Image by Ben White. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
What will you not let yourself have?
That piece of cake that's sitting in the office kitchen?
New underwear?
A gym membership?
A new phone?
This week I thought I would do something a little different....as it's nearly the end of the year (and Christmas!)
On Thursday morning it's market day here in Vicenza...so I put together a little video so you can see a little of a winter morning for me in Italy looks like...
So how do you feel about money? Is it driving your decision to stay where you are?
Are you staying stuck because you're afraid that making a change will mean you somehow 'misspend' your money or even lose it all?
Most people don't know what they want.
We have been told that 'I want, never gets' and we put away our dreams in the wardrobe in the attic.
And it can be challenging to encourage that dreamer within you to come out ,so you can get clear on that bold, exciting, adventurous life that you'd love to lead.
Do you ever wonder how other people seem to get stuff done?
You have all these intentions about what YOU'RE going to do and yet, somehow it never happens??
I took a gap year after University and spent 6 months in Canada, where I temped for the securities division in a major bank.
I asked one of the investment advisers whom I'd got to know for some career advice.
He said to me: "Claire I think you could do anything."
Something that I used to struggle with is not having enough TIME.
It was all very well reading about how you could get loads done if you did something for 10 minutes a day, but I found that when I got stuck in to something, 20 minutes would have gone past then I would carry on for a bit and suddenly it would be midnight! It would put me off doing it again because I would be tired for work.
Read More
Fear can hold us back from creating the life we want. Here I share a story about how I moved through a big fear that was preventing me taking the next step.
Read MoreImage by Oscar Keys
The kind of whispers we’ve all heard went through my head:
"It’s inevitable - you can’t have good health all the time."
"You’re just getting older, it’s totally normal"
"Everyone has stress in their job, but we all have to work don’t we?"
I started wearing glasses for distance.
Read MoreImage by Noah Kuhn. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
A big bear that used to hunt me (no, not a real one) was:
What if I fail?
Say you're in a reasonably good position as you are. You have a job, maybe some money in the bank. Your co-workers are alright. You’ve got a nice-ish place.
Why would you risk it all for some…pipe dream?
Read MoreImage by Rodion Kutsaev. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
It’s about what your heart is saying to you.
Whispering, maybe. Faint maybe.
In a cupboard under the stairs, locked away, hidden, bruised, hurting, in pain, longing, whatever state it’s in.
Where your heart lies, there your treasure is.
Read MoreImage by Jordan Sanchez. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
I started this journey, thinking it was just about finding a job that I loved.
I quit the graduate training scheme I was on (having sat the exams and leaving my job before even finding out the results) because I had decided that following my dreams and trying to make myself happy was more important than what the company needed (and because I spent tea breaks crying in the toilets).
Read MoreImage by Olenka Kotyk. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
If you’ve been feeling as though your dream is so far away and you wish you could just ‘be there’ and start ‘living the dream', take heart.
You CAN start living it: right now.
Read More
Image by Julia Ceasar. Used under a creative commons license.
I used to feel disheartened with my teachers when I would show them my work and they said: "Great, but can you do this and make it even better?"
And I would look at them and think:
“I’ve put all my effort into this and you’re wanting MORE?"
Read MoreImage by Daniela Cuevas. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
In every moment, you have a choice.
When I first read that, I felt so much pressure.
In every moment, I had a choice?
I felt that I would more often than not choose the wrong thing.
Clothes, food, jobs, men.
I was notching up errors.
Read More
Image by Marta Pawlik. Used under a creative commons zero license.
There is a horrible, inevitable ‘feeling’ you have when you keep grinding away at a job that you hate.
A ‘Will I ever get out of this?’ feeling. Of course, there is a possibility of redundancy. But if we ‘wait’ for something to change, we then realise…it’s only ourselves that is stopping us from moving forward.
Read MoreImage by Joshua Earle. Used under a creative commons license.
Are you still ‘deciding’ to do something about that dream?
How long has it been now? What are you waiting for?
Read MoreI put the date of my relationship with la bella Italia being established as 2013, when I took my first trip to the country, for a few days in June. Yet my love for Italy had been brewing for a few years before that - subtly but with increasing force: moving in with two Italian translators, almost always choosing Italian food to eat when I ventured to local restaurants and picking up my first audio book of Italian language lessons. The beauty, history and culture counterbalanced the less glamourous parts of Italian life (the infamous and complicated system of bureaucracy for example) and I knew Italy was somewhere I wanted to live.
Read MoreImage my own.
With this life, this adventure, starting before you’re ‘ready’ is something all the great adventurers tell us we should do. It’s true. It dawned on me that the process is similar to learning a language.
Read More
