Are you living the dream or playing it safe? Isn’t it a good idea to sometimes hedge your bets?

I subscribe to quite a few blogs. I get lovely feel-good stuff directly to my inbox. Some of it makes me think, some of it I think I know already and some of it inspires me to do more.

I hope that my blog helps others in the same way. I’ve only been writing this blog for a short period of time and if I’m honest I was surprised at how much positive feedback I got from it at first, because it took me so long to actually get to a point where I felt I could ‘ligitimise’ my writing and actually put it out there for people to read.

Before this, I was continually ‘playing it safe’. I went down the traditional academic path and got a ‘normal’ job. Whilst I might have read and studied a lot in my own time and got qualifications in many complementary therapies, I didn’t feeling comfortable sharing my knowledge with the world.

There was a part of me, deep down, which felt like a fraud.

I told myself I hadn’t been doing it long enough, I wasn’t doing it full time, I wasn’t sure how much I liked it yet…but the biggest reason I found not to put myself out there was because it was just too much of a risk.

This is something I think everyone goes through at some stage. It is part of human nature for most of us. This trick is not to believe it too much. Chances are if you’ve put in the time and effort and you have belief in yourself you’re just as good, if not better than everyone else.

To continue my story (I wasn’t at the point of significant self-belief yet), I was working a full time job at the time with a bunch of people who thought therapy was a load of rubbish, to put it politely. They wanted 110% commitment and dedication from me and didn’t agree with me that working 50 hours a week was enough to show this. They didn’t want me to have any outside interests.

Once, when I was close to leaving, a colleague asked me some advise about surfing. I spent about 5 minutes talking with him about it and when I had finished another colleague ripped in to me because I seemed so much more enthusiastic about surfing than he had ever seen me about work – do you blame me?!

So, it was easy for me to tell myself it would be impossible to pursue my dream of working to help people. Even if I could reduce my hours to allow me the time to write and see clients (I didn’t have that option – it would have shown a lack of commitment), I couldn’t show my colleagues the ‘real’ me – they would have attempted to make me feel like I was doing something wrong.

Turns out, the universe works in mysterious ways and I was afforded an opportunity to quit and move to London, which, with trepidation, I took.

Problem was, I took another job because I was still too scared to risk it all and move to London with few savings and no guaranteed income. By this time however, I’d started to write.

Writing my blog is one of the best things I’ve done. I can tell myself that I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m writing my thoughts and insights for people to read or not read. If they don’t want to they can just go to another site. they haven’t paid me any money and so they will give me honest feedback. Turns out, I get really goo feedback. In fact, I’ve not had any negative feedback.

When I started out on this I didn’t really know how it would turn out or how I’d be received but I decided to take the plunge and give it a go. The worst that could happen is no-one would read it, but at least I’d have a catalogue of all the things I’ve learnt over the years, in one place.

It gave me a sense of achievement, and still does.

I don’t know when or if I’ll do this full time but I am continually feeling the universe’s influence giving me the push and opportunities I need to continue growing and going down this path, which gives me hope for the future.

Keeping the faith in yourself is your single most important job for getting the life you want and enjoying it. If you know where you want to go, spend time analysing that picture, making it real and vivid for you, adding sounds and feelings and words to it and placing it in the same place in your mind as other thoughts you hold strong and true.

Keeping the faith in yourself opens the doors, then you just have to trust yourself to step through them.

Playing it safe will only get you where the ‘safe’ you wants to be. Allow yourself to dream bigger – you deserve it!