When is the right time?

So I am back after quite a while.

I am sure that just like me, many of you have spent months if not years dreaming about what you want to do with your life. You may have also planned changing your current situation “one day”. You always come up with many different excuses for why you have to postpone it and of course the sum of the boldest excuses is “It’s not the right time”. Well let me tell you a fact about the right timing. There is no such thing as “the right time”. If you want to change, do it now and I mean NOW.

I knew this was the “right time” I had always been waiting for. I knew that now I had 6 months to build what I had always dreamed about. But of course I didn’t know where and how to start. I was so excited that I didn’t even know if I could share this happiness with any one. I had 6 months of paid salary without having to show up in a J.O.B every single morning. I mean how exciting is that? The day I learned about this, I had the biggest smile on my face and I was the happiest person I knew that day. I called the only person whom I thought would comprehend my happiness at that moment who by the way offered me a glass of champagne to celebrate my newly found freedom. That level of happiness lasted for about two weeks.Then I started to feel the fear as I started to realize I was in a new situation. I was of course motivated by the things I was always passionate about. I was about to create a list of my passions. I took a pen and paper. And that was an “aha” moment! I stared at the paper for an hour and couldn’t write down one single word! I had way too many passions I wanted to pursue! Yes. Just like you. I couldn’t put down a list of the things I wanted to do during the next six months. I started reading books and blogs about how to start. So after a week, I had a whole 20 pages with ideas; front and back!

I continued reading and rediscovering who I really was and the things I really wanted to do in my life. I knew from the beginning that there could never be “one thing” I wanted to stick to and make a living out of. I had too many dimensions to my personality that I wanted to develop. There were too many things in life I wanted to learn and enjoy. I went to a series of workshops my ex-corporation was offering. There I met a number of people who had lost their jobs and that’s when I saw the reality: Most people were not excited at all for not having a job! Rather than focusing on how to embrace the opportunity they were given, they were constantly trying to convince themselves and others that it was not their fault to be out of their jobs. I was amazed to see how disappointed people can be in situations like this. I felt a vibe that was not pleasant at all. So quite unconsciously, I started avoiding these people. Instead, I started searching and finding people who shared the same ambition with me. I discovered events in the entrepreneurship community. I discovered a whole new side to Stockholm, the city I had lived in two years of my corporate life. I had no idea that there was such a vibrant startup community in my very city. But I was all about fearing that I didn’t have the right status, or the right skills or the right type of connections. I kept thinking to myself: “It’s not the right time”. It was exciting but scary to take the first step.

Soon, I reconnected with that one person who understood what I was all about. I had connected to him since the very first moment I met him five years ago. I figured out in the next few months that during all these years in which I found him a wonderful person who understood me fully and shared the same passions and ambitions with me, had indeed been in love with me all this time. After we reconnected another time, I realized how much I loved him.I thought to myself: “It’s not the right time to start a relationship. Now I have to focus on my career and a relationship can only get in the way”.

Guess what happened next? I kept reading and reading and reading. Then I dared to meet him. No no! I didn’t take a step. Fortunately he had the courage to take a flight and come visit me. Those few moments before meeting him in the airport were the scariest and the most exciting moments. I was walking four steps forward, stopping and taking one step backwards. When I met him, I was in shock. I was silent. I could feel the tension that was between us. I couldn’t look him into the eyes. I knew that the love of my life was in front of me. So close that I could touch him but I didn’t dare doing so. At one moment I thought to myself: “There is no such thing as the right timing”. At that moment I overcame my fear and took his hand. You think it was easy?! Oh no. Fear rushed back in. I still couldn’t look up into his eyes. I went trough another round of fearing and daring and eventually I looked up, paused and kissed him.

I learned to overcome my fears and embraced the love I was feeling for him. I had always loved him but I was too scared to accept that. It is scary to accept that you have found that one person who is exactly the one want to be with, who shares the exact same dreams and wants to live life exactly the way you do. It is indeed a scary thing to realize that you have met the love of your life. I dared greatly and accepted that. I dismissed every one around me that dragged me down instead of boosting my energy towards realizing my dreams. I dismissed everyone who threw a prejudice on my chosen relationship with the love of my life and I chose to ignore the judgments that friends and family imposed on me. After all it’s my only life and I have chosen to live it fully and happily. Surprisingly most members of my family accepted, respected and felt happy about my chosen relationship. I have had lots of struggles ever since but I know that I have not doubted for a second about the fact that I am with the one I am meant to be with.

After a few weeks into our relationship, my love quit his corporate job in Paris and moved to Stockholm so that we could start our life together. We of course seemed crazy to most people: “So you are a couple in love with such big dreams and no salary who wants to rent an apartment in the center of Stockholm? Hah!”. People said when we visited apartments to rent. Friends and family were thinking the same. I did have a salary for another 3 months but did that really matter? Luckily, a friend of a friend who is the most wonderful land-lady I’ve ever had, followed her heart as she met us and decided to rent her apartment to us. Yes we moved in together and have lived happily ever since.

What happened to my big career dreams and why haven’t I written here for such a long time?

Yes, it is quite obvious that I like many of you had a breakdown aka “spiritual awakening” as Brené Brown calls it. I started my blog thinking that I was going to post once a day. Then I excused myself and promised myself to post once a week, then it became once a month and now it’s been several months I haven’t posted. But you know what? Now I am actually writing!

I have had a wonderful opportunity to spend time on discovering what really mattered to me. I have read hundreds of amazing blogs and tens of books and watched many TED talks who have inspired me a great deal.

Learned and read and watched and got inspired. But what is a plan without taking actions?