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My bi-weekly newsletter: Find Your Forward: The newsletter to move you forward when you are stuck, facing a crossroads, or adapting to a fast-changing world. No matter where you are, there is always a way forward.
One dead end was when I was only 23. I was working two jobs, barely keeping my head above water, and trying to find a way to pay for college. At times, it felt like the world was conspiring against me. It wasn’t, of course. This taught me one of the greatest lessons of my life: I can change my future. Within two years, I more than doubled my income, and was enrolled in college. And that was just the beginning.
A new beginning was in February of 2001, when Rick (then boyfriend, now husband) and I made a life changing decision:
We weren’t going to settle for the traditional path of working as hard as we could for someone else and sacrificing our lives along the way. It’s what we had been doing and it’s what we saw our friends do. We were all living for the weekends, for our 2 weeks of vacation and longing for retirement and calling it good enough.
But it wasn’t good enough.
That’s when we made the leap into creating our life, our way.
Since then I have been blessed to have been able to coach more than 3000 people from a wide range of companies from small family businesses to Fortune 100 businesses to motivated individuals.
The major unexpected happened on March 6, 2003: I woke up and could no longer raise my arm to brush my teeth. I experienced crushing fatigue that left doctors perplexed. One doctor gave me a 3% chance of a full recovery. Another told me that, based on my test results, I shouldn’t be alive. Luckily, not only did I recover, but I’m stronger and healthier than before I got sick.
These experiences are why I passionately believe that there is always a way forward.
My own life experiences tell me that that’s true, as well as my experience in having coached thousands of people and my graduate degree, which is based on the science of human flourishing.
If you are looking for your way forward, I hope you’ll join me.
