It took a lot of courage to decide to run across America.
It took even more courage to decide to not run across America.
I’ve told a handful of people already.
And now I am telling you, right now, through my words. I’m not going to run across America.
It started as a gut feeling. A deep one. I knew something didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t locate the source of unease. I started to feel trapped. Immense pressure. Caged in. Putting everything else in my life on hold.
At first, I questioned whether I was scared.
I’m ok with being scared. With fear. Fear and I, we go way back. We all have fears. I even wrote about it at the beginning of the year.
I was not scared to run across America.
So what was it?
I knew I had to dig deep.
When I work with people, when I coach, the first thing I do is listen. I listen carefully to what people say, because often, what they say has more to do with what they’re not saying.
So I decided to just listen. To my own words, as I talked to those around me.
“I don’t have enough time for the training”.
“I’m scared I won’t be able to save up the money in time”.
“What if I can’t find a job when I come back from America?”
Words.
They were just words.
And I kept saying them over and over and over.
I started to believe them.
That I didn’t have the time.
Or the money.
Or the job security.
And you know what?
It was bullshit.
If I want something, I make it happen.
The truth is, I just didn’t want it enough anymore.
I didn’t want to save lots of money each month.
I didn’t want to give up the huge amounts of time required to train.
I didn’t want to turn my back on an awesome job.
I just didn’t want it enough.
I didn’t want it enough.
I beat myself up about this. Hard.
I questioned how I could change my mind about something so huge.
I felt like a fraud, a complete shit. On Nicole. On the people around me who’d had my back from day one, ready to pull out all the stops to help me get to my goal.
“So when victory comes at too heavy a price, well, there’s honour in choosing defeat”
My girlfriend showed me those song lyrics by David Ford the other day. She held up her phone and there they were, disrupting me as I talked myself in circles, driving myself mad, trying to make a decision.
And this is when I realised fully.
It’s ok to change your mind. To give up. To turn your back. Even when you’ve worked your ass off to get to that that point. The important thing is that you dared to dream. That you set the bar high. That you had the courage to start.
Setting goals and following dreams doesn’t always mean achieving the exact thing you set out to do. On your journey, you may come across and choose to walk different roads that you didn’t even know existed. Roads that lead you even closer to yourself, to the life you’re living right now and the life you see ahead of you.