Choosing Life

The sea just meeting the shore with rose petals scattered

Just over two years ago I made a huge change in my life, I made the decision to leave the corporate world to do the work that calls my heart and my soul. It took time to leave, it took a long time and even though there were times when I made that mean something, I know that time is OK. We can take all the time that we need.

That’s not the reason these words have found there way to this page though. Something else has been lurking in the background, a difficulty that I couldn’t articulate until now. Fear has been present throughout these past couple of years. Of course it has, I’m doing something new and without the perceived security. But there’s been something else to this fear, something hidden underneath. The battle of how my life should look.

I’ve been carrying around the weighty expectation of how my life should look, versus how it is, despite me choosing everything that’s here in my life now.

All the conditioning of what’s expected, all interwoven and entangled. The noise about what I should be doing, how I should be doing it, what I should be earning (or even striving for), how I should be living my life. It’s been there a constant in the background, a gnawing.

Stuck in the in-between space of a life that I knew inside out, that I knew how to do and how to be. To something new, unknown. Something that’s uncertain. Something that asks more from me than ever before. That asks me to show up in a way I haven’t before. Something that calls my heart and my soul.

Fear touching the edges of this life that I’ve been working towards, that I knew I wanted. And then when it was here, it gripped me, it challenged me and left me with a wondering, am I doing the right thing? Can I support my family in this way? Look what everyone else is doing and how they’re living. The chatter loud, the noise incessant.

Then as I sat amongst the vast hills of Tuscany for In Essence Retreat, with the beautiful participants and the team around me, everything fell away. There was a specific moment, when quiet arrived, I was met with a deep knowing in my bones. More than that, I felt so alive in that moment, so very here, as if taken, completely and utterly taken. I can still feel it. Everything feels like it’s fallen away, and something else has come in. The fear has dissipated, oh what a relief, for fear to move away in this moment.

It’ll change, again, and again. The fear will come back in, it did just the other day. I’ll feel scared, confused. If there’s one thing I know about this life, is that it isn’t constant or static. It’s nuanced, and confusing, and terrifying, and joyful, and strange, and weird and wonderful. It’s everything.

I have always been dedicated to this life, my curiosity is deep and full. Today I feel more dedicated to my work and my life than ever before. This life I have created. It may not look like tradition or expectation, but this is what I choose, for me, for my family, outside of anything else.

I have no idea what tomorrow is going to look like, or the next week, month or year. But I’m willing, I’m willing to lean into uncertainty to take a risk and see where life takes me.

So sit here, feeling the difference in my body and my bones. Having left something behind. Letting the threads of expectations and shoulds loosen a bit, may be even letting them go. Knowing that my life looks different, even that I’m different and that’s OK. It’s more than OK, this is who I am.

I have a powerful one-to-one programme called Life Mentoring, if you want to make changes in your life or if you need support you can get in touch or book a call.