Long suffering, mega long time readers will have seen me circumnavigate the virtual globe as I did what I’ve been so keen for you to do … find my thing. I wrote at least three ‘I’ve found my thing’ posts on just my first blog and here we are, nearly two years later, and I’m teetering on the edge of something awesome. (And yes, I know you’ve heard me say that before too. But hear me out. )

Back in July I started training to be a life coach and this was accompanied by a big grand announcement on my site at the time, TruthPassionJoy.com:

Truth, Passion, Joy is focussed on helping  creative entrepreneurs like you get happy by being honest about who and where you are, by empowering you to be brave and helping you share the most awesome you with the world.

Together we work on growing or expanding your business by getting past the mind blocks that are stopping you.

That was followed just two months later by this place and now, on the first day of advent, I finally need to tell you what’s been going on around here (and why I’ve been so quiet!)

But first, a little bit of back story (because it’ll help what I’m about to tell you next make a lot more sense!)

The first blog I ever wrote was for lovely UK charity Give A Brick. January 5th 2010.

Give A Brick exists

to inspire, empower and enable individuals to show love to other people in their community.

Why?

Everyone needs to be loved and, more importantly, to feel loved. We all deserve to be respected and valued. And in an ideal world, a person’s first experience of that should be within the micro-community known as ‘family’.

And we love because we were loved first. By this being I tend to call God (or the big guy) but you may know him as the Divine, Spirit, the universe, the force, or something else entirely. What you name him (or her. But in the interest of keeping things simple, let’s stick with ‘him’ for now) is really just semantics.

I’m a Jesus freak. Jesus is the reason why Give A Brick was founded.

And a couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of talking to a very close friend of mine about Jesus. We talked about God’s love and a feeling she was getting deep inside of her. The whole conversation was amazing. Time stood still (until I turned around to find hours had passed in the blink of an eye) and it felt like coming home.

You know how I’ve been urging you to find your thing? Legacy stuff?

Well finally I know what I’m here to do.

Because my friend doesn’t come from a traditional Christian background. The conversations we had weren’t about ‘praying the prayer’ and it was sheer joy to hear her say ‘I can hear her’ when talking about the Holy Spirit (because, like the big guy, traditionally the Holy Spirit is referred to using the masculine pronoun.)

Over the years I’ve always found it super easy to talk about God stuff with people in a way that meets them where they’re at. I can’t give you specific examples but it’s like we can be talking about sprouts (picking a word very much at random!) and it will morph into this conversation about God’s love.

And that is what I’m here to do.

Encourage conversations with people in a way that is kind and fun and respectful of where they’re at.

The irony is, after my conversations with my friend that weekend, I remembered a fully formed idea that accidentally popped in my head one Sunday in church. It was a book outline for an offering I called (largely for mine own amusement at the time I must confess) The G Spot.

It’s that feeling that you get inside that something’s missing. An ache or emptiness. This thing that is so very hard to find the exact right words for (you see, I told you The G Spot was a great name for it! ) but that everyone has, even people who have no apparent belief in anything bigger than themselves.

And it’s exploring that G Spot or ‘soul itch’ as I now more often call it (for reasons that will become apparent in the next paragraph) that I’m here to do.

This is legacy stuff for me.

But of course it doesn’t really fit here on Go To El. The soul itch stuff is bigger than me and so it needs to have the space to grow and evolve and develop. Soooo, as we sit on the edge of 2012, I’m here to pull back the curtain on The Itchy Soul.

What will happen to Go To El?

I honestly don’t know yet. Helping people get free from a day job they loathe is still something I feel very passionately about. But you could quit your job, start your own business, and still fail to scratch that soul itch and end up feeling empty, which is why The Itchy Soul must come first.

But in this, my final post on Go To El (for the forseeable future at least) I’d like to offer you a challenge. It can be very, very, VERY scary to look at your life and realise that some major changes are needed.

Going back to square 1 (I literally have no contacts or email list or products or anything like that yet) is daunting!

