Is today the day?

The kids are sleeping, Ian’s out for a run and I’m sipping my morning cuppa 

 

Over  the last 18 months of traveling I’ve had so many messages from people who would like to do what we are doing.

 

I’ve had comments on social threads from people who have their own goals and dreams they want to achieve but are not remotely close to a hitting them.

 

And it makes me so sad.

 

Because one day it might be too late.

 

Yes, there are multiple legitimate reasons why many people may not be able to fulfil their dreams and every day I don’t take our life for granted and I am grateful for the life we have carved out for ourselves so far.

 

BUT…..

 

The people who send me messages or who comment on travel threads are often not in that category and everything they want to achieve in their life is theirs for the taking.

 

And there are 2 core reasons I’ve seen over and over again in these messages and threads, as to why they are not grabbing the life they really want:

 

1. They don’t have the courage to take the leap from what they know, into the unknown.

 

2. They are not prepared to make some sacrifices in the pursuit of their dreams.

 

So let’s talk about COURAGE

 

It took balls to give up the life we had to embark on this adventure and many people thought we were crazy!

 

But we knew that the hamster wheel life we were living was not fulfilling us, we just weren’t as happy as we knew we could be.

 

We had great jobs we loved, we had a home, we had amazing friends and family around us and you would think that was enough but at our core we were miserable.

 

Because at our core what we loved, and what we wanted was adventure and travel and to do it our way.

 

When we pictured what it would look like it gave us butterflies in our tummy and we would spend hours at night in bed looking at all these countries and joining travelling FB groups.

 

We knew this was what we wanted and we knew we had a choice.

 

Stay in the life we were living or take a bold leap of faith into the unknown and see how it went.

 

To know that if it all went tits up we would know we had at least tried and we would avoid that awful feeling of regret and the ‘what if’s’

 

But what we did do was to lay some foundations in place:

 

1. We made the decision to delay leaving for 2 years after we actually decided to try and make it happen! We called this our ‘2 Year Plan’ We knew we didn’t want to sell the house to travel and so we knew we needed to plan out how we could keep the house and earn and work whilst on the road.

 

Many people sell their homes for their adventures and this is massively a personal choice and is unique to everyone’s personal set up and life.

 

There is no right or wrong here.

 

But for me having already moved abroad to Uganda once and then returning unplanned a few years later i knew I wanted to have this stability of our home still in situ ‘just in case’

 

For us, I’m glad we did this and although those 2 years were hard because once we’d planted the seed we just wanted to head off, it was the right thing to do for us.

 

Work out how we could fund our travels but still find a way to keep our home in the UK.

 

This added another challenge, but one we chose to rise to!

 

2. We made a leap into new ways of working! I’d always dabbled in the online space but not in a way that would be my main career so it was scary and exciting in equal measures!

 

I spent time looking at my skills, knowledge and experience and where I could best be of service and of use to people and which I could deliver online.

 

I knew it would take time to build an online presence and so I officially launched The Profitable Couch in 2019 even though we were not going to leave to travel until 2021 helping to business mentor incredible health,wellness and fitness pros around the world.

 

Making full use of the 22 years I’d worked in this space.

 

The joy this has brought me over the last 4 years is immeasurable and I have made friends for life and I love taking my clients with me on our travels:

 

They were all there for the build up and they are still with me right now

 

But back on that first day when I launched online it was scary AF going into a whole new way of working but I remembered a quote I’ve always loved….

 

‘On the other side of fear is all you ever dreamed of’

 

It was also scary considering taking the kids out of ’normal’ school.

 

Would this be a disaster, would the kids learning go ’pete tong’?

 

Was I being a completely irresponsible parent?

 

Actually the kids have thrived!

 

They are so happy and confident, they are learning every single day whether it’s through the online schooling we use, the homeschool resources we use, the clubs the kids have joined, the people we meet, the cultures they are learning, the every day experiences they get which can be as simple as going up to an ice cream shop on their own and asking for an ice cream in the local language to a complete stranger who speaks no English.

