by Amy Slattery
Have you seen the movie Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow and that lovable Scottish actor John Hannah (yes I have a slight crush...I think it's the accent)?
I love the idea of the movie that any choice, decision for any situation (within or out of your control) that may seem very insignificant at the time of making it, can lead to a completely different turn of events in our lives. *Spoiler alert - in the movie the character Helen runs for her train, in one scenario the movie continues as if she had missed her train, watching the sliding doors close and the other, her life in which she had just made the train in time, beating the sliding doors and making it on the train.
The chain of events then plays out in both situations. This gives a bit more of an ‘out of my control’ concept slightly, but it did get me thinking, what decisions or choices have I made that led me in the direction to be here at this point today?
It was actually over the Christmas holidays, surrounded by all the festive cheer, spending time with family & friends and feeling genuine gratitude for the life that I live. That I was reminded of this movie… I had one of those ‘what if’ thoughts.
“What if I’d made the decision to live overseas again”, “What if I didn’t leave that job”, “What if I didn’t say yes to this or be open to that”…then I wouldn’t be right here, right now having the best time of my life!
WHAT IF!
The words WHAT and IF are two pretty innocent words, not much happening when they are by themselves… but then we humans decide to put them together and it can start a whole chain of events (but that’s another blog for another time).
At the time, I was more reflective of how I'd gotten to this point in my life, what decisions brought me here? I have a wonderful loving husband, great family, and friends, my own business with my best friend and a genuinely pretty amazing life! I see opportunities everywhere. But what got me here?
So I thought I would share my 7 (yes it has to be 7) Sliding Doors moments, of course, there have been plenty more but these are the ‘bigger’ ones in my life.
7 Sliding Doors Moments
1. Trying out for the Primary School Basketball Team – now this was many, many, many moons ago, however, I remember it because I was in primary school at the time when my year 6 teacher said I should try out for the
town basketball team, all the other schools had people trying out.
Now I had NEVER played basketball at the time but thought (reluctantly) ‘ok if you think I should’ (I was probably more scared of disappointing the teacher if I said no haha). So I tried out and amazing I got in! It was one of those moments that's stuck with me as really did learn to appreciate the faith that others can have in you, it completely pushed me out of my comfort zone (especially at an age where the worry of what the other kids think and fitting in is very high). But it was great fun, I made new friends and going away on a sporting trip is always good!
2. Saying no to a 'traditional' University course - you go to school, you get good grades, so you can get into University, so you can get a good job, then settle down, then start a family and live happily ever after right? Not that there is anything wrong with that at all...it's the path I thought I would take, but then I changed my mind (eeek)!
I decided to go to hospitality school/college it was presented at an info session and that was it! I was in (you would study on campus for 6 months – the college was run as if it was a hotel and then the next 6 months would be on placement… and it could be anywhere in the world, wherever you could get in!) This sounded amazing to me! So after a little nudging of my parents, I was able to attend. I got to study and live 3 other cities while getting my qualifications, at the end I was offered a working visa in the USA and jumped straight on a plane for Chicago! Definitely a small town girl in a big city there! I remember landing the same night of their first heavy snow fall…coming from Katherine, NT I still remember the tears thinking what have I done...and OMG it is freezing!!!
3. Taking on a role at a leadership company – after coming back from Chicago (September 11th happened while I was there = no visa extensions so I was homeward bound) I found myself working at a beautiful hotel in Adelaide. I realised however that the way I was going to continue to grow and move up would be to move out! So I started looking! I was offered a job at a leadership training company, organizing and managing their events. This was by far my biggest learning curve in life! I learnt so much about myself in the 5+ years at that organisation and I loved working there. When you get the opportunity to listen and learn from some of the most amazing presenters in the country you can't help but take it on board and grow yourself, I was definitely stretched and given amazing opportunities (again the faith they had in me...unbelievable)!
4. Getting a Life – probably the biggest sliding door moment of my life, my 7-year relationship ended around the same time by Dad fell sick with cancer, and then suddenly passed away within a matter of months (as I write this it is just after the anniversary of his passing). This led to a spiral of avoidance! I did not deal well with what happened, I was working ridiculous hours during the week and then partying ridiculous hours on the weekend, I was completely running myself into the ground!