But do you know what’s more daunting? Getting to the end of your life and realizing that you never quite hit the mark. That feeling of never quite getting there, always something missing. That’s enough to make grown men cry.

So I dare you, as we enter the final of stretch of 2011 and prepare for the adventures that 2012 will bring, to take a good hard look at your life and where you’re headed.

And if there’s something you’re not happy with, it’s never too late to make some changes.

Go on. I dare you.

P.S. Did I mention yet how much I would love it if you hopped on over to The Itchy Soul with me? Click here to dive right in. There are only a couple of blog posts up right now but I’ll be publishing daily so we’ll soon remedy that.

P.P.S. Thank you xx

All this legacy talk. It gets you all buzzy in your brain doesn’t it? Or is that just me?

Timing is a funny thing.

Two days before he died I embarked on what I can only describe as major renovation work. But I wasn’t renovating a building. It was my business that was getting the makeover.

The mission for the week he died? Finding your why. Legacy.

Doing stuff that matters.

It’s been a remarkable renovation experience (and I’m only half way through!) but what do you do when you realise you’ve been kidding yourself?

Is it possible to choose a noble, fabulous thing for yourself, but it not be your real legacy stuff?

What if that noble, fabulous thing were well received? Profitable? Helped lots of people?

But you found yourself realising, every day that you put off doing the thing you’d unwittingly been avoiding, that you were a smaller person as a result.

What would you do? Tell me in the comments.

P.S. There’s a little shin dig happening online next week that, if you’re into building a business, you’ll want to keep an eye on. Click here to find out more. I have an interview with Baker coming later in the week. Very excited!

P.P.S Yep, if you decide to part with your cash next week as a result of me telling you about the aforementioned shin dig, I will earn a commission and yep, as ever, 10% of my commission will go to UK charity Give A Brick.

It wasn’t the day I had planned for myself at all! The stuff I had planned for me today (including writing a blog post longer than 100 words!) didn’t happen.

But it’s been very, very cool.

And so as you head into the weekend I’d encourage you to keep your eyes open. Expect the unexpected.

Miracles happen every single day and if you keep your eyes open, your head up and look around, you just might get to catch a glimpse of one.

And you know what? It’s wonderful.

Have you seen a miracle happen this week? Tell me in the comments.

Nope, this isn’t one Welsh girl’s attempt at dissecting US politics. To be frank, I don’t even want to try.

This is all about the year. 2009.

I asked Google what happened two years ago and that was the biggest, most memorable answer it could find. (Unless of course you’re a Michael Jackson fan.)

So anyway. Two years ago.

You see yourself where you were?

Too often when I talk to people about starting something new, doing their own thing and quitting their jobs, time comes up as a major distraction.

Not enough of it. Too late to start. Too busy.

You’ll never, ever, have more time than you do right now.

If you’re waiting for the perfect time to start doing your thing you’re going to die waiting, still sat in that job you say you loathe so much.

I’m not saying quit your job tomorrow. In fact I’m going to stick my neck on the line here and say that for most people, quitting a job with nothing but your wits to fall back on is a really really dumb idea.

But.

Two years.

It’s nothing.

Where do you want to be two years from now?

There are no guarantees in life but one thing I’m certain of – if you do nothing more than spend the next two years dreaming of the day you quit your job, two years from now you’ll look around and see it looks an awful lot like it does right now.

Unless you win the lottery of course. But even that is a non starter if you never buy a ticket!

But there is something you can do right now, today, that will be one small step toward quitting your day job.

Even if it’s just talking with your partner about your aspirations (and yep, I know that can feel like a massive thing!)

Or writing a list of all the stuff you’d love to do as your work.

Or talking to me about all the stuff that’s doing your head in.

Imagine where you’d end up if every day for the next 731 days you did one thing toward building a profitable, sustainable business.

Sure, the thousand mile journey starts with one step but to really get the most out of this game it also needs the one after that.

And the one after that.

And the one after that.

