Exactly 1 year ago today, I walked into the office on a Monday morning and an email came through to announce an important meeting in the afternoon that we all must attend. Everybody knew it was going to be something huge… The company I used to work for announced the sale 1/3 of their business to a direct competitor. As a result 1/3 of the office were made redundant, including me.
The news came as a shock, but I was quick to see the MASSIVE opportunity there.
Only 5 days later I was going to finish my 1 year Yoga Teacher training course and graduate as a 200H Yoga Teacher. I’d secretly dreamed of dropping my office career to go teach yoga, but was too scared to do it.
It wasn’t all easy at first.
I cried a lot in the first days after the redundancy news. Teaching yoga was my secret dream and I did previously consider dropping everything to teach full time. But I had come to the conclusion that it just wasn’t a wise idea. Letting go of the certainty of a monthly salary, holidays and benefits, to step into the unknown of the self employed life.
I spent the first few weeks considering getting another full time job. But after listening to my self carefully, I gathered all my strength and decided that I was going to give teaching yoga a go!
So I did it: I started covering for other teachers anywhere in London to gain experience and contacts. I went on further teacher trainings and built more knowledge, through studying and teaching.
I taught several hundreds of classes to thousands of students in the past year and this brought me loads of joy.
Would I have had the courage to drop my office job and step into the unknown? Probably not.
I am so grateful that life took me this way and made me experience what it’s like to follow my passion and make it my main way of earning a living. It’s wonderful and fun, rewarding and really doesn’t feel like I’m working at all (despite not having a day off anymore).
This has been possible as I didn’t have any major financial commitments. No kids, no mortgage or loans to repay. I did have some savings to help my peace of mind until I was able to grow my teaching schedule to earn enough from it.
Sometimes life takes us where we need to go.
If we don’t have the courage to do it ourselves. And when it happens we should stop and think. And ask ourselves: “What is it I need to know? What is it I need to learn through this lesson?” and act accordingly.
It may be hard at first, but when you will look back, you will see why it happened. And if not, keep looking.