Six years ago today, I was let go from Fidelity Investments and my journey toward becoming a coach began.
I resisted at first. I tried like anything to get another job within Fidelity, and then to develop a consulting business. Until I realized that what I really wanted, what I even felt called to do, was to become a coach helping senior leaders to transform in the same way that my teachers and mentors and coaches had helped me to transform.
In this journey of the last six years, I’ve noticed there are a few things that get in the way. No one told me about these things, and I’m sharing them in the hopes that they will help you create what you want, just as I have been able to create (or at least to start creating) what I want.
1. Know what you want
No one tells you how hard it is to actually know what you want. For you. Not the things that you think others expect of you, or the things you think you can have. The things you actually want.
2. Trust your inner knowing
For me, coaching was about a quiet knowing. I would challenge it, I would say it wasn’t practical, that I wasn’t qualified. But it knew, and it waited for me to come around. I am so grateful for that inner knowing, and for learning that I could trust it.
3. Ignore (most) other people
Chances are, that thing you really want is not on the predictable path, and most people have taken the predictable path. They will sabotage you to make themselves right. Not out of malice, but out of genuine concern that you are trying something that isn’t possible. But there are a few people who will see your magic. Hold on to those people. They are priceless.
4. Be unrealistic
It’s actually easier to do something unrealistic than to do something linear. Because linear requires more and more of the same. Linear is exhausting. Unrealistic requires you to create yourself differently, to see the world differently. And that transformation makes the seemingly impossible easy.
5. Do it even though you don’t know what will happen
So many people refuse to take the leap without knowing where the net is and EXACTLY how it will catch them. These people will never start. Because it is impossible to know how it will work out. You just have to trust that it will.
6. Continue to do it even when it’s hard or you’re stuck
The spiritual teacher Byron Katie says that you can have anything you want as long as you are willing to ask 1000 people. Creation is the same. You may not have to continue for years and years, but you have to be WILLING to. You have to come from that willingness, because otherwise you will stop the first time you run into a learning opportunity disguised as an obstacle.
Six years into this journey, I am so grateful that I have learned each of these. I offer them today to you in both gratitude and the hope that they will help YOU create what you really want.
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