Go on. I dare you.

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What if your real work was the Lego?

What if your gift to the world was something that lit you up and brought a smile to your face? Every. Single. Day.

There’s this fallacy going round that work is meant to be hard, gut-wrenchingly painful, a drudge to be endured. You ‘work hard’ and as a reward, we’ll give you 48 hours to do the stuff you actually want to do (just so long as you have enough energy left to actually enjoy it!)

Good deal? Nope, I didn’t think so either.

Soooo. Here’s the thing …

If you’re not going to play it the way you were taught to play it, you need a different game plan.

Think for a minute about all the stuff you’re fabulous at. (Actually, grab paper and pen and make a list.) Start with all the stuff you’re great at (don’t make any judgements, no editing. Just let it all out.)

Next on the list add all the stuff you love doing. The stuff that inspires you. All those things you’d do for free, just for the sheer joy of it. Activities that seem to make time go faster. You forget to eat? Lose all day in it? That stuff. Write it down.

And then add the stuff that people thank you for. What do you do, just because, and yet you always seem to get thanked or complimented on it?

Now look at all that stuff. Without needing to see what you’ve got on that list of yours, I can tell you right now that any of that stuff could be your new work. The stuff someone else would pay you to do.

But first. Go back and look at it again with a big fat scribbly pen in your hand. Got it? Fab!

Put a line through everything on that list that isn’t fun. Everything.

Yep, even that one. I don’t care if it feels like the easy money, (that’s a fallacy anyway) if it doesn’t feel fun to you, off it goes.

Because if it’s not fun, what is the point? Seriously. You get to choose. You might as well choose fun.

But there’s a catch.

Once you’ve chosen, there’s a whole heap of stuff that you’re gonna want to start saying no to. And that can take real guts. But trust me, it gets easier with practice.

So the sooner you start, the sooner it’ll get easy to say no to anything and everything that doesn’t light you up.

What’s stopping you? Tell me in the comments.

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.” ~ Danielle LaPorte.

That was me a little earlier, quoting Ms LaPorte in response to one lovely reader (hey Dan ) who made the observation that he was hired to do something he was excellent at but that it was, at the same time, something he was fundamentally opposed to. Tough spot eh.

And I know he’s not alone.

But that isn’t the point of this post. It was what Dan said next that got me thinking.

I’ve only myself to blame. I’ve only got me to fix it, too.”

The latter made me smile because I love it when people start sounding all fired up and ready to fix stuff but that’s not the point of this post either.

I just wanted to pose an alternate idea and hear what you think.

Because as easy as it is to blame yourself for being stuck doing something you hate, as comforting as it might feel (because if it’s your fault you can fix it right?) and as much as you might actually quite enjoy beating yourself up about it, I don’t actually think it’s your fault at all.

(As an aside, I also think fault and blame are ultimately pretty irrelevant. It is what it is. What’s important now is where you go from here. But I digress.)

You got a job because that’s what you were trained to do.

You remember the line don’t you? “Study hard, get good grades, get your qualifications, get a job.”

As a mum to three little ones, I’d ask you not to blame your parents for sending you to school (even though that’s where your training really started) because they didn’t do it on purpose. They were modelling their parents before them and doing what they were told is the ‘normal’ way to do things. (And let’s be frank. Home-schooling can brings it’s own challenges!)

Doing things differently, being the one who’s very definitely not normal, choosing to say no to the way things are done and instead forging your own path? That takes something special.

It’s easy to go to that job every day and come home exhausted every night.

It’s easy to be like everybody else and moan and whinge and complain about how much you hate your job.

It’s easy to sit in front of the telly every night, watching life go by through someone else’s lens.

It’s easy to live for the weekend and that fortnight a year somewhere hot.

It’s easy to feel grumpy when Monday morning rolls round again.

But just because something is easy doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

You’re on the brink of some major change sweetie and you need to know right now that it is not going to be easy. There will be days when you wish you’d never even started all this. You might stamp your feet and curse.

