If They Are Willing to Do the Work

I had several conversations this week with people thinking about changing their job. For various reasons they wanted something different, something more, something other than what they were doing currently for work. The challenge was they were not sure what they wanted to do or how to figure that out. It can be daunting and overwhelming to invent your path no matter what you do for a living.

I have a friend who wanted to live differently than how she was raised. She wanted to be debt free, have no mortgage and set herself up for financial success in her forties. That meant living a life VERY different from the one she experienced until college. It meant changing how she handled money, time, “things” and how she spent her energies. She set up a plan and slowly began chipping away at her debt, downsized and moved into a tiny house, then began saving over sixty percent of her income each year. She reinvented who she was and how she thought about money, which invented a new future for her to enjoy.

It takes guts to change your life. Change is never easy, and sometimes it can be elusive and hazy. We need to be honest and face where we are today, find out what we like and don’t like, and then be willing to energetically remove what we don’t want and run full tilt towards what we do want.

I always find that making a list of what we want and what we don’t want helps immensely. Writing it down helps us process and see more clearly. When we have a chance to review it, let it settle, change things, tweet things, or even erase things, THAT is when we know. And if we are willing, sharing our list with a trusted advisor – a friend, mentor, or coach – helps us talk through our writings to better cement what we want and what we do not want our future to include. Because what good is it work towards a future you don’t want, which means finding out what you do want. And what we want now may not be the same thing we want twenty years from now, yet twenty years will be here before we know it…so what do we want next? Take time, write it down, process through it, and talk to someone you trust about it. Then invent the future you want, no matter what has happened in your past. Anyone can change if they are willing to do the work.