I believe that life is for living, a grand adventure, where joy is the reward for a life well lived.
And the key to getting what you want, in life and in business, is to keep it simple.
Simple does not mean easy!
But it does mean that you can follow the same process, do the things that will get you the life you want.
I left my corporate job of eighteen years with barely a backward glance and moved to a Greek island to live the life I’d always longed for.
A simple life, in my shorts and flip flops, with 17 18 cats and Molly the dog (although they weren’t in the original vision, they do bring me joy!).
And I consult, mostly online, with corporates and small businesses, helping them work simpler and smarter so they can scale.
You can get the life you want. It’s not always easy, it’s not always fun, but it is possible.
And I want to show you how!
The short and snappy version!
- Take responsibility for your life
- Be clear about what you want
- Face the fears
- Believe in yourself
- Stop worrying about the HOW
- Make a decision and go all in
The longer version
Manifesting the life you want, the big change, the even bigger dream is not easy.
It annoys me that so many people seem to be marketing manifestation like it’s the answer to all your woes.
That there’s some magic trick out there that you just haven’t got the hang of yet!
There is no secret.
There is nothing that is going to take you from a standing start to living the life of your dreams in six weeks and even six months is a stretch!
But when you do the work, when you really believe, when everything seems to magically fall into place, I can see how it feels like the universe is conspiring to get you exactly what you want.
Because the feeling of calm, of peace, of knowing that you are doing exactly what you should be doing is pretty intoxicating.
I just don’t believe it’s the universe.
I believe it’s you!
So the longer version are the stories of how I manifested this life. With the actions I took, the things I did to get to that first big milestone.
1. Take responsibility for where you are right now.
Take full responsibility for your own life, the choices you’ve made and how you feel.
If you’re not happy now, if you don’t like the choices you’ve made in life, you can change that.
It’s your life!
And if you accept that the choices you made are what led you here, then accept that new choices, new decisions are what will get you there – to the simple, joyous, happy and abundant life you want.
Take responsibility, not just for the forks in the road you’ve taken, but for what you’ve achieved so far.
Write those things down and think about them.
- Why did you make the choices you’ve made in the past?
- Why did you take that path instead of another?
- What challenges did you face and overcome?
- What did you learn from your experiences?
When you start asking yourself the questions, remember how you felt, what drove you on that route, where it led you, what you learned.
This was the first thing I had to do when I wanted to change my life.
Stop railing against the world and my fate and take responsibility for where I was now.
To remember that I chose the path, that I stood at the crossroads and picked one direction.
And that it was up to me to make the choice now, to live the life that I wanted to live, or to live how other people thought I should live.
Accept and believe that it’s your choice, your decision, because it’s your life!
2. Be clear about what you want.
Like so many other people, I never knew what I wanted to do when I grew up!
And it used to make me uncomfortable to talk about it.
When I got asked, every year, where do I see myself in five years time, all I could ever think was “not here”.
And of course, 18 years later, I was still “there”.
I was so comfortable in where I was, what I was doing, the money I was earning, so busy with the everyday that although I dreamed about another life, I never really knew what that life was.
I never really sat down and thought about what I wanted.
How I wanted to live.
One of the most important steps in any direction is where you want to get to i.e. what do you actually want?
Creating a strong vision of what I wanted in my life, how I wanted to feel, and what I didn’t want, this is what gave me the courage in the end.
But it wasn’t an instant process.
I didn’t just sit down and fill in some workbook.
It grew slowly.
From a wish to live a different life, to a dream that I talked about, to the vision that gave me the destination to head towards.
What started with a wish became a vision when I got really clear about how I wanted to live.
How I wanted to feel each day, what I wanted to wear, who I wanted to be around, where I wanted to be.
And that wish got stronger the more detail I put into the dream. Talking about it, the detail, what it would really be like, that’s the one thing that turned it into reality.
Writing down what life would actually be like made it even more concrete.
But sharing that vision, describing it, discussing it, building on it, that’s what made it so strong, I could feel the sun on my face, the joy in my heart and most of all, believe in it.
You have to know what you want to be able to believe it’s possible.
And to know what you want, you need to be clear about how you want to live.
Because this life is your adventure!
3. Face the fears.
Call them out. One by one.
What do you really fear?
Because fear can stop us in our tracks.
It can hold us hostage and destroy our dreams, if we let it!
And that’s the key.
The fear is real.
It’s hard to control because we’re wired to be wary of what we don’t know, of the dark, of the unknown.
Fear is designed to keep us safe and secure in an uncertain world.
I feared.
Not being able to make enough money to live on. That I would spend my days as a Jeremy Kyle addict, lounging around on the sofa, trying to make money from doing surveys at 50p a pop.
Irrational fears.
That I wouldn’t be able to get my hair done!
When I wrote them down, called them out and brought them into the light, out of my mind and onto paper, I could see so much more clearly what they were.
Excuses.
A reason my mind was giving me to stay where I was, to not rock the boat, to stay miserable.
Because fear doesn’t care whether you are happy or not.