But it sure beats dying bored.

You ready to start saying no to normal? What can you do today that will be one small finger up to ‘normal’ (and one giant leap for all the weirdos out there!) Tell me in the comments.

I thought not.

Because grabbing, seizing and acting upon opportunities is lauded as something commendable and good.

But what about when it’s not?

Anyone who’s known me for anything more than about five minutes will know that I’m not an advocate for dumbing down or wimping out. Tell me I can’t do something and I’ll work ten times harder to prove you wrong.

But something happened this year that I’ve never told you about before. And it’s very relevant to this discussion.

It also feels very scary to be telling it right now. I procrastinated on it all last week, but after promising in Friday’s post that it was coming today, I can put it off no longer.

Be warned though … it’s not pretty. I can tell you now that it does have a happy ending. But I won’t come out of this one smelling of tulips and daffodils. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Because I did something exceptionally stupid. And dishonest. Something that nearly cost me my marriage.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning. Ish.

I’m not going to re-tell the whole story of how Eleanor became El. You can read that here if you want to. I’ll just make reference to it as that time in my story when I got massive, life-changing value from a life coach friend (despite at one time thinking life-coaching was all a bit woo woo! Well come on, it can be sometimes!) because it’s relevant to what comes next.

Long story short, I was given the opportunity to train online with Tony Robbins and Cloe Madanes.

I was already signed up for emails with links to their free videos so when they opened enrollment for the new class, I heard all about it. A friend had told me it was something like $15,000 to train with them so I ignored every single call to action.

Until the very last day.

Something compelled me to click the link on that last day and when I did I found that, while it was still more money than I had, it was a lot less than the predicted $15K.

At the time I had very little money of my own. A few paid blog posts, some WordPress installations, bits here and there. Sure, as a couple we had savings. But I knew what answer I’d get if I mentioned to my husband that I wanted to train as a life coach. He’d see it as just another thing and it would be a big fat no.

But I was determined to find a way.

It felt like an amazing opportunity and I wanted to poke at it a bit to see if it had legs. So I emailed the support people explaining the situation and asking if they could accept smaller payments.

The quick answer was yes and no. They had a payment plan but even that was more than I had but they gave me 30 days access to the training for free. All I had to do was send them my postal address and they’d sign me up.

I was ecstatic!

At this point I had no idea what I’d do at the end of 30 days but it felt like a real God-given opportunity so I grabbed it with both hands.

I started the training. It was brilliant! 30 days turned into 60 and then 90. As each month went past and they didn’t ask for payment, I felt more and more convinced that this really was an opportunity sent from someone upstairs.

And then one morning I got an email that sent rocks to my guts.

It was notification that my items from RMT had been dispatched. These items were bonuses from the training. DVDs, a book and a training manual. There was nothing I could do to stop them. All I could do now was hope that my husband was out when they arrived so I could hide them away and he’d be none the wiser.

Because I had every intention of telling him about my training. But not until it was proving itself a good investment and I was running a successful coaching business.

I’ll bet you can guess what happened next?

That’s right. He was very home when the parcel arrived. And very not pleased when he found out I’d invested nearly $4,000 in something without discussing it with him first.

I’m going to gloss over the next 72 hours or so with these three sentences: It was not pretty. I’d betrayed his trust. Twice in the many conversations that occurred he wanted to shake hands on us getting a divorce.

To say that I’d totally floored him would be putting it lightly. I rocked every belief he had about me.

Grabbing an opportunity is brilliant … but at what cost?

I’d gone with this because it felt like an opportunity I couldn’t say no to. I knew he’d not see it that way. I didn’t want to hear a no. So I went behind his back and did it anyway.

There is only one thing that saved us at this time …

Love

I knew he loved me. But it’s easy to love someone when they’re nice isn’t it? It’s easy to play happy families when everything is ticking along safely and calmly.

But to have someone do something so deceitful. To have them hurt you. And to do the one thing that would cause you the most pain. And still come out the other side loving them?

