Courage

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” – Steve Jobs

I have my share of Apple products and love them. But I was also inspired by Steve Jobs and the way he approached his life.

Launching my own business as a life coach, many people have remarked to me that it’s very brave of me, that it takes courage to follow your dreams. They say it with a bit of amazement and wistfulness on their faces. And when I say that they, too, can follow their dreams, change their career and do what they love, they begin to tell me all the reasons why they can’t.

• “I’m too old to make a change. I should have done it when I was younger, but now I have to think about retirement.”
• “I have too many responsibilities – kids, a mortgage, a spouse to support. You can do it because you don’t have all that.”
• “I can’t quit my job because I need the benefits (particularly insurance). And I can’t get my own insurance like you did because of my health problems.”
• “I can’t make enough money if I did what I want to do.”

It’s interesting the way our minds work. Our culture is very left-brain dominant, and the left brain looks to the past and predicts the future based on the patterns it sees in the past. This is helpful when you are learning a new skill, but not so helpful for “out of the box” thinking. The left brain also looks for evidence to prove its theories are correct, so if we think a thought of “I can’t make enough money being an artist,” we will look for and find examples of starving artists, of people who only do their art on the weekends and keep working at a job they loathe. If you tell someone to go into a room for 5 minutes and look for as many red objects as possible, and when they exit, ask them how many blue objects they saw, they will be at a loss. Our brains are programmed that way.

The cool thing is — our brains are a tool, not our whole being. We can use them for our purposes, instead of letting our thoughts rule us. A belief is just a thought we’ve said to ourselves over and over again. If it’s working for you, great! If not, choose to believe something different. For example, make a list of all the artists you know of that ARE making a living, and a good one at that, by following their passion. (Hint: NY and Hollywood have lots of examples!)

Trying something new isn’t easy. But for me, staying with what wasn’t working wasn’t easy either. So I decided to try something else. And I am so very happy that I did.