Fear just wants you to be fearful.
So don’t let the fear win.
Call it out, write them down and look them squarely in the face and ask yourself if they’re true!
4. Believe in yourself
Stop feeling like you can’t get what you want and start saying, why not me?
I’m not a fan of the whole, asking the universe for what you want kind of thing.
A bit too vague for me. And a bit like releasing yourself from responsibility.
I prefer to believe that we are all in control of our own destiny, that life is what we make it.
But that’s a difficult thing to believe in at times.
Because you have to believe that you can make it happen!
When the change is so big, when you’re not sure exactly how, you’re left with faith.
In your own abilities, that you can figure it out, that it will all turn out alright in the end, no matter what happens.
If you want to change your life, you need to believe that you can.
That you will figure it out a way.
So remember that what you have in life, where you are now, what you know now has been the result of what you’ve done.
What you’ve accomplished.
That you’ve built up skills and knowledge along the way.
That when you started out in your job or your business, you didn’t know everything.
But you worked it out.
You’ve set or been set big goals before and you met them.
Write them down.
All the things you know, all the experiences you’ve had, the lessons you’ve learned, the knowledge you’ve gained.
Write them down, again and again, and again.
Until you believe in yourself as much as others believe in you!
5. Stop worrying about the HOW
In the past, I’ve been called by colleagues as the how to lady.
If someone needed something, to know or get something done, I was the one to call on..
“I know this isn’t you, but I know you’ll know how to….”
I like being the expert, I love knowing how to get things done.
But when I wanted to change my life, leave my job, buy a house in the sun and move abroad, I had no way of knowing at the start, exactly how that was going to happen.
All I really knew was that there was another life out there and it was mine.
I longed for it, I could see it, hear it and feel it.
The vision that had been growing in my mind, of living a simpler life, in my shorts and flip flops, that was the life I should have been living.
Not the groundhog day of a major corporate, toxic politics, pointless meetings, dress down friday and office wear!
But worrying about how, what work I would do had gotten me nowhere.
So I simply let go of the how!
And I’ll never forget the moment I finally let go.
I told a friend at work that I was going to take the money and use it to buy a house in Corfu.
And she said to me “but how are you going to live?”
It was in that moment that I released myself from the how and I replied
“I don’t know yet. I have a high level plan, I know the destination and I’ll work the rest of it out on the way”
The vision led me to that place.
And it just felt like the right thing to do!
6. Make a decision and go all in
You have to decide that you are going to make the change and be absolutely committed to it.
This doesn’t mean go out and leave your job straight away, without any back up (although I have to say, there is nothing more motivating than not being able to pay your bills!)
But when you make that decision, it needs to be heartfelt.
No wishy washy maybe or I wish anymore.
You are committed to that course of action.
And that’s the key, really. When you’ve decided, you can start taking decisive actions.
I was lucky because I was forced to make a choice.
There was a finite time to make the decision to leave the business and once I’d put my name down, there would be no going back.
And even with all the soul searching, all the pros and cons, knowing what I’d be letting myself in for if I stayed, there was a part of me that hesitated to make that final decision.
After all, I was known as an expert. I was being asked to stay and take on an even bigger role, which was pretty flattering (especially to a people pleaser like me!).
I knew that there were big opportunities. The business was descending into chaos and in times of chaos, I thrive.
I’d worked hard to get where I was. My whole life had been invested in that business.
But in the end, it came down to one split second decision point.
A catalyst moment when I realised that I just didn’t want to play these corporate games any more.
This was a fork in the road.
Either I re-committed to a life that hadn’t made me happy but seemed like a safer option.
Or I decided to take control of my own life and choose my own adventure.
When that split second came, the decision was just there.
I didn’t second guess it. I made it, I decided and I put my name down on that list.
There was no going back.
And that was the start of the real journey!
I stuck around for an extra six months to help with the transition so I didn’t actually leave for another eight months.
But almost a year to the day I walked out of that office for the last time, I set off in an old, beat up red transit van with a fridge, the washing machine, our cat and my partner, to our new house and life in Corfu.
Which is a whole other story!
When you see all the marketing around “manifest” what you want in six easy steps or do these simple things to get what you want, know this.
It is not easy.
It is not easy to believe in yourself, to break from the norm, to choose to take the path less travelled!
It took me years of wishing, months of agonising and then another year and a half to get there.
And if I hadn’t been forced to make a decision, I don’t know if I would have made it ever, maybe I’d still be wishing my life away, longing for a different life and not taking any real action to get it.
I was really really lucky. And every day I’m grateful for that.
But what I do know, is that it was the right decision.
And when I’d made it, when all those pieces came together, the weirdest feeling of calm and peace overtook me.
And it did, indeed, seem like the whole universe started to conspire to give me what I wanted.
Everything fell into place.
Step by step, every action I took was in the right direction. Every obstacle was overcome. Step by simple step.
The journey isn’t over. There’s always another adventure to follow!
But what I also know, is that if I can do it, then anyone can.
What life are you choosing to live?
