The big step backwards
If you’re in the UK I hope you had fun celebrating the Queen's platinum jubilee and took full advantage of the 4 day weekend! What a treat!
My eldest son Charlie is in the middle of A-Level exams right now. - in fact, he has physics today. Yuck.
Last night we had a chat and he explained to me that whilst he's proud of the effort and hard work he has put in, he’s worried he’s going to fail physics, not get into engineering at Uni and therefore not fulfill his dream of becoming a Formula One Race engineer.
I reminded him there was always more than one way to achieve any goal and that it might just mean starting off somewhere a bit lower down in the chain for example being an apprentice rather than a graduate. He looked totally dejected and said I don't want to take a step backward.
A "step backward" music to my ears I thought. Do you know how I feel about taking a step backwards? Let me tell you what I told him.
I fully believe there is an order to everything and a large part of our success is trusting the signs and the path we are guided to follow. If one way doesn't work out, it's because that's not the best way for you - and what sometimes feels like a step backwards can actually just be a change of direction to a much quicker way forward.
For example,
At the age of 31, I left my beautiful family home, our family-owned business, and my 13-year long relationship/marriage to take a massive step backwards , to be divorced, to live in a 2 bedroom house on housing benefits and job seekers allowance with £20 disposable income a month. I had no partner to rely on, no savings, and no real job prospects.
Fast forward 10 years and I have a better marriage than before, a bigger house than before, I have my own business that earns way more money than our family one ever did. And it's not just me. Look at the stock market for the last 50 years. Every time there has been a bad year, a year where it makes a significant loss… the next year the market rebounds and it rebounds better than it was before the loss.
This is the natural order of things. If you do your part.
So this week, I hope you will be guided by the signs to lead you where you need to go. Be brave enough to follow the path even when you think you’re headed in the wrong direction and trust that you are in exactly the right place at the right time for the right purpose.
Life isn't about never having a setback or a tough time, it's about knowing FOR CERTAIN that better times are coming and it’s only up and up and up from here.
See you on the up!
