving my spot, I was tempted to talk myself out of this new and “unfamiliar” experience. I didn’t know anyone in this group. I didn’t even know where our destination of Bentley, Alberta was. But I was ready to make new friends and I committed to my decision. After meeting at the designated site, we set off to cycle. I fell into an easy pace with a couple of women, who began to share stories and their passion for touring. I was fascinated. I’d never met anyone who’d done this, let alone a woman who had the courage to do it solo. The more they talked, the more excited I got. Perhaps it was the fact that life had been halted by COVID these past two years, but something was fueled within me. I’ve coached long enough to pay attention to this feeling. I hadn’t felt this “lit up” for a while.
Howard Thurman in his famous quote invites the question for all of us: “Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
As I rode home that day, my thinking went over the “logistics” of this lofty idea. It didn’t seem practical or realistic! I had no experience or equipment- no tent, sleeping bag, cooking equipment, or panniers and not even a bike equipped to do this. I had only ever cycled between 25-50 kms in a day with a group of friends, carrying only water and snacks… and not since before the pandemic. I had never cycled any great distances alone…I was still coaching clients, what would this look like on a bike in a tent with sketchy Wi-Fi at times? Where would I even cycle to? How long would take? What would an adventure like this cost? What if I spent all this money and couldn’t finish? Have you heard from this voice…after a while it sounded like…"blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." I noticed I was in my intellectual mind. Thinking that is driven by conditions, shaped by our history and our previous experience of what, up until now, we’ve known or believed could be possible. This thinking does not come from what we’d love. It limits us and causes us to shrink back into our comfort zone. Do you see this pattern within yourself? In my book “What If You Could”, this voice is not nice, it’s means to protect us, it really does, but it is cold and icy, and a killer of dreams.
Vision based thinking, is the polar opposite. It is expansive. It comes from our CREATIVE MIND and invites us lean into the question “what would I love?” Not what is possible! It takes awareness and rigor to see this. Our intellectual mind wants to know all the answers, which causes us to waffle and procrastinate. Author Raymond Barker, says procrastination is really a decision for failure. If this seems a little harsh, sit with it for a while. Procrastination stops us from moving forward and results in a feeling of powerlessness and stuck-ness.
So, I leaned into my excitement and began to see myself inside this adventure, and new creative thoughts came to my mind. What would my destination be? Suddenly Quebec bubbled to the surface. My son was getting married there September 10. And now I heard from an internal voice that seemed much kinder. It was inviting me believe in possibility and to imagine “what if I could?” This voice prompted another decision. I decided for my dream. In that moment, I still didn’t know how any of this would happen, the fear was still there, but I was decided. On Monday I took the next step I could, from where I was, with what I had. I drove to Edmonton and began shopping for a bicycle.
Have you ever looked back on your life and thought, “wow, would I have missed out if I didn’t decide for that!” That’s how I feel about my two month cycling adventure this summer. It exceeded my wildest expectations. These two decisions continue to open doors for me, and birth new ideas and dreams, that I could never have imagined when I started out on June 19… terrified. Had I decided to miss that cycling event, I wouldn’t have remembered much about that day. But this was a cool and crisp spring morning, that I will never forget.
Henry David Thoreau’s quote sums up beautifully what I lived into this summer: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. New universal and liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.”
In each and every moment you are the decision and choice-maker of your life. Feel the power of this one sentence. What happens to you in 2023 is not up to luck, or the pandemic or the economy- IT IS UP TO YOU.
If you are a person who spends time and energy making others happy, why not decide to invest time and energy in yourself. Ultimately you get to choose... Are you are ready to thrive?
Is it time for you to lean in and allow yourself to be supported, to ask for help, to have inspiration, motivation, and someone who believes in you? If you're ready to move forward, and curious about my coaching programs, let's have that conversation. In between my coaching, speaking and book events, I carve out time for complimentary discovery sessions. Let’s have a conversation to see where you are, where you want to go, and if we're a fit to work together.
"Our life trajectories are driven by our decisions. Life is a sum of all your choices." -Albert Camus
What if you could live a life that lights you up?