“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anais Nin
Remember when you were a kid at the end of summer and your mother would take you and your siblings to buy new school shoes? If you were anything like me, I spent most of my summer months either in sandals on the beach or barefoot building up the calluses on the bottoms of my feet to the point I could tolerate running on the hot gravel road that flanked whichever family farm I’d been spending the summer on.
For the weeks during summer, my little dancer’s feet took a hiatus from ballet slippers and those stiff saddle shoes which were standard issue in my house up until I rebelled against them in the 7th grade. And the last thing I wanted to do at the end of summer was to force my feet into a pair of shoes that felt constrictive and confining.
The Shoe salesman (most of them were men in the 60s and early 70s) would measure our feet and dutifully suggest that we “size-up for growing room”. Then, just a few months into our “shoes with growing room” our toes were gasping for air as we were forced to wear them for just a little longer. It was agonizingly painful, especially when one of the cooler girls at school was sporting around in a new pair of suede wedgies or wavy Famolares every other month (you had to be there to understand).
Our growing feet as kids that want nothing more than to kick off our tightly outgrown shoes to run free fully expressing our joy is not terribly unlike the beautiful person living inside each and every one of us. But rather than busting out of the box we, and others, have packed ourselves away in, we choose to stay all bound up, depriving the world, and ourselves, of the geniuses we are and the gifts we each are meant to give this big, limitless world.
We tell ourselves, “Someday. Someday I’ll take that trip. Someday I’ll get in shape. Someday I’ll get out of this unfulfilling relationship. Someday I’ll quit this miserable job and start my own dream business. Someday I’ll invest in myself and take a chance on me. Someday.
Well guess what, every day that you let go by, is gone. A bud that doesn’t bloom ends up withering on the vine and someday turns out to be “where did the time go?” or “it’s too late for me now”. We fill our lives with excuses of why we don’t live the life we dreamt about as a kid.
What are you waiting for? If you are on the verge of blooming, don’t let the fear of the unknown trick you into “playing it safe”.
If your heart is sending you a message, listen and do something about it! You don’t need to know how it will all unfold; you just need to take the first step. Schedule a discovery call with me today to learn more about what’s possible for you.
Love and Light
Michèle