The letter I wrote to myself the day I resigned

I was looking through the old notes on my phone the other day and came across a scramble of words which I wrote when I was on the tube back from work the day I had spoken to my boss about my decision to leave the industry.

That stream of consciousness, I’m sharing with you today… here goes..

I finally did it.

I’ve accepted it myself and told them that I’m leaving.

I cannot tell you the fear I felt. I still feel. Stepping out into the unknown.

The new life. The total empty slate of being. Of living. Of freedom to find something that makes my soul sing. The security has gone. The money has gone.

The trajectory of a safe happy life has gone. But is it happy when you spend all day yearning to do something different?

To have an impact. To inspire. To let people HEAR me. SEE me. The real me.

To help people come to their truths.

To see the reality of the world.

This short, sweet, painful, twisting, seemingly endless, desire filled, boredom filled, journey to god knows where.

Why waste it?

Why allow yourself to sit in fear of what will happen if you pull the rip cord?

You are safe. You are ok. You are loved. You don’t need to prove anything anymore.

The money doesn’t make you more worthy.

YOU makes you worthy.

YOU just as you are.

Imperfect but whole, trying your best to live a life that makes your soul sing.

A life that has impact.

Where you are in control. Where you determine your destiny.

I’m done with the wanting. The never ending hoping, desperate for the approval of someone else to make me whole. That approval never comes.

The only thing that wins is approving of yourself.

Of your choices. Of your life. It is your life after all. Live it. Take risks. Fall. Fail. Get back up again.

Anything but spend years wishing for something else. Wishing yourself to feel alive.

Aliveness is just around the corner if you just allow yourself to follow that tiny whispering voice telling you to turn around and try another route.

What does it feel like to cut free from the chains of societal expectation? To give up something that so many others focus their entire lives on, to give up the ‘success’ we’re told to shoot for the skies for.

I’ve taken myself off that track. Off that well oiled train track, the HS2 to ‘success’ and a ‘comfortable life’.

I sway between fear and elation.

Fear of what’s next, the emptiness of the next year, the total unknowing of what’s next for me but then the excitement comes.

A feeling deep in my chest, a flutter.

As if the child inside me is dancing, finally having found the freedom to free herself from the self-inflicted chains of expectation to go and live the way she wants.

The freedom to be who she wants to be. To live where she wants to live. To do what she wants to do. To create a life which is authentic and real.

She’s smiling, I can feel it.

I’m smiling.

The fear has subsided and I feel so centred and real that I know that the slow train I’m boarding is the right one.

I can finally peer out of the window and enjoy the view

Notes to myself, February 2020, an iPhone somewhere between Southwark and Waterloo, The Jubilee Line.

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