You Get to Not Get What You Want
Receiving every twist in the path as a gift
When I was 19, my life plan was to get married and become a missionary somewhere else in the world, where I would live a life of serving other people and mothering the motherless. I steeped myself in religion, service, and self-reflection for years to prepare.
But that didn’t totally pan out. I drifted in another direction. And by the time I was 23, I wanted to spend my life being a Spanish teacher and have four to five kids with my then-husband. I spent four years in the classroom learning the ropes. I learned how to teach people difficult concepts, and what worked and didn’t work in education. I learned what truly learning looked like. I learned about parenting, and what building trust with kids meant.
But once I had my first kid, I realized she needed me home with her. So when I was 25, I shifted again. I wanted to run my own stationery business and have it blow up like Anna Rifle’s paper company, with my products in every store across the country, while also casually being the most successful stay at home mom to ever live. I taught myself the ropes of graphic design, marketing, shipping, and business ownership and brought up my own business that same year, all while juggling my young daughter at home. I'd strap her to my chest while I walked to the mailbox to send off orders.
But over time, that fizzled out. And when I was 30, I decided to run a second-hand shop. It started online but eventually I found a real live shop. I wanted it to be the best one in the city, with some real Shop Around the Corner energy like in You’ve Got Mail, again, while effortlessly mothering my two kids. I gave it my best shot, but…it wasn’t everything I had dreamed about, and then I watched it slip out of my hands during covid.
When I was 32, I wanted nothing more than to figure out how to stay married to my husband, even though it was… not exactly going in that direction. I spent years in therapy, learning everything there was to learn about personal transformation and relating to others. I gave everything I had to understand myself, relationships, and how to make them work. But my marriage still ended.
And when it did, I was 35, and I thought it would be so helpful if I could possibly win the lottery, and/or to also magically go back and re-do a lot of decisions that led me right to where I was, a divorced mother of two with very little clue of how to move forward in life. I learned to let go of regret, and get my hands dirty in the right-now.
It’s easy to sum up the past as a deflated pile of dreams (or at least, it’s easy for me.) Looking back at it all, I can give a healthy side eye to some of the aspirations that I had (primarily being a missionary, lollllll.) It can be embarrassing to face past versions of ourselves and what dreams we had and how much we were or were not able to realize them. But with time, the criticism I’ve held for myself has melted because I can see an interesting thread through all of it, one where the bones of my past dreams served to uphold my present. And while I’m not religious anymore, I’ve held onto the idea that everything is happening for us, not to us.
All of the years I spent relating to myself and others and learning to communicate, through therapy, through religion, through being in classrooms as an educator, eventually led me to being a full time coach. Everything I learned in my first two businesses, from graphic design to marketing to administration has come in more than a little handy as I support myself as a single mom. All the flops along the way taught me the resilience and self-trust I needed to have in hand in order to guide other women toward their biggest dreams with the same resilience and self-trust. And funny enough, even my old Spanish degree that’s sat for years served me well, since my bilingual boyfriend highly valued being with someone who is fluent in Spanish.
There’s an Abraham Hicks quote that goes, “There is nothing for you to go back and live over, or fix, or feel regret about now. Every part of your life has unfolded just right. And so - now - knowing all that you know from where you now stand, now what do you want? The answers are now coming to you. Go forth in joy, and get on with it.”
I hold onto this quote daily, not just as a reprieve from my own self-doubt or regret, but as a reminder not to take any of it too seriously. It is a privilege both to get, and not get what we want. It is a gift to flop. Life always has a funny way of weaving all of it right into the most beautiful parts of our story.
Thanks for reading, see you in the next newsletter!
In your corner,
Jolie
p.s. some things to keep you in the know:
+ my new home organizer packet is going to save your sanity and get everyone in the family on top of their shit
+ if you’re looking for a place to start with rewiring your brain, might I suggest my workbook, Better Stories, which gives you the exact teaching and process that took me from being a newly divorced sad, broke, and totally lost lady to a thriving, grounded, content and financially de-stressed lady (discount code for paid subscribers in my last post!)
+ If you’re looking for actionable mentorship that gives you tangible results on things like making change, acting intuitively, and feeling new levels of self-compassion and empowerment, let’s talk. I’m currently accepting applications for February forward for private coaching, and you can read all about that (and what my clients are saying) here. Or if you just want to cut to the chase, you can fill out this form here to book a call with me to talk about it!