Image 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.
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Image by Davide Ragusa. Used under a creative commons zero license.
I did hundreds and hundreds of exercises, read very many books and spent years changing careers before creating the vision of what I wanted.
There are two major sticking points in a person’s quest to finding work they love.
The first is working out what you want. (Over and over people tell me what they DON’T want, but you have to turn that on its head and get specific).
Read MoreIt was 7 years ago that I first googled 'changing careers’.
I hadn't known what I wanted to do after University so I took a gap year, temping in Canada. It was a whirl. An adventure. And then 4 of my close friends got engaged and started getting mortgages and sending out wedding invitations and I took fright. I needed to get a proper job. Settle down. Stop messing around.
Read MoreImage by Lechon Kirb. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
We all have those days when everything just goes a bit haywire and we find ourselves in a spin.
What do you do when you're feeling confused about what's happening and slightly crazy?
Here's my top three practices to getting myself back on track, with perspective and feeling myself again.
Read MoreImage by Saul Cueller. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
A quick guide to my core self-care practices. These activities have helped me develop a strength which help me walk through the challenges (instead of having a flop, panic or going to pieces like I used to!)
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.
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Image 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 MoreImage by Luke Pamer. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
How much do you listen to your heart?
Saying no ‘feels’ wrong sometimes. You're convinced you'll hurt someone’s feelings. You feel uncommitted. It means ending a relationship.
And sometimes saying no is about aligning with what your instinct tells you, however crazy it 'sounds'.
Read MoreImage by Milada Vigerova. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
It can be such small things that hold us back.
In my case, it was a haircut. It was REALLY getting me down that I was overdue. But I was putting it off because I was scared I was going to come out looking like a poodle. Or at least look a bit weird.
After talking with my coachI realised that this needed to be a priority. Go get your hair cut, Claire. TODAY
Read MoreI hopped on the train to Florence yesterday to meet a new friend and fellow business owner, Nicole. We enjoyed a delicious lunch, followed by a little tub of sweet gelato sitting on the steps of the Uffizi gallery, bathing in the warm sunshine. We wandered round the city, stopping here and there to inspect this and that, relishing the classical architecture and hum of Italian voices around us. I realised how much my soul had craved this kind of love. The inspiration love. The artistic love. The enjoyment love.
And how we often get it backwards.
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 MoreImage my own.
La dolce vita took a little rain check one day this week.
The apartment I’m staying in at the moment dates from 1937. That makes it pretty old.
And the guy who runs it (and lives here) knocked on my door on Wednesday evening, just as I was about to Skype in with my accountability group.
Read MoreImage by David Marcu. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
And we thought that was just supposed to be a pep talk.
But we CAN. Do anything.
Read MoreImage by Jeff Sheldon. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
If you want to change your life this year; if this is the year you’re actually going to go to the country that’s been on your list forever, if this is the year you’re going to leave the job you hate, if this is the year you’re determined to change SOMETHING to make your life better: CONGRATULATIONS. You’ve taken the first step to doing something.
You've set an intention.
But let me guess, you’ve had this intention before right? And nothing’s happened.
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Image my own.
It makes it easier to part with possessions when you know that you have to carry them up four floors because the Italian apartment you’re staying in has no lift. I’d shed more since I arrived in Italy, giving away what I knew I didn’t need. Carrying books around for 3 months, on numerous train journeys does beg the internal question: How much do I really want these?
Read MoreImage by Jeff Sheldon
This time last year, whilst still in my job, I realised how much my home environment had an effect on how I felt. I lived in a beautiful, spacious flat in one of the most desirable areas of London, but my ‘stuff' was closing in on me.
Have you ever wanted to be Mary Poppins: just click your fingers and it all go away?
Read MoreImage by Ali Inay. Used under a creative commons licence.
You’ve probably read articles and bloggers talk about how you need persistence. I used to think this was a ethereal quality that I lacked and somehow need to push through another back-breaking barrier of hard work to achieve.
Now I don’t believe persistence comes about like that.
Read MoreImage by Matthew Clarke. Used under a creative commons zero licence.
A big challenge for many people is feeling as though they don’t have the money to fund their dreams.
Image by Florian Klauer. (Used under a creative commons licence)
First, a reflection!
My year
This time last year I was facing the same frustrations in my full time job that I'd faced for a while. My employers had agreed for me to go part time, but it hadn’t quite begun and my former role had a few bits and pieces to tie up.
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