I’m guessing that looking from the outside, my life trajectory looks like dust in the wind. My college major was linguistics and languages, I was a chef, then had a series of office jobs. Now I do intuitive counseling. I’ve moved many times.
And yet, from my perspective, I’ve been deliberate in many of my choices. I knew when I was five or six that my goal was to speak at least seven languages. In my early twenties, I decided I wanted to have children, and I wanted them out of the house by the time I was fifty. I knew I wanted to live in different parts of the country and the only place on my list that I didn’t get to was New England (there’s still time, right?).
Often in both this newsletter and in our Facebook group, I pull cards that encourage doing something concrete today to move you towards your goal. What I may incorrectly assume is that you have a goal or a dream. Do you?
My clients range in age from just twenty to almost eighty. At the lower end of the age range are people who feel they’re too young to have concrete goals. At the upper end, we have people who feel they’re too old to dream. I can’t start over at my age!
Guess what—Julia Child was fifty when she wrote her first cookbook, which launched her career as a celebrity chef. Harlan “Colonel” Sanders franchised his chicken restaurant when he was sixty-two. Grandma Moses began her prolific painting career at age seventy-eight. I transitioned from a twenty-year career as a wedding officiant to what I do now when I was fifty-nine.
So, what’s your dream? Did you want to go to college or graduate school? Take dance lessons? Open a catering business? Learn to draw? Work with children? How can you make that dream a reality?
It may not be as complicated as you think. Look at schools online to find a program you’re interested in. Find the local dance studio and see if they have classes for adults (most do). Offer to cater a friend’s party—for pay. Take an art class at the community college. Volunteer at an elementary school. You get the picture.
Take that first step. Live deliberately.
As the poet Mary Oliver said, Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?