Are you being who you want to be?

When I turned 40, I took a workshop that changed my life. I discovered it was OK to dream outside the world of my own experience and to make my life into something I could love. Within a year of taking that workshop, I’d left my job to make less money doing something I wanted to do and felt passionate about. This led me to my current career of facilitating and coaching and leading the very workshops that changed my life in 1999.

This morning, as I took my place in front of the workshop room once again, welcoming participants to a new day of the WellBeing workshop, I actually clapped my hands together and said, “I am so excited to be at work!” Prior to attending my first workshop in 1999, never did I ever think I would be applauding an opportunity to spend a day at work! Nor did I think I would be guiding groups of travelers to Bali or taking 2 months off to circumvent the globe (yes, that’s how I’m spending the next two months).

I used to hear stories of people with amazing careers doing work they loved, and I would feel resigned that it would never be me. I didn’t have the right background or know the right people or have enough resources to leave a safe job while raising a family. Evidently, as with many of the limiting thoughts I held about myself then, I was wrong. I could and I did become one of those people with an amazing career that on most days I love and every day I am grateful for.

I have witnessed hundreds of individuals make career changes in the past 24 years of being engaged in this work. What I have come to know for sure is it is never too late to begin our journey toward meaningful work. It begins with awareness and intention and the courage to ask and listen to the answers to two of the bigger questions we will ask of our lives: “Am I being who I want to be? Am I doing what I want to do?” Yes!

xo – sherrie

 

P.S. I really am taking the next two months away, one month to visit Bali and the other to walk the Camino de Santiago via a route that begins in Porto, Portugal. I walked the Camino for the first time in 2018 and wrote about it then. The experience continues to teach me about myself and life even today. I’m sharing my original post and a few photos with you below.

My Camino – May 2018

I have known about the Camino for over 13 years and knew I would walk it one day. I had my first inkling it was the right time during a quiet moment in a workshop one day when I closed my eyes and saw myself looking down at my feet in hiking shoes standing on a beach with the waves lapping my shoes.

Today I leave home,
to journey Home to myself,
to walk and listen.

I wrote this haiku on May 17 as a prayer. It was the morning I left home to begin my four-week journey to walk the pilgrimage of the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. The Camino is a long path covering hundreds of miles over some very steep and beautiful terrain. My journey was restorative and renewing. It was more than and nothing I expected.

Like all pilgrims, I began walking. I walked for three days. It felt hard and amazing to be on the path. AND THEN I came down with the flu. A five-day, really bad flu. One that demanded I stop walking and rest. I did so in a little hostel. This experience was not what I thought I wanted on the Camino, and you can image I might have felt some resistance to this experience. I did finally surrender (aka, I fell asleep) and woke up days later feeling better than I had in years. I felt strong and resilient in my body, excited and ready to walk on. This unexpected experience challenged any idea I might have been carrying about “walking the Camino perfectly.” Instead, I let go and learned the gift it is in life to simply walk on.

The wisdom of ”walking on” continued for me as I listened to pilgrims who shared their stories of extreme loss. One such pilgrim shared how he had lost all his considerable wealth. He told me, “After this loss, I came to the Camino to walk with my problems. In the end I realized I had no problems.” I learned this wisdom too from a Venezuelan family who became refugees as they fled their home and history for the safety of the unknown. Their story, like so many in life, is paradoxical in its sadness and powerful in its faith, trust, and love.

I was reminded over and over on the Camino that life can be brutal at times. Even now, in our civilized nation, children are suffering unimaginable brutality and injustice in the name of law. Humanity fails to take care of each other. It can be disabling to think about, and I feel hopeless at times. These pilgrims’ real-life stories reminded me we humans are resilient. We can walk on with courage and support from each other.

We journey as one,
moments of sacred grace shared,
walking our hearts home.

There were so many synchronistic moments on the Camino, many I experienced and many I heard about. There is also magic. Some days walking was easy on the Camino. It seemed it had its own energy and shared it freely with me. And then there were days that I felt like I was walking with bricks in my shoes. I felt so weighted down and thought it was impossible to walk on. I experienced my life engaging me in a daily conversation, and as the days ”walked on,“ I was learning how to quiet my mind and listen to the deeper meaning each experience offered.

This moment is mine
and mine alone forever
I breathe into it.

I know what a privilege it was to walk each day without much of an agenda other than taking care of my feet, keeping water in my bottle and fuel in my body. The simplicity of these days rekindled my sense of wonder.  I came back home to myself with a profound appreciation for my life, family, friends, and work.

Like Dorothy in Oz, I left home for a time and remembered once again there is no place like home.

I walk in oneness
I am everything I love
and everything else.

The people of Spain greet pilgrims with the words “Buen Camino!” which translates as “Good Camino!” It is a blessing they offer, a little support for a tired pilgrim. Day-to-day life is like the Camino, some days more difficult than others. Let’s remember to offer words of kindness and encouragement to each other, if for no other reason than the recognition of the courage it takes to awaken each day and walk on.

In the end, I actualized my vision.