One VISION & 100 Days to make it happen!
After a tumultuous two year period in our life, my husband and I slowly woke up and smelled the coffee!
Well, actually, it wasn't coffee; it was Spring and the air was sharp, senses were tingling and the call to a different way of living was loud and clear.
It took a while for us to get started on our new journey - my husband's employer required a 3 month notice period and I went through periods of being paralysed by fear and doubt - however, on 23rd July, 2016 we started our 100 Day Challenge.
Two and a half years earlier our lives were turned upside down when our 33 year old daughter died within three days of being admitted to hospital with pneumonia that turned into sepsis. As if this wasn't enough to rock our world, we became Kinship carers to her two children who came to live with us.
As you may imagine, emotions were running high and we were pulled in all sorts of directions as we faced an ever-changing bereavement process whilst, at the same time, re-learning how to keep pace with the needs and demands of two small children aged three and eight years of age and the sacrifices that parents everywhere are only too familiar with.
And so, early in 2016, we decided that enough was enough and set about creating the life we wanted to live.
Being Coaches, it felt natural to step back and look at our family from an impartial observer position.
"How would you want our lives to be if you could draw our future?" I asked Raymy one night.
We had fun, using our imagination to explore different versions of potential realities. Maybe Raymy could give up his job and we could work together instead? What if we were to move to a bigger house where we could run our coaching, training and mindfulness programmes?
Ah but (there are always 'ah but's!), the kids have been through enough change and they are now settled in the local school. So what if we create the space we need in our own home and build an extension so we can have a home office and do our work from home?
Soon these fantasies became possibilities until we realised that the only thing preventing us from stepping into our imagined reality was ourselves. A three month notice period and a bit of inner, self-work to deal with the irrational fears enabled us to prepare ourselves for the change then, at the end of June, the time came for us to jump.
"Come to the edge", he said. "We can't, we're afraid!" they responded.
"Come to the edge", he said. "We can't, we will fall!" they responded.
"Come to the edge", he said.
And so they came... And he pushed... And they flew.
(by Guillaume Apollinaire)
And so, after a short holiday, we launched our 100 Day Challenge on 23rd July 2016 and we agreed to coach each other through the journey. We learned that YOU CAN FLY if only you take a chance and step out of the comfort zone - or off the edge of the proverbial cliff.
Our challenge was to build a home office in the garden (as an alternative, short term strategy to the home expansion) and expand Acorn Principle Plus - our Learning & Development business - by creating an Online Academy that would enable us to live and work together on a daily basis and to share our learning with the world.
Life is hard sometimes, but there are always lessons to be learned. I believe that we learn our life's lessons for a reason and that reason is to build connections and share our experiences so that others may also benefit from our discoveries.
In setting out on this journey we added the 100 day timescale to help retain some perspective, to keep us on track and also to build in a level of accountability. We launched our first Online Coach Training course on 30th October 2016 and have been running 2 or 3 courses each year since then.