How I made my dreams come true – Step 1 : I looked at the truth

STEP 1

Looking at the truth

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Changing one’s life is a very modern dream.

It’s a project a lot of people would like to start so to get rid of their past and find a job or a lifestyle that would be representative of their personality to 100%.

As we never take time to know ourselves and to look inside of us, so to find out how we really feel and what we really want, we are tempted to look out for something outside of us that could fill in our ‘inside’.

What I figured out this past four years is that starting something new needs two important pillars :

• the first one is to realize that all what we’ve been through, good or bad, will help us to embrace a new life and that trying to get rid of our past is a huge mistake we should avoid.

• Second of all, what’s important is to clearly identify the problem’s core before losing ourselves in energy-consuming activities that would just be an updated version of the very same life pattern we are accustomed to.

Don’t ged rid of the past

As I partly put it in this blog’s ‘my story‘ page, I left my position as a civil servant four years ago because I couldn’t stand it anymore.

At first, I blamed everybody for the fact I wasn’t happy in my professional life. It was my boss’ fault, my colleagues’ or bureaucracy’s. Whatever.

If I hadn’t left, I think I could have been able to blame the entire world for being as it still is.

I then put myself in a victim’s position intending to be in total disrupture with my own story.

At this time, I still was a real stanger to myself as I thought I had missed a musician’s or an artist’s career. I was sure I just had realized my family’s ambitions without thinking about what I really wanted for myself.

But that wasn’t the truth.

Actually, I was – and still am – a man loaded with autonomy and energy, but I had been spending the past 20 years putting myself under authoritative people I couldn’t get along with anymore.

Why that ? Because it was actually reassuring me and because I wasn’t really ready for anything else before the very moment I decided to quit.

As a consequence, trying to get rid of that was a total waste of time because this behavior had defined me my entire life. Most of all, it is also because I pushed this professional life pattern to its very limits that I’ve been able, four years from now, to literally let explode my deepest wishes.

As a matter of fact, everything I was unstisfied and unhappy with, was part of my path and it was more than important for my project to succeed, to proudly stand upon all of this so to start something new and to be born again, eventually.

Straight to the problem’s core

Long story short : the starting point of the direction change I wanted to see happening in my life was the fact that I was looking for an activity that could summarize my personality.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know exactly what this would mean.

The real truth is that I was already a forthcoming coach, an entrepreneur and an author but I was totally blind to that and I wasn’t able to clearly state what I really wanted.

It took me time but at some point, I realized that, whatever the boss, whatever the organisation I wouldn’t be completely fulfilled until I feel completely free.

And then I touched the truch or at least did I feel it : I wanted no more boss. I wanted no more office policy. I wanted to define my own’s. My problem was definitely about freedom or at least, about my perception of freedom. It was about making decisions and choices without listening to any other voice but mine.

As cristal clear and obvious it already was to my relatives and friends for a long time, it took me a hell of a time to figure out that I wanted to be my own boss in order to do what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted without anyone watching over me, telling me that any idea of mine was no good. Until these ideas become theirs.

I wouldn’t admit it for myself as I was repressing that with a lot of blind endeavours until it became impossible for to go further this dead way.

But here it was : the only way to find my place would mean I had to authorize myself to be fully responsible for the lifestyle I was looking for.

Without this awareness, nothing would have been possible.

A good place to start

There’s a lot of advice that can be given around the fact of changing one’s life. 

Our modern society urges us to be happy even if we aren’t ready for it.

We are urged to be free, to feel happy and to show motivation. We are nearly demanded to rapidly deal with such emotions as frustration or anger as if we were eighty years old zen masters whereas we are just twenty-five aged common individuals. We are urged to improve our way of managing intepersonal relationships. We also  have to be good fathers, good friends, great lovers, wonderful managers and so on and so forth.

What I’ve learnt is that it’s impossible to become the individual we’d like to be regardless to our internal pace. And in this crazy-fast-paced world we’re living in, taking our time is a good place to start when we’re about to make a radical change in our lives.

If you are compelled by a life change, taking the requested amount of time to clearly identify what you are expecting for and what part of your story can be very useful to start something brand new, could definitely be the first smart steps you could take to get to your natural changing path.