Choose to use your gifts and live the adventure of this lifetime. Step into the larger scheme of following your dream. Let’s deluge the world with the ultimate dancers, people who feed their souls with work and feed their work with soul. ~ Tama Kieves
I recently read a newsletter written by one of my favorite authors, Tama J. Kieves. She wrote a wonderful book called “This Time I Dance” about her career transition from being a lawyer to becoming a writer and coach.
She invited her readers to write a letter to themselves from a place of either looking ahead to what they want or looking back to acknowledge what they’ve accomplished.
Her article reminded me of how I felt after leaving my corporate job. I thought about what I would say to my former terrified and fearful Self to give her reassurance. Below are ten things I would tell her:
- You’ve come a LONG WAY, Baby! From where you sit, feeling scared and alone, you have NO IDEA of how grateful your Future Self is that you chose to follow your heart and your dreams rather than following what you now believe to be true about security and safety. Even though you feel too anxious about your future to see it clearly from where you are, the journey will be worth it.
- It will be worth every long walk you will take to ease the burning anxiety of not having a solid and dependable paycheck coming in.
- It will be worth enduring sleepless nights, wondering if you will survive your career transition until you figure out how to create a ”life-lihood” that combines Passion, Purpose, and a Paycheck! ®
- It will be worth pushing through your fear of failing, of disappointing yourself and everyone you think might be watching and waiting to see if you will “make it”. You will learn that they aren’t watching as closely as you think. And you will learn that what they think doesn’t matter nearly as much as what YOU think about who you are becoming and what you are doing.
- It will be worth learning to have faith and to trust that you will be okay.
- It will be worth opening yourself up to giving and receiving support from people and learning that they really do care. You will learn who your true friends are and that you have more of them than you think.
- It will be worth learning that allowing others to contribute to you is sometimes the biggest gift you can give.
- It will be worth giving up everything you’ll learn to give up – like beating yourself up over past mistakes, indulging in negative self talk, and your pre-conceived notions about what you can and cannot do. You’ll learn to give up needing to have everything figured out before you take action.
- It will be worth discovering the incredible and indescribable joy and fulfillment that comes from giving your time, talent, knowledge and energy to help people who are going to face a career transition just like you are facing.
- It will be worth it to stand tall in your shoes years from now, feeling comfortable in your own skin, being proud of your inner hero’s courage and feeling excited and delighted to be in charge of creating how you want your journey to go.
I’m glad I accepted Tama’s invitation to write to my Former Self. Maybe I’ll write to my FUTURE Self next! I’d like to pay Tama’s invitation forward. If you’ve gone through a career transition and created an Encore Career, what would you say to YOUR Former Self? How would you honor your journey toward creating the life you always wanted?
If you are in the beginning stages of your career transition or life transition, what NEW future would you create if you BELIEVED you could design it to go exactly like you want it?
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Curious about designing your own Encore Career? Call Coach Sue at 949-212-4345 to schedule your complimentary “get acquainted” coaching session.