Wow, that’s pretty intense stuff.

Two months later he asked me for my business account number.

A very suspicious me: “Why?”

Because I want to do something nice, to show my support for your business.

What happened next was the one thing I never, ever anticipated in this story.

He set up a monthly standing order from our joint account to my business account to cover the cost of my training.

He said he didn’t want to talk about it so I just sat there in quiet awe.

Because had you told me that this is how the story would have played out, I’d never have believed you!

But here’s the real truth: had I known exactly how this story would have played out, the tears, the pain, the hurting … I would never have even clicked the link that day.

Thankfully this story has a happy ending. I know now, more than ever before, just how loved I am, I’m making him proud and our relationship is stronger than ever before. (It’s funny how the tough stuff can do that to you.)

But I’m forced to ask … grabbing an opportunity, at what cost?

The people you care about won’t always understand what it is you’re doing. They may secretly think you’re having a bit of a mid-life crisis or that it’s just another whim. And that’s life. It’s the way it is.

But before you take that leap, start that new thing or sever those ties, just remember why it is you’re doing it and ask yourself, is it really worth it? Are you willing to lose everything? Or is there maybe another way?

I was scared of hearing no. And so I found another way that avoided even asking the question.

But no is not a bad word. Sometimes no just means ‘not yet’ or requires you to start talking to find another way.

If you side-step the no by never even asking the question, you might be setting yourself up for more trouble than you can possibly imagine.

Always ask. Give the people around you the chance to surprise and delight you.

Because if you don’t ask, you’ll never find out what’s possible.

Have you ever asked something of someone else and been delightfully surprised by the answer? And do you grab opportunities at any cost? Tell me in the comments.

And that’s great and all. I love it when people are ready to take action. Action takers are my absolute favourite, bestest people in all the world.

However (you knew there was a ‘however’ coming didn’t you? It was a toss up between that and a ‘but’) there is this rather frustrating place which, in honour of it being November 11th at the time of writing, we’ll call ‘no mans land.’

Now don’t get me wrong. Unlike that original troubled place between the trenches, this probably isn’t going to get you killed and you won’t find yourself playing football there on Christmas Day. But it can still feel pretty grim!

What am I rambling on about?

That place in your head where you know that you won’t be hanging around for a moment longer than necessary but you can’t quite quit yet because you have plans to make happen first? It can be very frustrating!

But what if you could make this time happier? Is it possible to be in a job you totally loathe and yet still be happy, regardless of the external yuckiness?

I believe its possible.

But I also know its very easy for me to say. I’ve not had a ‘normal’ job since my eldest was born 8 years ago.

So today’s post is more of a discussion starter than a ‘I have the answers blah, blah, blah’ type offering. Because I’d love to hear what you think.

Can you be happy in your day job and still make plans to leave or does your loathing fuel the drive to get out?

Does the idea that you be happy where you are right now scare you?

Is it possible to be at a really low place in your day to day life and still find a way to be happy?

(By the way, I’m not suggesting you strive to live in a state of perpetual happiness. No one is happy all of the time and any one who tells you otherwise is either lying their face off or on something! But can you can be happier, more content. Less miserable and unhappy.)

Come and hang out with me in the comments. I’d love to hear your take on this idea of happier despite the circumstances.

P.S. If you came here today expecting that story post that I hinted about yesterday, you’ve not missed it. It’ll be published on Monday. I just wanted to give us the weekend to hang out and chat happiness.

He only went to watch his wife give blood but left with a new career. Talk about value for money eh.

It all started with a message on my phone this morning, reminding me that I could give blood today at the Catholic hall around the corner from where I live. I was set to go today anyway but, as an aside, I loved the call to action! Score one to the Welsh blood service.

So anyway, my blood did its thing (apparently it’s very cosy inside my body and as such it took nearly 10 whole minutes to leave!) and after dutifully reading a magazine for 10 minutes I got to my favourite bit … tea and biscuits!

