About three
years ago, I felt a sense of frustration with my life. Even though I had a good
life, I couldn’t shake the sense that there was something more that I was
called to contribute. It’s not like being a wife, mom and pastor left me with a
lot of free time, but in my heart I knew that I wasn’t maximizing my full
capacity. The journey wasn’t easy. The first step was admitting that as good as
things were, I knew I could be better. The second was leaving the comfort zone
of good, to pursue great. I spent two and a half years prayerfully completing
personal development exercises. I learned that a lot of times I played it safe,
no limit pushing or testing just doing what I thought was expected of me. While
safe playing it safe was easy and didn’t create any waves, it was also boring
and predictable.
The question
that changed my life was “What do people come to you for?” As I reflected over
my life, I realized that people had always come to me for encouragement and
empowerment. If you thought you couldn’t, I made you believe you could. That’s
a gift I got from my grandmother who raised me. She never told me once that I
couldn’t accomplish something. She was my biggest cheerleader. She told me
every day of my life that I was smart and pretty and I believed her. I was 27
when my grandmother passed and I felt like the air had been taken from my
sails, who would tell me that I could do it now? Who would cheer me on? I didn’t
realize the impact that her passing had on my ability to live fearlessly. After
her death, I learned to play life safe which meant only doing what you knew you could do. Nothing changed until I decided to push
myself out of the box.
The journey
led to pursuing a master’s degree in sports psychology. Almost every time
someone who knew me heard that I was going back to school, they said, “Don’t
you have enough to do?” I learned that just because our days are filled with
things, doesn’t mean it’s all we should do or are capable of doing. Taking those classes only confirmed by belief that people need more than inspiration to change, they needed "know how." The next
step of the journey was life coaching. It happened by accident (I thought). I
started posting encouragement on Facebook and my inbox got flooded with
questions. I answered them to the best of my ability. Then a lady said, “I’ll
pay you to coach me.” WOW! What a minute! There are people who pay for what I
do for free. I had heard of life coaches, but didn’t really know what they did.
I soon discovered, they did what I had been doing my WHOLE life for free because it never occurred to me that it could be a job. The story on how I learned to get comfortable accepting pay for what came
naturally is one I’ll save for another day. After this lady, there were others
some paid, some not, but each one I used an opportunity to perfect this gift
God gave me.
The ability
to work with someone over a period of time to recreate their lives gave me a
satisfaction beyond what I could have imagined in a very different sense than
being a pastor. As of today I have about 8 clients that I meet weekly with. I’m
learning how to build the business, using every opportunity to learn and be
more effective. The frustration I felt a few years ago is gone.
I don’t know
where you are in your journey…maybe you don’t have clue what you want to
do but you know you’re ready for change
or maybe you know exactly what you want to do, but you’ve allowed fear to hold
you back. Well allow me to encourage you to take the risk called faith. If you
move forward, God has a way of directing you where you need to go.
Oh yea, remember
earlier when I said, I wondered who would be my cheerleader after my
grandmother passed? I learned how to be my own cheerleader. I had the power the
whole time and so do you!
