Sometimes leading a self-determined life leads you to things you never would have anticipated.  It’s one thing to think about making the jump.  Planning it.  Saving for it.  Attempting to minimize the risk side.  Listening to those who have gone before.  Pledging to stay true to yourself.  All of that and more.  Those things are one thing.

Doing it is an entirely different matter.

Choosing to be an artist, and to invest in your business, and dedicating yourself completely to the cause of supporting yourself through your craft is one way of taking a plunge into the unknown.  Selling the silver to build the business you have been dreaming of for years is another.  Moving to a foreign country and scratching a living out of whatever you find there – yet another.  There are different ways to skin the cat, but in the end, until you do it, you will never know exactly how it feels or what can transpire as a result.

As for me, I was terrified.  My stereophonic world went tinny and the sounds of reality were distant.  I was gripped with the fear that I had just made the most monstrous error a person can make.  I don’t think what I felt was that unusual, but it was a hell of a time to find out that I am not a natural born risk taker.  I thought I was until I actually signed on the dotted line. But  I received Benefit Number One of Changing your life very shortly after taking the plunge.

Benefit Number One of Changing Your Life is coming face to face with your own personal truth.  My insides were screaming no no, let’s go back, change this.  Put the money back in the account and give this property back to those nice people we bought it from.  But it was too late for all that.  Worse of all, my husband had also received Benefit Number One - his personal truth.  His eyes were aglow with the possiblities.  He’s a natural risk taker.  He assumed that I had a clue as to who I was before I made the committment.  And that was a mistake.  I just thought I knew.  But I had no idea.

So I ran around trying to do what I was supposed to do to get the bed and breakfast open but in reality I was just plain terrified and felt terribly alone.   Until at some point my inside caught up with my outside and I realized what I was missing. What I was missing was Benefit Number Two of Changing Your Life.

Benefit Number Two of Changing Your Life is realizing how much you are actually capable of.  When you’re doing it for the Man, you are doing it at half the capacity that you actually could do it if your life depended upon it.  It really doesn’t matter what “it” is.  If you’re doing the filing, you can be sure that if it’s your business, you can make a system that works ten times better.  If it’s your B&B,  you will yank out your lower back to get to that last spider web.  You will. Your entire life, your entire being, will become a work in progress on which you will never stop tweaking.

You are capable of so much more than you ever imagined.  You just need to take the plunge to see  exactly what you can do if your life depended upon it.  Because guess what?  If you change your life, your life DOES depend upon it. You’ll learn a thing or two about the people around you, too, which brings me to Benefit Number Three.

Benefit Number Three is that you get clear with others.  This is a magical benefit that comes from knowing yourself better. From understanding your own strengths and weaknesses.  You learn to recognize honesty in the eyes of others, and how the simple help of others, whether they be lovers, friends, or virtual strangers, is a gift beyond measure.

 There are many more than three benefits to changing your life to live closer to your soul’s purpose.  But I am starting out with these three, hoping that you feel free to share more benefits that you’ve found on your own path.

The bottom photo is a team of the most lovable guys I know.  Franco, our late friend, who called together Beppe (right) and Aldo (right) to help us move my 800 pound kiln into another room.  Oh, yeah, and my darling husband, too, in the foreground right.