Aside from the strong hot tea, I love this bit because I get to sit and chat with happy people. I mean, have you ever seen a grumpy blood donor at the biscuit table? Nope, me either!

And you know how at school they try to help you identify the stuff you’re really good at? Well they didn’t have my super power on the list that day, because my thing is people, specifically connecting with people.

Put me in a room full of strangers and I can find some thing, some common ground or shared thing, to use as a spring board for fun conversation.

(Between you and I, it drives my poor husband potty! I can see it in his eyes sometimes in queues in shops: ‘Please don’t feel compelled to make conversation with that person. Silence is good too.’

But I love conversation and I particularly love conversation with random strangers in places where waiting around is involved because, by nature, we find waiting around boring. And my argument is, if I can use my super power to make life a bit more smiley and fun for someone else during that time that is usually so dull and boring, I’m going to.)

So anyway, after having smiled at the lady to my right and accepted a compliment about my bag, I turned to the gent on my left and said hello to him too. And before long the questions came.

Him: Do you work?

Me: I work from home. (Truth be told I was inwardly cringing slightly at this point because as a rule, most people in my home town don’t really get what I do.)

Him: Ah ok. It’s my day off today.

Me: Ooh, nice. Or maybe not nice, because you’re sat in here waiting for your wife. (He’d already told me that he was just enjoying the free tea while his wife was relieved of her blood.)

And then came the question that all too often draws a blank when I answer it:

“So what work do you do?”

After getting zero points for ‘life coach’ I went on to explain that I help people who don’t like their jobs decide if quitting is really what they want to do and if it is, help them work out what they want to do instead.

And then he got it.

He started to tell me how he liked his job but that he also worried that people might look down on him for it. After suggesting that maybe this was all in his head (he’s a taxi driver) or that maybe it was his brain’s way of trying to do the kind thing and keep him safe (because as it turns out, this chap has aspirations and you know already what our brains make of those little rascals!) I asked one of my favourite questions …

If all your bills were covered each month and you could do anything for work, what would you like to do?

As is too often the case, that drew a bit of a blank initially. I had my coach hat on by this time and suggested that if he didn’t know what he’d actually like to do, how would he know if he was getting closer to it?

We carried on chatting. What did he like about being a taxi driver? What did he enjoy doing when he wasn’t at work? What about before he was a taxi driver, what did he do then?

And finally we had two breakthrough revelations: He really likes talking to people and he likes driving.

(Hang on to those two, they’re going to be important in about three paragraphs time!)

While I was mentally thinking about how he could combine the driving skills with talking to people, we had an apparently parallel conversation about our children. (Turns out that his youngest left the school my three are in just last year) and he started telling me about a parent he’d taught to drive.

Now small worlds being what they are, I knew who he was talking about as soon as he described her and when he said how she’d finally passed her test after he started teaching her I had my ‘aha!’ moment.

“You could be a driving instructor.” I announced proudly. (We’d already discounted lorry driving because it was a solo sport and so it only ticked one of the two boxes.)

“I’d really like to do that. But it’s a pain because if I was unemployed, I could get the training for lorries or buses but not to be a driving instructor.”

“Why can’t you sign up for it while you’re still in your job?”

“Well I’d have to do it at the same time as working. And it’s three thousand pounds.” (Nearly $5000.)

He went on to tell me that he’d gone as far as talking to a local company that handles the training. They’d wanted £500 up front and he just didn’t have the money.

Having clarified that the training would allow him to be self-employed I went in for what (in my obviously biased opinion) was the killer move.

“If you’re going to be self-employed with this, you could open a business account. The bank I’m with give free banking for 2 years while you get up and running. Why not talk to them and see if you could have a business loan for the training?”

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a massive advocate for debt. Before we cancelled it, we would pay the balance off on our credit card each month. We accepted credit when I had my eyes lasered but only because it was interest free. And it’s thanks to my husband’s prudent money management that the current financial mess hasn’t hurt us that badly.

However.

