“You will find Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on your calendar but you won’t find ‘someday’ there. I remember when I decided to go on my friend’s first yoga retreat in Indonesia almost 4 years ago now. The previous winter I poured over her incredible images from her yoga teacher training in lush, beautiful Bali while in harsh contrast, I scraped ice off my windshield in chilly Canada. I’m self employed, single with a mortgage and work was sporadic at the time. It did not make financial sense to book three flights halfway around the world to take yoga, but I was turning 50 later that year and thought, this is a once in a lifetime journey! Who knows what life will bring?
I started to panic financially about my decision about a month before the departure date. I also decided to tack on a trip to Australia, since I was going all that way; a total of 5 weeks for every decade of my life. Was I crazy!?!
I’m not even middle income status and I’m Canadian, which meant I also had to pay the US exchange for everything. I’m also someone who’s quite practical when it comes to money. I’m definitely more of a saver than a spender. I only have one credit card on purpose.
So I started to reach out to past clients and one of them booked and she booked again and thankfully, she booked a lot of work with me right up until the day before I left for the trip. Magically, I also had two months of work come in from another company I freelanced for, literally starting the day after I arrived back. Had that date been off by one day, I would have missed the training and not been included in that project!
Before I booked this and much of the time leading up to the trip, I had NO IDEA how I was going to make this work financially but I was determined to go. And I did. And I did not go into ANY debt to do so.
That journey, just even saying YES to that retreat, was the beginning and catalyst that changed the course of my life over the next few years because I was saying YES to myself, YES to my life on my terms, and YES to adventure! When I followed my dreams, abundance followed.
I am eternally grateful for this experience that I decided and chose to say yes to and I somehow plan to be part of the next one this February. It’s time and, again, I’m really not sure HOW I’m going to pay for this one but “someday” isn’t on my calendar…