You Can Always Quit Softball

I announced earlier this week that I’m now a general life coach and no longer specializing in Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) coaching.

It felt like a really big deal to announce, and I was honestly surprised by the outpouring of support I received. It seems like other people recognized how hard this decision was too.

Here are three lessons I learned along the way that I wanted to share today:

1. That little voice usually knows what you want before you’re ready to admit it. The hard part is learning to listen.

2. You can practice making a decision to notice how you feel. Sometimes the relief you feel tells you more than all the thinking you did before it.

3. You don’t have to have every detail figured out before you make a change. Not knowing what’s next isn’t a reason to stay where you are.

Let’s say you’ve played in the same softball league every summer for 10 years.

Sunday rolls around, and you dread going; you find yourself hoping the game gets rained out, and at the end of every season, you have this little voice saying, “I’m not going to sign up next year.”

But the team is counting on you, and it’s what you do every summer, so you keep signing up even though that voice has been saying the same thing for years.

This year, you decide you’re not going to sign up. You don’t tell anyone or make other plans for your Sundays. You simply practice making the decision and give yourself a week to see how it feels.

And you feel…relieved.

You’re not dreading Sundays or secretly hoping for rain, and maybe you’re even excited about having your weekends back.

That relief is information.

Of course, then your brain starts wondering what you’re going to do instead. Will you find another hobby? Will you still see your friends from the team? What will you do with all those free Sundays?

This is where you could easily convince yourself to sign up again because you don’t have the next thing figured out.

But you don’t need to know what you’re going to do every Sunday next summer to know that you don’t want to spend them playing softball.

That’s essentially what happened to me with my business.

The little voice had been there for a long time. This time, I listened, made the decision, and sat with it quietly. I felt an enormous amount of relief. I love my clients, but I knew I couldn’t keep thinking about T1D all day, every day.

I don’t know exactly what my new business will look like or where it will lead.

But not knowing what’s next wasn’t a reason to keep doing something I already knew wasn’t right for me. And sometimes, that’s enough information to take the next step.

P.S. Feeling stuck and ready for something to change? I can help. Set up a free consultation to learn more about 1-on-1 coaching.