It’s been a year since I quit my job. It also coincidentally almost coincides with my birthday which makes the reflection factor high. In case you need a recap, in the spring of 2018 I was seriously considering what I wanted to do with my life. I was tired of people asking me, “how’s work?” and only being able to reply with, “it’s fine.” By all accounts I was in a successful career that suited my strengths, but there was something missing. Finally, Seb and I decided that we had enough savings that I could quit and figure it out. Boy am I glad I did.

5 lessons learned from a non-traditional career path

During the rest of the summer, I made it my job to find alignment and get curious about things that I enjoyed. I crossed things off a summer want-to-do list like tiling a backsplash and horseback riding. I consumed hours of personal development content and learned even more about law of attraction. While working with my life coach, I realized that personal development is a huge passion of mine. While that might’ve been obvious to other people, I hadn’t really thought about it as a possible career option and in October of 2018 I made the decision to pursue a lifestyle blog heavily weighted in personal development and LOA.

By January, things were moving along, but winter always gives me a hard time and I was struggling with the fact that I wasn’t producing any income. Queue a major money manifestation when we sold our house and made enough on the sale to put a down payment on a better than anticipated home, pay off our cars, and have money leftover for renovations. In March I attended Alison’s Brand School and spent most of April running hard at blog monetization resulting in a mini-crisis of faith which ended up being a blessing in disguise.

Now, I’m comfortably working towards filling out my life coaching roster (work with me here!) as well as doing some consulting in the tech space using my previous skill set plus my life coaching experience – what a dream! I’ve got flexibility to do what I need to do when I need to do it. It’s all coming together quite nicely if I do say so myself!

I’ve done a lot of things over the past year and not all of them were things I would consider ‘successful’ but I’ve learned so much and I’m overjoyed with where I’ve ended up. In an effort to share, here’s a peak at what I’ve learned from the last twelve months:

Take the good with the bad

It’s easy to fall into a low vibe or pity party when you’re struggling to make money or hit a goal. Those are the best times to reflect on what’s going well. Because most of the time, it’s not as bad as you think it is!

Mindset and habits will set you up for success

Do the things you know are good for you – even and especially when you don’t feel like it. For me that’s: meditating, staying positive, exercising, connecting to a higher purpose, taking my vitamins, feeling into my desired outcome, being intentional. Aka not watching TV or hopping on Instagram as a default.

Look hard at why you’re avoiding things

Avoidance is the number one thing that will slow your roll. Do you best not to fall into the avoidance trap, look into why you might be avoiding something (aka self-sabotaging), and rest intentionally only when you need to.

When in doubt, talk it out!

Entrepreneurship can be lonely and hunkering down trying to get shit done can be even more isolating. The more you talk about your goals and dreams, the more they energize and excite you. This doesn’t mean you have to go around blabbing to everyone about your business all the time but picking a confidant or two that you can regularly bounce things off of is incredibly motivating. Bonus points if they help hold you accountable.

Don’t forget to believe

I think the reason most entrepreneurs “fail” is because they focus on the fear of failure instead of the possibility of success. You have every opportunity to succeed! Always reconnect to your faith. Believe in yourself. Believe in a higher power. Believe in things always working out. And if you don’t have many positive thoughts and beliefs, start rewriting them!

I couldn’t possibly list out all of the things I’ve learned over the last year because it’s a day-by-day (and sometimes minute-by-minute) process. My hope for you is that wherever you are right now and whatever you really truly want for yourself, you start right this minute taking action towards your dreams. Part of why being a life coach is the perfect fit for me is because I’m so passionate about helping people create lives they love and live their fullest version of success. If there is any way that I can do that for you (blog post on a certain topic, course idea, coaching) please let me know!