Have you ever looked back on your college days and wondered why you chose the area of study that you chose? Every time I have to pay a student loan bill, I feel like I am throwing money out the window because I'm not in a profession that relates to my degree. It gets frustrating. And then I remember that I met my husband by going to that college. So now am I paying a loan so that I can have a husband? :) kidding. I have been struggling with my career path for a while now. Well...since I graduated college. I really wanted to be a life coach so I went to graduate school and took the coaching courses there and earned my Graduate Certificate in Life Coaching. But I never found a path to plug in my education. So I did what most people do, and went to work to pay the bills. I have been at my current job for almost 5 years and I love the company, the people, the atmosphere.....but it's not in align with where I thought I wanted to take my career path.
I went on maternity leave with my second baby and towards the end of the leave I felt very conflicted with going back to work and putting my baby into daycare. We had a blessing in disguise at the time as my husband was laid off from his job the 2nd day he returned to work from paternity leave. So here we are, it's fall...we have a newborn, Christmas is coming, my son's birthday is coming, it's football season and we cannot go to a Duck game, and we felt like our lives were falling apart. I started looking into professions that would allow me to work from home or work part time hours with similar pay to what I was getting already. It all came down to the fact that I wanted to go back to school to be a Physical Therapy Assistant. I spent 25 hours in clinics observing the job, took courses online to be able to apply to the program for 2014 and prepared myself for something new and exciting. In April, I found out that I did not have enough points on my application due to a couple "B" grade courses and therefore did not get chosen to be 1 of the 24 students to enter into the 2014 PTA class. I was devastated. I wanted to throw in the towel and settle for being complacent in life. My dreams were smashed. My husband was having no luck on the job front and we felt stuck. But as we were in this frustration of losing 1/2 our income, we were also able to keep our baby home. 9 months, lots of interviews, a trip to Arizona for a face to face interview, state & city police testing and many unemployment checks later and my husband lands a job. Woohoo!! We realized pretty quickly how lucky we were that he was able to stay home with our baby for the first 9 months of her life. We cannot get that time back. So although we struggled financially, we grew closer as a family.
This journey we have been on, trying to sort out our dreams for our family and our careers, has been a roller coaster of emotions, but it has been good. A few days before my husband started this new job, AdvoCare was introduced to us. A light went on in my head and I knew right away that this was going to be the vehicle that lifts us up and out of debt. I had to go to work on this. So with little to no money, I invested in my challenge. During my challenge I fell in love with the products, my mood changed, I felt better on the inside and I saw a passion ignite to help others feel better as well.
Last night I had an epiphany. As I am trying to decide if I want to re-apply for the PTA program this winter for 2015, I realized how all of my interests and my passion is tying together. As we build our team in AdvoCare, I will be COACHING. I will be coaching team members and product users. My entire goal with AdvoCare is to help people reach their health and business goals so that they can enrich their own lives. This is perfect! Now I understand why way back in 2007, I had a dream to be a coach. And although I haven't seen the avenue since then, I see it now. And PTA fits perfectly into that mold. I desire to learn more and more about how the human body works so that I can help people feel better, recover from injuries, condition their bodies and teach them how to fill their bodies with good nutrition.
If you feel lost in your career like I did, keep revisiting your dreams. What is stopping you from reaching them? If you are living your dream life, how can you make it better? There is always room to grow in each of us. Write your goals down on paper and put a date next to them.
By this time next year, I will be ________
and YOU fill in the blank. And then....go after it!
BE THE BEST YOU.
No comments:
Post a Comment