By Kate Swoboda

Okay. So you’ve set a goal. Or you have an idea in mind for something you want to change. Maybe you’ve even laid out a few action steps. It feels heady, this goal-setting business. There’s a kind of a rush, whether it comes from finally getting over the fear that surrounded admitting you wanted something, or realizing that you’re completely stoked to have it and ready to dive in.

“It will take time,” some cautionary voice inside of us warns. Perhaps some more fear crops up then, too, and then when we push that away there’s a new surge of that great feeling. You did it! You set a goal! You identified a dream! You’re going to make it happen!

Days, weeks, months pass. Then perhaps you realize: Shit. It really does take time. Maybe lots of time. Maybe the kind of time where I don’t know what the hell to do with myself now that the bubbly rush feeling is gone and (WARNING: BOAT METAPHOR AHEAD) I’ve got one foot on the boat and one foot on the dock. That boat isn’t setting sail yet, so I need one food on the dock, and yet it kind of is, so I need one foot on the boat, and I’ve got a groin muscle that is seriously complaining right now.

And somewhere, in some part of ourselves that we don’t want to acknowledge (usually, anyway), we are bummed that the goal did not happen instantly, with a snap of the fingers. If you are anything like me, you might even have moments where you want to claw at the walls and cry, “Does this mean it’s not meant to BE?” (Caution: this is the moment when most of us go out to buy a new self-help book, commit to a meditation practice that we won’t follow, sabotage ourselves by talking to someone who doesn’t really support us, consult a psychic, passively quit, or actually quit).

passively quitting: not out and out quitting, but slacking off on doing whatever needs to be done to a degree that things start to sputter and stall, or retreating into complaints and defeat, until things get worse so that you can more legitimately say “Well, it wasn’t working.” Think of men in relationships who grow inexplicably distant and stop returning phone calls so that you will do the dirty work of breaking up with them, and you get the idea.

I confess that I have experienced this phenomenon myself in the past few months (this is the bummer realization about becoming a Coach—learning about ways to change behavior and hold space for others in the midst of a rough patch does not automatically translate into my own problem-free, reaction-free, rough-patch-free life).

I wanted to declare that I was starting a new career path of coaching + retreats + e-courses, and I (secretly, of course) wanted everything to be wildly successful. In my mind, this meant a completely full coaching slate, retreats that sold out within a few weeks of announcing them, e-courses that also sold out within a few days of announcing them. Also, everyone would be wildly pleased with everything I did. I told myself that this was a “reasonable” thing to expect, because after all, (imagine me puffed up with pride for not being “perfectionistic” about it) I wasn’t saying things needed to sell out in a few hours. I was saying a few weeks. Also, I really liked this word: wildly when attached to this other word: successful.

In reality, clients have come and gone at the same rate that they always have, some retreats have filled easily while others have not, and my e-courses have filled over weeks, not days. In reality, I was being perfectionistic about it, an old habit, even though I didn’t want to admit it to myself. The past few months have been an experience of living in Trigger City. I had expectations, and if they weren’t met, I needed to keep having Talks With Myself about perfectionism and boundaries and not telling myself a Story that I was failing if I didn’t automatically have the same level of financial security working for myself that I had had working for someone else. I kept fretting about how I wanted to make a living supporting myself, forgetting that duh—I am supporting myself. That rent check each month? Written by me. Not a sugar-daddy. Me.

I make it a practice to “look for the gold,” to find out where in life’s challenges there’s something of value, and from that place—and of course I can only speak of this now because I’ve made quite a bit of headway and processed through many of the feelings—I see a lot of value in my experience in the past few months. Talk about practicing acceptance. Talk about practicing Letting Go. If you ever feel like diving into those practices, start a business.

But the biggest thing that I have needed to acknowledge is that I Wanted It Done Now, and I forgot that I Am Doing It.

(Now, before you start wondering if I left my career as an English teacher because I am challenged by proper capitalization, let me just add the disclaimer that I’m aware of how to properly capitalize things.)

I Am Doing It. I’m in process. I’m doing everything that needs to be done, and have had a number of successes along the way.

Remember the metaphorical boat? When I get stuck in I Want it Done Now I actually maintain the fearful, spread-legged, “I’m going to fall into a pond of duck shit” feeling. When I step into I Am Doing It, a sort of thrilling realization hits me:

The boat has left the dock, baby.

Both feet are in. We’re sailing.

Time to enjoy the ride rather than skip over the part where I’m out on the open water.

From a really deep place, I am now excited to see what is before me. I mean, how cool is this—I have started to work for myself. There will never again be a year like this one, my first year. Never again will I have quite the same freshness of beginner’s mind that I have now. This is something worth savoring before it transforms into something else.

And how neat it is that I can already look back over the past few months and see, and feel, a real shift in who I am that has resulted purely from taking this leap. I can even see how, based on the experience I’ve had with this, I would be a better teacher should I ever decide to return to the classroom. I can see how I am a better partner, a better friend, a better human being on the planet, walking with more patience and more insight and more willingness to trust and a drastically expanded comfort zone around taking risks.