I’d started the year 2014 excited with the news I was pregnant, after years of trying and then finally conceiving through IVF. Unfortunately, 11wks into the pregnancy I miscarried. My husband and I found ourselves in couples therapy trying to navigate our sadness. The therapy helped me feel excited about the future again, but it stirred up something else for my husband, he wanted to be alone, he felt lost. He moved out in July 2014 for some time alone and for six months I found myself in limbo waiting for him to find himself and return home to me.
A week before Christmas 2014, we officially acknowledged it was over and I was heartbroken. I found myself confused and bewildered about what next. I didn’t want to go backwards but I felt like I was at the starting line again only this time with lots more baggage. My mum reminded me of my dream to live and work in Australia, I’d held this dream since 2003 (from my very first visit) but had let go of it when we’d started trying for a family. I actually remember crying sitting on the sofa at the time I had let go of that dream. I’d chosen to stay in England and have a family and I couldn’t see it ever coming true, so I released it. But now I see it was always my dream to have and that it needed my marriage to have ended for it to have become a reality. I decided to tell my boss on my return to work after Christmas that I wanted to leave to move to Australia. I had no idea how! But I set my intention and I trusted the universe would help me find a way. So many things happened after I’d set my intention.
I started telling everyone including my neighbours that I was moving even though I hadn’t found a job or figured out the best way to get a visa to live and work there! I didn’t know anyone in Australia but it felt like it was something that was going to happen that I needed to be there – it felt right. I had this innate belief about it happening and it’s odd because I’d never previously been so sure that it would happen because for years it was just a dream and one that felt so far from reality. The more people I shared with the more things I noticed shifting: I discovered one of the HR managers in the company I worked for had her first trip to Australia booked for the end of Jan. She offered to take my CV with her to share with other businesses out there. She said there were no roles there but she’d share just in case.
At the end of Feb a role came up in Sydney that was looking for someone with my experience to help get the business on track. The GM had seen my CV in Jan and reached out. Not only that, but she had a meeting in London in March which had been in the diary for months and she invited me to meet her face to face whilst she was over. She offered me the job at the end of our catch up and three months later in June 2015, with visa’s sorted and shipping container on it’s way I landed in Sydney to start my new life! It’s amazing that my dream of living in Oz came true after I’d let it go – it wasn’t the way I’d pictured it happening, but I realise it was the way it needed to. It’s interesting I felt that I was most supported in my work when I dropped my own mask of trying to be someone I wasn’t. I’d been driving my career towards being a Finance Director/CFO and the more I strived the harder it seemed to achieve.
When I finally allowed myself just to be me, to be playful to not take life so seriously I started to realise that people were responding to who I was more positively, and opportunities started coming my way. What was interesting though was when I was offered a CFO role I finally realised that in wearing the mask I had been working towards a life that wasn’t mine. I didn’t want to be a CFO, not really, I’d been striving to prove ‘I was good enough’ and my career was the avenue for finding that proof. My marriage ending really shifted my perspective on life and what was truly important and as I reflected I realised I loved performance, but I loved humans more and I realised I wanted to help people accelerate performance in their lives by helping them strip off their masks in the way I’d finally done myself. Corporate environments can sometimes make it really hard for people to feel safe enough to be themselves so this year when I got granted my permanent residency and was free to work without visa sponsorship I took another leap and started my own Holistic Performance Coaching Business. Whilst it’s still new territory for me having my own business I’ve learned that when you leap the net appears! I’m trusting and surrendering to the journey each day and I know if I focus on my vision of a world without masks that I only need to touch one heart at a time to make a difference.
When we follow our dreams the universe supports us, Glin literally spoke her dream into reality you can too! When we have the courage to truly be ourselves doing what it is we really want the universe responds.
Do you have a story like this we can share?