Let life unfold without having any final destination in mind

HAVE YOU ever had one of those experiences where you see the journey you’ve been on so clearly? I had that the other day. I was due to start a Peer to Peer coaching programme at Harrogate college.

It is the college where my small business journey began, way back in about 2011. I had left my career as a barrister, decided I wasn’t returning and I wanted something completely different. I wanted something that I wasn’t going to turn into a career or a job, something with no pressure, stress or responsibility, simply something I loved to do.

So I enrolled on a holistic massage and anatomy and physiology diploma. It felt right, although slightly mad considering my background. I loved it, it was so right for me at that point in my life and as a result of that course I opened my first small business ‘Bliss Holistic’. I followed my nose into reflexology, specialising in stress, burnout and improving wellbeing, then creating a blog, which turned into a book, then this column, which ultimately led me into full-time coaching.

What struck me as I stood outside Harrogate college the other day is how far removed what I am doing now is to that course; how back then I couldn’t ever have imagined doing what I’m doing now. In fact, I wasn’t even aware that the type of role I even existed. It fascinates me how every step I’ve taken over the past 10 years has brought me to this point, how each step was relevant and needed – even those that at the time I thought were wrong or felt like I was going in reverse instead of forwards.

I’ve coached so many people over the years who are transitioning out of one career and have no idea what they are going to do.

It fascinates me how we feel we have to have a plan, have it sorted out, we need to know our final destination – and in fact the same goes for our teenagers, how we feel they must have their career path sorted out. So often it feels like our lives depend on it, like we only have one bite at the cherry or like time is running out. We innocently put ourselves under so much pressure and stress trying to ‘work it all out’.

In my mind that would have been the worse thing that I could have done all those years ago. I only knew the careers that I had been made aware of and whilst I could have pursued them, on reflection, I could have potentially missed out on a career that I love, one that I couldn’t have possibly imagined, let alone plan.

For me, life is a blend of my two favourite quotes, one from Steve Jobbs, the other from E L Doctorow. That life is ‘like writing, it’s like driving through fog, you can only see the first couple of feet, but you can make the whole journey that way’ – but that ‘you can only connect the dots looking backwards, so you have to trust that they will somehow connect’.

All we can ever do is take that step that feels right for us in the moment, and the more we let go of what our destination looks like, the more we can allow life to flow and unfold in the way that it needs to – trusting that wherever we end up, in any given moment, will be exactly where we need to be.