Warning: A Big Leap is a radical shift in thinking, which challenges one or more of the assumptions you have previously made about life. Once you’ve made a big leap, life will never be the same again.
Make Your First Baby Step to Creating The Life You Really Want in the next 3 Minutes!
You’ve got a dream. In quiet moments, you allow yourself to fantasize in the bath – about your own business and what it would look like/what it would be like to sing at the Royal Albert Hall/to write and have your first book published. Then you quietly fold your dream away.
Most of us had our childhood dreams kicked out of us years ago. At some point our teachers, parents or friends have told us to get a grip, that we’d never be an astronaut but had we thought about accounting? Most of us at some time or other in our lives were told to ‘get real’. So we did. We folded our dreams neatly away and conformed to how the world wanted us to live, playing the roles that society demanded that we played in order to be happy. We passed exams, launched ourselves on a career then bought the car and house to go with them. We did all the ‘right’ things, lived by all the ‘right’ rules so we can’t understand why we’re not happy and why we are so desperately resentful and exhausted.
To rediscover our dreams, we need to make a big leap in thinking. The following process will take 3 minutes. Get a piece of paper and scribble down the answers to the following.
Step 1: Ask a big question: (or two)
Imagine you are living the dream. It’s 3 years from now and you have written the novel/are playing jazz at the Royal Albert Hall/have just won business person of the year for your new business. A documentary film crew have asked to film a ‘life in the day’ and follow you round:
What is the highlight of the programme?
What do people say to their friends about the documentary when they are discussing it the day after?
Step 2: Ready to leap?
Making the big leap is fundamentally about changing the way we think as well as changing what we do. So answer the next big question:
What would you have to believe about yourself to make this dream a reality?
Stay with the question. Don’t get into ‘that’s not possible’ or ‘who will pay the mortgage? Just the answer the question. What would you have to believe? That you were clever enough? Brave enough? Talented enough? Savvy enough? Good enough? That you’re gorgeous? That you’re a quietly confident maverick or someone who has the brains, determination and flair to make a new business work? Or that you really are a talented writer/artist/singer? What would you have to believe about yourself to live the dream?
Step 3: Take a bootcamp baby step:
Our beliefs form and come true for us when we find evidence to back them up. What we focus on expands. If you believe that it will never be possible for you to live the dream, that life’s a bitch and then you die, well you’re right. What you believe about the world is true. Your reality is what you think it is. So if you want to change your reality, change your beliefs. Change your belief by finding some new evidence to support the new belief you wrote down in step 2. If you have to believe you’re clever enough to start to create your new life – what action can you take in the next 3 minutes to prove to yourself that this is true – from doing the crossword to doing an IQ test on the internet. It generally takes around 100 pieces of evidence before a new belief takes root and your focus begins to change effortlessly. Take a baby step and go and find your first piece of evidence NOW. Change your belief, change your reality, change your thinking, change your job, change your life, live the dream.
Congratulations, you’ve just made a big leap in 3 minutes.
“If you want to pursue your dream, let ‘faith and trust’ be your mantra. And whatever you do, don’t listen to your ‘inner pessimist’ - the voice that always encourages you to play it safe and not take risks – which slowly chips away at your confidence if you try to do anything different. By listening to your ‘inner pessmist’, you set yourself up to fail. By listening to my real friends and coach, having faith and trust in myself, I was able to start my coaching training. I chose to listen to the voice out there that said, ‘there are many life coaches and writers, however, there is only one Salma, the life coach and writer!
Salma Shah, 30, Big Leaping from IT sales to life coach and MD of her own coaching company. www.lifeskills-co.com
