Beyond your wildest dreams. That’s where life will take you if you let it. It beckons to you like a hot fudge sundae teasing and tantalizing your senses. It calls you by name, the sweetest sound to a person’s ears. One minute you’re walking down a well-defined road and the next minute you find yourself traveling unfamiliar territory.
What Happens When You Dream?
What do you do when you find yourself being drawn to a space that is outside of your comfort zone? Like a magic carpet ride, something that only happens in the movies and your dreams, you can make the most of where the wind takes you or you can play it safe and continue in the predetermined direction. My friends know me well. They know that I can be the unpredictable one in the bunch. The one whose resume and life experiences are a who’s who for adventure and the unexpected.
My Journey
My career path led me to work for Delta Airlines as a reservation specialist, New York Telephone (now Verizon) as a service & repair technician (yes, I installed and repaired phone lines), Bee Alive selling Royal Jelly Products, Census Taker, Retail Store Manager, Fitness Instructor, Mystery Shopper, Pharmaceutical Auditor, etc… When they ask, what are you doing now, I’m not sure if they admire me or pity me, but they can count on me to be in the midst of the unexpected. Because of me they now know the world is filled with a plethora of unusual gigs. Not all of them were my dream job, but they each had elements of my vocational fantasy, to create my destiny.
The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of
I’m not encouraging anyone to leave the safety of their 9 to 5. The comfort you get when you know what you’re doing tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that. I’m not saying that all of your dreams should be explored or even entertained. But what if? What if your leap of faith wasn’t really a leap of faith at all, but instead lands you right where you are supposed to be? Perhaps your vocational calling is about adventure and you’re working as a corporate tax accountant instead of running an adventure travel agency. How’s that working for you?
[Tweet theme=”tweet-box-normal-blue”]I should never work harder for someone else’s dream than I work for my own.[/Tweet]
Lessons Learned
Here’s what I know. Over the years I’ve traveled down some eclectic paths. I enjoyed most of them and the ones I didn’t care so much for I got off at the next stop. Each of those opportunities taught me more about myself.
They taught me…
- How strong I am.
- I’m more courageous than I give myself credit.
- How to leap and have fun.
- I should never work harder for someone else’s dream than I work for my own.
- Do not to mistake one person’s ambition for my hearts’ desire
- I’d been trying to get a job like everyone else when I was really called to be an entrepreneur.
And that’s when I stopped. I stopped believing that I had to conform to society’s expectation of what it looked like to be a gainfully employed responsible adult. I recognized that I could make it doing it another way. Doing it my way. And once I came to that realization I woke up and discovered that I was on the path I had been meant to be on a long time ago. Sure I took a few detours trying to be part of the human preference for the status quo but that was part of my lessons learned.
Robert Frost said it best
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. ~Robert Frost
Question? If you were on a magic carpet, where would your wildest dreams take you?