Like many people across the Western world, we bought our home with a mortgage. Why? Because we didn’t have the kind of cash needed just hanging about waiting to be spent. So, like many people before us, we chose to take on a massive debt and buy a house on credit.

It’s about assessing the risk and making an informed decision.

Getting a loan for $5000 and betting it on a horse? Super risky move.

Getting a loan for $5000 and using it to buy antiques? Always risky but safer than the horses!

Getting a loan for $5000 and using it to pay for training for a vocation? There are no certainties in this life. There’s still the risk that there’d be no work at the end of it all, but it’s safer risk.

Is it a risk worth taking?

Only he (and you when it’s your turn) can decide that.

But from my biased position (more on that in tomorrow’s post because I have a bit of a secret that you don’t really know about yet) choosing to invest money in training that will lead to work that is centred around stuff you love doing is always a good decision.

(Except when it’s not. But you’ll have to come back tomorrow for that story.)

But here’s the thing that I walked away thinking about …

It’s not about a new vocation at any cost. Walking from a job you kinda loathe sometimes but also is OK sometimes too to a something else can be great, but only if that something else is centred around your beliefs, values, passions and purpose.

What’s the point setting up a business of your own doing something other than the stuff you love most? You might as well just get another job!

And it starts with knowing yourself.

Because if you don’t know what most lights you up, if you can’t put that stuff of yours into words (and believe me, I know from very personal experience that that’s not always easy) you’re going to have a tough time when it comes to designing your dream work.

If this sounds like something you could use some help with you’re going to love what’s coming next week.

There will be limited space available (because I’ve not yet learned how to clone myself!) so I’d strongly suggest you pop your email address into box down there underneath this post and signup for email updates because, as ever, my friends on email will get first dibs.

In the meantime, did you ever walk into circumstances and come out with a lot more than you bargained for? What did you do with this opportunity? Tell me in the comments.

• Everyone hates their job. It’s just life.
• Leaving the rat race is only for wealthy people.
• Leaving the rat race is only for the select few.
• If everyone left the rat race the economy would collapse.
• I’m not qualified.
• I’m too qualified! I spent years in college just to get this job.
• What will my friends say?
• What right have I got to start a photography business?
• It’s a bit left field.
• I’m too old.
• I’m too young.
• It’s too late.
• No one will take me seriously.
• I don’t have enough time.
• I don’t have enough money.
• I don’t have enough energy.
• I have too many people dependent on my income.
• I don’t know how.
• I’m scared.
• What if I mess up?
• I can’t charge money for that can I?
• I don’t know where to start.
• I don’t know which is the best option.
• There’s already loads of people trying and failing. Why should I be any different?
• What if I’m wrong?
• Getting a job is safe and secure.
• Everyone gets a job. It’s just the done thing.
• I won’t be able to take the kids on holiday.
• I’m just so tired after a whole day in work. I can’t run a business after that.
• What right do I have to get paid to talk to people?
• Why would anyone want to hire me?
• Spare time? What’s that?
• What if I put all this time in and it doesn’t work out?
• How do I tell my mum?
• Only weird people quit their jobs.
• What if everyone thinks I’m having a mid-life crisis?
• But I could lose the house.
• I’ve never been lucky so it probably wouldn’t work for me. 38
• I’m a realist, not a dreamer!
• If it all went wrong he’d leave me.
• Why me?
• Everyone expects me to be working.
• If I don’t have a job they’ll think I’m lazy.
• If I take the kids to school every day they’ll assume I don’t work.
• This job is why I worked hard at school.
• Getting a good job is just the way it’s done.
• What will I say when my kids ask why I’m not at work?
• Without a job title I’d feel like less of a person.
• I can’t leave because I’ve paid into my pension.
• The health insurance benefits are excellent.
• My partner expects a certain standard of living.
• Quitting the day job isn’t for people like me.
• I can’t!

What lies are you telling yourself today? How does that help you? Which lies would you love to be rid of? Tell me in the comments.

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