 

To meeting new families and making new friends, their view of the world is so much greater and their confidence through the roof!

 

In Turkey alone Raif was the one trying to teach us Turkish as he had learnt the most!

 

And of course there were a whole other load of things and unknowns we needed to consider that were totally knew to us when we first started planning this adventure but rather than make that a reason NOT to make it happen we just made good use of the Google and asking those in FB groups who were already living the life we wanted for help and advice.

 

We were not to proud to say we were Rookies!

 

And now 18 months in we are the ones being contacted for advice and that feels amazing!

 

SUMMARY: Yes taking a leap of faith towards realising your dream (whatever that looks like for you!) can be terrifying, but if you want it bad enough then take a deep breath and dive on in.

 

As Marie Forleo says….everything is figuroutable and find people already doing what you want to do (or similar) and ask them how they did it!

 

People are always willing to share their journey with you and to help!

 

Don’t regret the chances you didn’t take because of fear because that down the line will mess you up.

 

Now let’s talk about SACRIFICE:

 

I get messages from people who have a nice house, a nice life, a nice job but what they want at their core is a totally different life.

Because what they have right now is well…..NICE but it’s not amazing

 

They’re not miserable but they are not fulfilled in the way they would love to be.

 

But the problem here is that their life is still NICE so whilst they talk a long old story about this amazing dream they have, their nice life keeps them ticking along enough.

 

So whilst they may have a dream they'd love to achieve they are just not miserable enough to take action or they are not willing to take the risk of giving up ‘nice’ for the unknown!

 

So instead they settle for a ‘half life’ or mediocre existence that is not amazing but it’s.... nice.

 

SUMMARY

 

Truth Bomb- If you aren’t willing to make sacrifices then you don’t want it badly enough.

 

Because when a dream becomes a serious goal it embeds itself into the fabric of your soul and nags at you every day and night until you HAVE to listen to it

 

If you want it bad enough you won’t see things as sacrifices.

 

You will be so focused on what you do want that those nice things you have won’t longer be enough to make you happy.

 

You’ll want more, not in the material sense but internally.

 

Anyway my purpose for writing this is to remind you that regret is horrid so just do what you can to avoid it!

 

Grab every opportunity that comes your way and give it a go!

 

Some may be a disaster and some may be the best decisions and choices you ever made!

 

Listen, take it from me…..

 

We aren’t wealthy, we are just your average family who decided to face the fear and do it anyway, who wanted a dream bad enough to make sacrifices, and give up the ‘nice’ in the quest of finding the extraordinary and a happiness that we knew we wanted in our souls.

 

We are no one special so although it’s a cliche it rings true….if we can work towards our dreams then you can sure as hell work towards yours.

 

I’ve spent years seeing some of the worst atrocities that can happen to man. Things I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

 

I’ve seen suffering on levels you could not imagine and like many I’ve lost people at ages that just weren’t fair and when their lives had barely begun.

 

If you don’t want to live your best life for you then do it for them because they didn’t and don’t get the chances we do and have.

 

So don’t take for granted what you have before you.

 

Take a moment to grab a cuppa, a glass of wine or anything really and truly ask yourself if you are happy with the life you are leading now?

 

If you are then congratulations, keep doing you!

 

If you are not then truly explore what you want from your life, where are the gaps, what needs to go and what needs to change and begin to take the steps towards achieving the happiness you want and deserve in whatever way that looks like for you.

 

Happiness is 100% an inside job.

 

Think about what lifts you inside, what fulfills you and brings you joy and seek to do more of that stuff and less of the stuff that brings you down, sucks the life from you or just isn’t fun.

 

The cool thing is that you have the choice about how your story ends

 

Make it an ending that is built on a life of happiness

You can start a new chapter whenever you decide to!

 

Is that today??