Big dreams are painful. I heard this in a therapy podcast a few weeks ago and it resonated with me. The desire to arrive somewhere, to become somebody or to have something and the “not yet” that we face every day is most painful. We can ignore it but it will not do us good and it will not be possible to do this for long.
It resonated with me because I had the dream of becoming a professional coach for a long time and it all happened with small steps.
I remember waking up one morning, more than 10 years ago with the vivid impression that I was wearing someone else’s clothes. That it was somebody else’s life I was living and not my own. I was still employed in a corporation back then and I did not even know what “wearing my own clothes” meant to me. The feeling I had was so true to my heart that I knew it had to be important. I just did not know what to do with it then.
I did not know what I wanted to change and in what direction, so I did nothing. In the next years a feeling of discontent grew with me, I could not find peace with my life and I started searching for new jobs and opportunities, yet nothing seemed to move in any direction. I was feeling stuck and it was so frustrating and overwhelming. And I remember feeling inadequate in a way and asking myself: Why does this happen to me? Why can’t I be content with what I have? Most people would be happy in my shoes: well-paid job, good working environment, highly appreciated at work. The way I see it now is that my heart was longing for something different and without these negative feelings I was experiencing I would not have had the courage to take the leap.
Change is difficult for all human beings and in order to take steps to a new direction I needed to see the current situation as worse than anything else that might come from transitioning to something else.
I have come a long way in the last 10 years and many things have happened to me since then, but looking back everything seems tied up. There were many times when I did not know how a certain decision will help me and sometimes it seemed that I was actually moving away from my dream. Now I know that everything that has happened, lead me to where I am today, where I dreamed to be. And all the struggle I went through was not about external opportunities that might come or not, but it was more about me being ready to handle them when they come.
The best advice I can give my former self is to be patient and pay attention to the signs and the doors that open and opportunities that arrive. Even small things I did not think back then that were related to this dream, lead me in fact to where I am now. Big changes do not come all of a sudden and it was in my own interest to take it slow. I needed to change myself, who I was, in order to face the different challenges in my new life. Change in my identity did not happen overnight, nature preferred to take it slow so that I keep my physical and especially mental integrity.
I am grateful I did not go through this alone, I had so much support from so many people around me that I cannot ever repay them. I know “no one has ever made it alone” and I am no exception. Support from the loved ones or my fellow coaches has been invaluable and I know it will continue to be the same in the future.
Transitions are not easy, “no-one likes change but a wet baby” and it was hard for me too. But I always kept in mind how I would feel at the end of my life if I had passed the opportunity to pursue the dream. And I knew that as hard as the road is, the feeling I would have had (if I did not have the courage to at least try) would have been even harder to bear for the rest of my life.
I feel now the truth in this saying: “If the universe put a dream in your heart, it has every intention for you to make it happen.”
