When on earth did it exactly happen? What morning did I wake up and think: “Man that was stupid! I was going to do some cool stuff today and I feel like a dog’s breakfast.”
When did I make the shift? When did parties get to be…. not as much fun. When did I decide that I would rather just sit around a table with a few glasses of wine talking with friends than go out and get incredibly drunk and be incredibly hung-over the next day? When exactly did it stop being “fun” if it even was fun in the first place?
It was not much fun, if all I remember is worrying about how I looked, how I sounded, who I was with. It was a lot of worrying. Now that I think of it how was that even fun?
It was somewhere between 25 and 30. That’s when it hit me. One “morning after” I decided that this just wasn’t fun anymore and there HAD to be something more than this.
What did I want? I went to University and had loads of fun and got a letter from the Dean of my faculty: pull up your socks or you’re out. Hmmm … no that wasn’t it. It was when …it doesn’t matter. What matters is I started to wonder: what next?
Did this mean I was looking for my purpose in life, at the time? Maybe, but somehow that didn’t matter either.
What mattered is that I made this shift. My focus in life suddenly shifted and I wanted more than just a party and friends. I wanted there to be some sort of direction to my life, a future and most definitely there had to be a reason why I was here.
It was like writing a newspaper article of my life. I went through all the W’s plus a How. Every one of them steered me closer and closer to what I was looking for. Who was I? Well I certainly decided I wasn’t a party person. I still go the occasional party but not very often. I certainly wasn’t a selfish person. I felt the desire to help others in some way. I wasn’t a saint either. There are some people who go in the direction of sainthood, but I knew it wasn’t me. I decided I was partly selfless. I also decided to follow my heart. If I felt a pull towards doing something for someone else, I followed that instinct.
As a result of following that instinct I got a pleasant reward. I developed a great sense of empathy and intuition. The partying had dulled these two natural abilities. It was just a short step to applying these two gifts to all areas of my life.
What was the next question I started to ask myself but this was a bit difficult. I figured since it was MY self-evaluation, I could do it in any order I wanted. It seemed I needed to know a bit more about the rest of me before I considered the "What" of my life.
Where came next. Well it seemed abundantly clear to me that I could do and be anything I wanted, wherever I wanted. The “Where” of my life only became an issue when I started exploring who I might be leaving behind if I changed where I wanted to do my life. So I began on a serious evaluation of the relationships in my life. Who did I want to keep in my life and why. It became clear to me that to just walk away from some relationships didn’t mean they were ended. Okay so I got my relationships in order. Funny thing about that. When I got them all in order I started to question why I would want to leave them.
The “When” part of my life was the easiest question, I asked myself. When I got clear that I wasn’t happy with the things in my life now then it only seemed right to get on the “right” road immediately. Since I was so much clearer about the new parts of my life, I was just too excited to stay where I was anyways. I was also afraid that since there was so much clarity in my life right now, I better start keeping my eyes open for the things I wanted to happen in my life. This meant that all the events and opportunities I had lost in the past….well I wasn’t about to let any of that go unnoticed anymore.
Why was I even doing this? Well it also seemed so apparent to me that if I wasn’t happy the way I was or at very least, no longer satisfied with the way things were, it didn’t make sense to stay that way. I know there are lots of self-help guru’s out there who think you need to know your “values” and “needs” to take any steps. My personal opinion is different. All I needed to know was that I wasn’t happy the way things were and I wanted to start questioning my motivations.
When I started exploring the “what” of my life I did pick up a few of these tools. I found that there was something much more important than knowing my values and needs. I found that all the tools in the world weren’t much good if I didn’t somehow find the inspiration within myself to bring a goal to fruition. If I wasn’t motivated to move forward with a neat and tidy list of value-driven goals what good were they.
I went on a journey to look for what inspired me, motivated me and kept me in the flow of my journey. And where did this bring me? Well I found some pretty terrific ways to inspire, motivate and keep me in the flow of my life. I found that once I knew these things the only option was for me to share them. I found that being a personal coach was the perfect way to do this and that is where I am today.
Maureen Miller B.Ed., C.U.G., Certified Teleclass Leader Associate Certified Coach with International Coaching Federation Coaching Personallyhttp://www.squidoo.com/ThinkingRevolutionhttp://THinkingREvolution.blogspot.com Vancouver Island, B.C.,Canada maureenmiller@leaderofyourlife.com Create a thinking revolution for yourself! | 