The turning point was when the company I worked for held a leadership conference in Adelaide – one of the speakers was
Martyn Newman and he spoke and shared a story about
Snow White Syndrome (the concept that for some of us we are lying on a slab waiting for Prince Charming to rescue us). Where Jodie (my now business partner) had one of her famous aha moments! We need to get off the slab! The way we did this was through starting a goals club, you can read more about that here
www.the7effect.com
The simple choice to move on from where I was lead to the biggest changes in my life to this point, I met Jodie, I worked for a wonderful family business, I grew personally and professionally more than I ever had, the goals club stretched me and kept me accountable to myself and others every month, every year and I achieved so may amazing things through it.
5. Moving On – sometimes you need to make space for amazing things to happen! That happened to me in 2013, the goals club that we had created came to an end and the possibility of making it a business came into play! I remember Jodie messaging one day to catch up for dinner one night as she wanted to chat with me about something (Jodie had never done that before, so I thought it must be about getting
The 7 Effect as a business off the ground). I might have ruined Jodie’s well thought out speech by pretty much jumping in with a “yep I’m in” before we’d even ordered! To be honest, I probably didn’t really know what I was getting myself into at the time, but I knew saying yes was the only option for me! So the planning commenced.
I was still working at the leadership company, but it had started to become harder for me to align my values to what I was doing…so this was one of my harder moments… I resigned! It was one of the hardest decisions I'd had to make, there was a sense of loyalty, a family culture, a reasonable amount of guilt…all of those emotions (the ones that are below the line and don't really serve us...but I still had them)!
I think it was about 2 weeks into ‘not working’ that I started to panic (what was I going to do! I needed some income until we were ready to get this business off the ground…I had money saved but didn’t really want to eat into that). So I got the word out that I was looking and ended up talking to an event company, however then came the guilt! I knew I wasn’t planning on working for them long term, I would be working on OUR business on the side until that was ready to move into. So after some great advice from, Jodie who quite simply said: “tell them your plans, what you can offer and what you will do, and see what happens”…WHAT?? Tell them that I could work for 6 months, maybe more... as I am really working on starting my own business!
Well, would you believe it…it worked! That was just what they needed to get through a crazy busy business time…BINGO!! Huge life lesson learnt there...sometimes you can ask for what you want!
6. The 7 Effect – so in May 2014 we launched full time with
The 7 Effect, learning every day how to run this business, grow it and love the life that we live! It is unbelievable that we are coming up to 2 years. I know there were plenty of skeptics when we started – some well-meaning comments “wow that’s brave starting a business in this climate”, “so your just going to start full time in it”, “do you think it’s the right time”?
Well, I am glad I didn’t dwell on those What if’s! We survived the dreaded 1-year milestone of starting a new small business and we have huge plans for the future!
7. Saying Yes – There are so many moments, choices, opportunities and offers that have come my way over the past 30+ years, this blog post could be 10 pages long! However, the general ‘theme’ is that most of the time I just said
YES!
This yes would more often than not push me right outside my comfort zone! Which my most recent sliding door has done...we come across so many people we work with who live in that infinity loop of time and money (not having enough of each or sacrificing one for the other), so when Jodie came to me after meeting one of our now clients with the opportunity to be
independent distributors in a new business I just said yes! It’s trying something different, it's out of my comfort zone, it's a new challenge, constant self-development and self-reflection but the huge opportunity is well worth it, using my leadership and coaching skills to develop a team which is very exciting and I am constantly learning something new!
So overall I have had 100’s of sliding door moments in my life (as we all do) and they have all taken me on different path's and lead me to where I am today, sometimes it's good to reflect on how you got to where you are, what you would do again, what you will say yes (or no) too, what you have learnt and come at it all from a place of gratitude. If you are not where you want to be right now what doors can you open (or close) to get there?
Start by thinking about what it is you want to be doing, where do you want to be and what are some of the things you want to get out of this life…and let's have a look at how to get there!
Remember, Live life by design…not by default
