Imagine You Have the Chance to Start Over....

(Dedicated to all Americans who are suddenly jobless, but live in a country where they can start over and still be anyone they want to be.)

Imagine over the past 10, 20, 30 years you have worked in the same industry and even the same office every day. You wake up in the morning and head to work. You greet your team, sit down at your desk, and check your voicemails and your emails. You take a deep breath and although you do love your job, you think about all the things you always wanted to do with your life and never had time for. Maybe you always wanted to write a book, or go back to school for nursing. Maybe you always wanted to pack up your bags and move to a small town and open a bakery, or a yoga studio or become a music teacher. Maybe you have wanted to take all the things you have learned in your current career and start your own business but you were too scared to spend the money or quit your job to make it happen. These dreams have swirled around in your head for a long time, but every morning you get up and go along with you’re routine, because that’s the safe thing to do. Work hard and save for your future.

Now imagine that a world event happens that is completely out of your control. Everything changes and you suddenly find yourself without a job. The company you have worked for (for decades in many cases) has had to make the very difficult decision to let you go. If this happened to you would you be upset? Would you cry? Would you be angry and think somewhere deep down of the unfairness of it all? Would you feel resentful or angry or sad, or would you wake up each morning and look at this as an opportunity to start your life over, to do what you have been dreaming of all these years but didn’t have the courage to leave your safe and steady existence?

Now is your chance. There is nothing holding you back. COVID-19 has turned lives upside down without warning, but because of COVID-19, you get a redo. You get to start over. You can be whatever you want to be. It won’t be easy and it will take a lot of patience and work. It may even take more money than you have, but we live in America, a country that even with all the current turmoil is still a place that you can be anyone you want to be. There will be self-doubt and scary times, and you will tell yourself often that you can’t do it. You will feel old and tired. You will feel not smart enough and not good enough. You will compare yourself with the successes of others, and you will have to remind yourself constantly that they too started from the beginning, but then inspiration will strike and this time you will be ready because you have nothing to lose. You will look at yourself in the mirror and you will say “it’s now or never”.

Many people will choose to wait out this difficult period that has befallen on us. They will choose to find a survival job to pay the bills until their industry comes back and they can once again work the job they love, but for many others, this is an opportunity. You have one life to make a difference, to live how you have always imagined, and in one moment you realize you can make that happen. You can turn this whole mess of a situation into something amazing. Just imagine, that moment is now. You have been given this opportunity by no choice of your own to start all over in this life and be anything you want to be. Will you take it? Close your eyes, breathe in deep, and listen to your heart. If you could start over, and live the life you have always imagined, what would you do? Who would you be?

“Nothing is worse than missing an opportunity that could have changed your life. ”

— Author unknown