And just like that…10 years!
This one sneaked up on me. 10 years ago, I carried a box of my stuff out of the Century City office that was my corporate home for the prior decade and left to hang my proverbial shingle. It was a rather naïve and instinct-driven choice – I wanted to coach, I’d almost finished my training and LOVED it, and I thought, Well, surely I can figure this out!
(Cut to every other big decision I’ve ever made, perseverating for days/weeks/months, analyzing the pros and cons, researching options…not a whiff of any of that!)
I’ve been thinking recently a lot about choices. I’ve been thinking about, in all aspects of my life, the choices I make – the ones that I stick with, the ones that I try and then release like a quiet breeze, even the ones I put off or avoid.
For a choice I made so breezily, it sometimes surprises me the level of dedication I’ve had to this particular choice.
I have chosen, day in and day out, this work for 10 years. Now, there have been lots of good things – getting my very first coaching client, the first referral I ever got, the pride of figuring out how to build my first website, the feeling of taking off early on a Friday, undiscovered and unpunished…
There have been a lot of hard things too – the first client that canceled on me, the first time I had to pull money from savings to cover my expenses when I didn’t make enough that month, the days wondering and worrying if or where my next clients would come from…
But that’s what I’m seeing about ALL my choices in life. It is never ALL rainbows and ice cream. Sometimes it’s a bowl of punch with a turd floating right in the middle. It was never going to be only the good stuff with no hard stuff.
Sometimes we’re lucky, and we find the hard stuff we’re willing to choose, over and over, for the good stuff that comes with it. And that’s what I’m thinking about now, as I look over the past decade of this choice and think about what’s next. What I want to continue to choose going forward.
Here’s to the next 10!
