It’s my birthday! Here’s what can change in a year.

It’s my birthday, y’all! My 42nd trip around the sun starts today, and thanks to technological wizardry, you’ll be reading this while I’m eating birthday brunch or out for my solo birthday hike.

Wow. What a year it’s been.

This time last year I was about six weeks into my coach training program, doing my best to convince myself that I wasn’t suffering at my job, terrified at the prospect of starting my own business, and feeling crushed under the weight of pandemic life.

And today? I work with the most amazing clients who let me into their hearts and trust me with their dreams. I’m building and growing a business that I love. I no longer walk around with painful knots in my shoulders (those disappeared a week after I put in my notice). I’ll be hugging my vaccinated friends in a few weeks. 

So much can change in a year.

To be clear: I know I have a ton of privilege that has made this possible. I’m a white, straight, cisgender, able-bodied woman with access to financial resources. I have a spouse with a stable job and good benefits. 

I also know this: If a friend had come to me this time last year and said, “I’m going to pivot my career at age 41 and sign up for a coach training program and launch a business and quit my soul-sucking job in the middle of a pandemic shitshow,” you what I would have said? “Oh my gosh, YES! I wish I had what it takes to do that.”

Did I ever think that would actually be ME? Oh no. Back then I thought that the things that were calling to me must be some cosmic mistake. “Me? I don’t think so. Sorry! Wrong number.”

It took so much work for me to claim my dreams for myself. To stop believing that somehow the things that I wanted were for other people but not for me.

So here’s what I want to tell you on my birthday as I reflect on the last year: No one is more deserving of your dreams than you. 

There is no one out there with some special sauce that you don’t have. You are just as brave, just as deserving, just as worthy of success, just as capable of doing the scary thing.

It took me my entire adult life to figure out that I didn’t need to wait to be someone else to step toward my truest life and that there is no such thing as the “right” time. I finally stopped waiting for conditions to be right. I gave myself my own permission slip. 

It’s been a lot harder and messier than I ever imagined (as these things always are), but here’s the other thing that I know: that cliché about how you regret the things you didn’t do more than the ones you did? 100% true.

I’ll take all the messy, all the scary, all the hard stuff. No regrets.

What is it that you want? Are you waiting for the right time? Are you waiting until you’re more secure, more courageous, more skilled, more settled? Until the conditions are just so? Until you’re more like someone else?

Imagine if you stopped waiting and wrote that permission slip today. 

What could change for you in a year?

P.S. Coaching can get you fast-tracked to that life you’re waiting for. Let’s clear out the noise and get you walking on the road toward the things that matter most to you. Learn more here.