Taking positive action

I have exciting news! I have got myself a new job, well, an additional job actually as I love mentoring too much to give that up. But during the summer, out of term time, my income gets a little thin. This puts me in the familiar dilemma of how to balance childcare and work, the conflict of really looking forward to spending some time with my children, but having no wage to take them anywhere and do interesting things. Aghh. Last summer I saw an opportunity, and applied. My first attempt got me invited to an assessment day – but it was arranged during the one week we had booked a little holiday in Norfolk. I was gutted. Fortunately they said they would be recruiting again this January, so I re-applied. I got through and after an interesting assessment day, and then a further interview, handwriting and IT test I got offered the job! I am going to be a Celebratory Officer. What is that? Well, eventually I will be conducting civil ceremonies for people getting married, first I have some training to do and then I’ll be the person writing in the register for a while until they let me loose with the speaking parts!  How brilliant is that? It’s a weekend job in the main, so I can spend most of the week with my children in the holidays and still earn some money doing a really unique and interesting job. Surely you can’t hate going in to work when you are surrounded by happy, joyous people at a wedding. 🙂

So today’s by blog is really about chasing dreams and taking positive action. I felt I needed to improve our future outlook, and I had to find a way that would fit in with our family, my needs as a mum, and as a working woman and my husband’s work pattern too. When I applied I honestly could visualise myself doing it, and that picture has stayed firmly in my mind from that day on. There are several theories about positive visualisation, cosmic ordering, and the like; and it does make me wonder about the power of these theories. I would describe myself as ‘open-mindedly sceptical’ if that’s possible. I do think you have to put things ‘out there’ for them to come to fruition. I don’t believe in hoping life will change and then sitting back and waiting for it to happen. It won’t. The future me is successful (although I guess actually I’m not doing too badly in the present!) When people ask what I do, I want to be able to say, “oh, I’m a mentor, an author and I marry people at weekends” I like how it sounds, and it looks as though I will have three jobs that I love. I am so lucky to say that. (I am making a massive assumption here that my book will be published, but today it feels like anything is possible!)

But there’s the thing – is it luck? Or is it that I’ve always got my eye open for an opportunity, always looking for the next step, seeing how I can make things better. It also takes a bit of hard work and a massive leap of faith. It means taking a risk and actually taking action rather than just talking about it. Because I have hardly any self-esteem at all I find myself thinking I’ve somehow cheated or got here by mistake, but deep down I know that’s not really true. I have to get better at believing in myself. This time a year ago I thought I was stuck in the same house forever, thinking things would never change, and now here I am – a wonderful new house in the countryside (our previous landlord needed their house back) a new exciting job, a current job that I love and who knows what else in the future.

So if you’re fed up with the status quo, whether you’d like a big change or a small change – take some action, take a risk, you never know where it might lead….