Part Six: Becoming a Life Coach and the Call of France

But I still didn’t have anything one would call a career. I worked at the bookstore, taught cooking and writing classes, wrote and made art as I could and traveled when I could afford it. One day I fell upon a web site called cooljobs.com and found a job for a hot air balloon chef in France. I applied despite my trepidation that as a vegetarian for the past eleven years, I knew nothing about cooking meat. I didn’t get the job, but while waiting for the news, I read an article about coaching in UTNE reader. This was me! I was a born coach, wanting to help others be creatively expressed. I conceived my new vision for my career:

I could work for myself part-time and have time to write.

I embarked on training with the Coaches Training Institute, quit my full-time job, and became a self-employed coach. I was doing this for several months when I got a call from the hot air balloon people. Was I interested in coming over to France and Switzerland for the five-week winter season?

Was I interested? Mon dieu! After a lifetime of trying to carve out my own path, I’d gotten the call I’d always dreamed of. Here’s your mission, here’s your ticket, here’s when we want you. It felt like a spy mission. I got my passport immediately. After celebrating the new millennium in California with friends, I flew to France.

Long story short, the job was hell. I got to experience first-hand a life lived outside of my values. There was no one with whom to have stimulating conversation. The food was bad and the music worse. Outside of cooking for my job, there was nothing to do in the tiny Swiss town devoted to the hot air balloon festival.

I did get to ride in a balloon over the Alps, and this glorious, floating moment almost made all the drudgery in the kitchen worthwhile. The biggest reward of the job was that it got me to France after almost ten years away. I wrote an essay about it (and won a contest) if you want to read it here. The biggest thing I gained wasn’t the money – it was the chance to be back in France.

After the gig was done, I went in Paris to hang out by myself and relish France. Standing in the Pere Lachaise cemetery, I had a big realization. I spoke French. I wasn’t learning. I had the skill. Why wasn’t I coming to France more often? I vowed then and there to return every year to France, and since 2000, I’ve been to France seven times, and the two years I wasn’t in France I was in England.

I returned to the US, moved to Boulder and spent the next seven years building my coaching business Original Impulse, writing my novel and writing other books and e-books about the creative process. I shifted from teaching the craft of writing to focus on the creative process.

It didn’t take long to discover that running my own business is not part-time work, so I had to learn how to balance work and creativity. This is a constant recalibration and juggling act for all of us.

In Boulder, I continued to cultivate my yoga practice begun in 1996, developed spiritual beliefs that helped me grow, and connected with a tribe of creative, intelligent friends who helped me hone my best self. I now live by these beliefs:

• Life is a made-up story, so might as well make up a good one.
• People are amazing.
• You can do anything you want if you believe you can.
• The best way to succeed and be happy is to control your mind.
• Life is magical and fun.

I devoted myself wholeheartedly to my novel Chasing Sylvia Beach, which I’ve been writing since 1999. I locked my artist in the basement, believing (rightfully so) that building a business is a creative act. My entire life is creative, but it’s not art making.

Art making involves making a work of art, and while writing is definitely an art, I crave more. I hunger for the play and freedom that painting or drawing gives me. I savor the meditative quality of making art. I love that fine arts, for me, involve a suspension of thought. Writing requires a deep engagement with thought and ideas. I am fervently in love with color, which is why I relish cooking and clothing.

After almost ten years of building my business and eight years of living and working in the same apartment in Boulder, I wanted more. I have the distinct intuition that there is more for me. That I can do more and express more and be used to a greater degree than I have so far. That life is more than being a successful businesswoman or a published and award-winning author. I’ve come to an odd cul-de-sac in my journey where I am called to move beyond myself.

So, one night in November 2007, a week after ending a three-year relationship, the idea to leave Boulder sprang fully formed into my mind. I call this the cosmic download, for it came to me all at once:

Pack up everything. Start a blog about it to share the journey and show people that incredibly impossible leaps are possible. Make travel shrines and sell them. Move out into the world and work from my computer, which the amazing advances in technology have made possible. Develop my creative travel tools into an illustrated book and also a teambuilding and creativity training. Go. Go for it.

As of this writing, it’s been eight months since I left home and embarked on this journey. Over and over I’ve been given tangible and miraculous proof that Journey Juju exists – that magical force that gives great gifts to those who step forward into the void in order to receive them. My biggest fear was money and having enough. Yet I somehow have more money than I’ve ever had.

I’ve met remarkable people, embarked on wonderful relationships, traveled to England, France, Holland, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Panama and Italy. The professional opportunities like the ones I asked for have come to me. What Julia Cameron said in ‘The Artist’s Way’ continues to be true for me:

Leap and the net will appear.

In my coaching practice and the articles I write, this belief, born from experience, not blind faith, underlies my efforts to help others take and live their leaps. I believe that living your greatest expression isn’t always easy or comfortable, but it is worth it.

I ask my clients what kind of life they insist upon having. Name it in a word or phrase. I insist upon having a zesty life: piquant, sharp, vibrant.  I’ve learned that we may not live out our dreams exactly as we script them, but if we look beneath the surface, we are often expressing the qualities of those dreams.

I still wonder what my life is all about. I still worry and don’t like not knowing what will happen. Sometimes I want that missive from the Source that tells me what I’m about and how to best express that. Mostly I am on a path seeking the grace and skills to live my fullest expression.

I don’t know where the future will lead me, but this is how I’ve gotten to where I am now. I’m incredibly grateful for my health, my fitness, my courage and all that I have learned and experienced so far. It’s a story that continues to engage me fully, this life of mine. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Comments

[Maureen]

Viva la journey! Thank you for sharing yourself and these gifts with the world.

[Annalie]

You are exactly who I needed to read right now. Thanks to Alyson Stanfield for introducing you. Thank you for setting out on your journey and telling us all about it - so that others, like myself, have a role model for this kind of change.

"Leap and the net will appear" That is the best advice!

I embarked on artistic path few years ago. And, still want to write that book. I will take the challenge of writing 15 minutes per day.

ah
www.annaliehudson.com

[Anne]

This is wonderful, Cynthia...a true inspiration. Thank you.

All good wishes!!

[Cynthia Morris]

Thanks Anne!