Cyclic Life: We End up Where We Were Meant to Be.
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Recently I have been in a state of reminiscence, maybe from the holidays or the fact that recently I’ve had a chance to reconnect with family and friends whom I haven’t seen or really been around in nearly a decade.
Whatever the cause, It’s turned my mind into a veritable highlight reel of memories and musings.
In my memories, I am reminded that as a teen involved in competitive powerlifting, I once wanted more than anything to work within the health and fitness industry and had dreamed of helping others to train their bodies to do extraordinary things, and to help them live a happier, healthier life. Somehow, because of the very cyclic nature of life, I now have the opportunity to do just that.
Let me elaborate.
Last year, after a major health scare, I made a complete and total life change. I quit my job and over five-year career in Automotive Sales and Finance, and went on a journey of self-rediscovery.
I found that over time I had allowed myself to become a lesser version of my true self. Dulled by my daily stressors, I was downtrodden by my search for fulfillment within my career and ultimately was morphing into a financial prosperity-seeker who was missing out on much more important aspects of my life.
I had become an absent friend, a depressed and disconnected daughter, and an anxiety-ridden workaholic with far too much on my plate.
The worst part of this was the fact that I was leaving things I was passionate about behind to pursue said prosperity. Art, music, exercise, and my love of being in nature all took a back seat to my daily grind.
Last year was a wake up call. Ultimately my health scare was just that, a scare, but it was enough, more than enough to get me to realize that I needed to be and do more, but to do that I needed to also be and do less at the very same time.
I needed to be more present in the real world outside of my cubicle and career, I needed to reconnect to the people in my life. I needed to change… no, not to change but to rediscover who I really am as a human being. To find out who I really am as a human on this planet, outside of my job or title.
I only wish it hadn’t taken so long to remember what is truly important, and that it hadn’t taken me a major health scare to put my life back into perspective for me.
Being completely open and honest that I was unhappy and unfulfilled was the first and most important step.
The second was to quit my job and start the search for something that provided me enough to live on but also gave me more time to reconnect with people by being present, to make plans and actually keep them, to take the small steps towards being a better friend and daughter, to start taking more time out in nature, to go back to the gym and refocus on my health and wellness, both body and soul, to start painting again, to start writing again.
So I did the above, and in that process I found a position managing a fitness facility — a position with great hours and flexibility, one which gives me the opportunity to pursue all these passions of my heart.
Only with these recent reminiscences did it dawn on me that this is exactly what I had dreamed of doing before my other career sidetracked me. It’s the exact thing that my heart desired before the pursuit of financial prosperity had turned my attentions elsewhere. Now that I’m writing it all out, I find I am exactly where I want to be, taking steps towards becoming the person I was always meant to be.
Credit to life for being so cyclical, I’ve discovered that when something is meant to be, there may be roadblocks and wrong turns, even U-turns, starts and restarts, but when you make a choice to live authentically, to be present in your world and to be the very best version of yourself, you can’t help but end up where you were meant to be all along.
I can only hope that in writing this, somehow I can inspire you to continue to choose to do things that make your heart light, that it doesn’t take an extreme circumstance or changes such as mine to make you see the importance of maintaining your own joy, through whatever means you find it, so that you don’t end up manipulating the very fabric of your beautiful being into something it was never meant to be in the first place.
Be present, Live authentically, and always follow the passions of your heart for those are the things that make you so uniquely yourself.
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Ashley Faith works as a Fitness Franchise Manager and as the Business Manager for a metal artist’s shop. She has been a singer/songwriter and poet for as long as she can remember, only more recently has she been feeling the need to write more, and to say the things that are in her heart about life, love, happiness and finding herself in the midst of losing herself completely, because it took her so completely losing herself in her work, her life and her friendships to really find herself again.
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