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Health & Fitness

Be Careful What You Wish For!

This blog will be I'm sure the first in a series of how I left my "secure" part-time job to work on my dream full time.

Elizabeth Hart is the director of Tailored for Success. 

You've heard it a million times: "be careful what you wish for, because it might come true". Or my favorite: "thank God for unanswered prayers".

Well for the last several years (okay, three years), I have been wishing and hoping to be able to leave my part-time job and focus full time on building my agency Tailored For Success, Inc. 

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I've written about goal settting, staying motivated, and never giving up. Well, now it's time for me to take my own advice.

January 3rd, I finally did it - gave notice to my boss that no longer would I work part-time a week, 20 hours at a job I no longer loved, or was motivated by. Not that the company I worked for was bad, or the working conditions terrible - it was a very nice place - but I longed to be able to focus, because my heart and head were elsewhere.

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So, being the professional I am, I gave 1 month's notice (the longest I've ever given) instead of the minimum 2 weeks. And as of last Thursday, I was done. Then Friday came and it hit me, I was unemployed.  But wait, how could I be unemployed when I had my agency? 

What I wanted, longed for dreamed of, finally happened.  So what happened, like any Type A personality, I got sick. Sick from all the stress in leaving a pretty secure job in this economy, sick from working like crazy and not realizing how much I was working and sick from general worry.  

So, instead of taking the advice of one brave soul who said "take some time off".   I pledged to plunge right into my work, because overnight, I was going to transform my agency into a powerhouse.

Well, of course that didn't happen - I got so sick I could barely stand it. However, after some much needed rest, I feel I'm back.  Ready to make a list of goals, remember they have to be SMART, and take on the nonprofit world. 

Of course, it is really scary to make SMART goals, and do what you said you would because, well, I could fail. But I was on the treadmill one day, by the way I get my best thinking done there, and I read a woman's story of wanting to write a book.  She worked on that book for years and got 40+ rejection letters and even was writing a revision while in labor. It took her so long to achieve her goal that she started lying to friends and family. She would say she was going on a "girls weekend" then check into a motel and write. 

Finally, after 67 rejections she got her book published. Think of it: 67 editors said 'no, we don't want your book, you've failed,' and she kept on going. 

I guess I can keep going after putting my dream on hold for 4 years.

Enjoy the Journey

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