I run 5k three times a week on my thredmill. To be more specific, I run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. This morning was no exception. I’m not training for anything specific and I never run much more than 5k. The role of fitness is to keep myself energized so I’d be happy and balanced wife and mother, and that I’d have energy for my business ambitions. I only have to remind myself how important my fitness is for my life goals and I never miss any appointments with my thredmill.

To really get my juices going my playlist usually includes some power music such as Nightwish and AC/DC. I was approaching 4k this morning with ‘It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll’ playing. This made me think of how many years have has passed since I started actively changing my life.

The turning point came on a very intensive leadership training course I attended in the end of April 2004 where I first heard of ‘The Controller’, an invisible voice in one’s head that judges and critizises everything we do. It has been carefully constructed by our family and friends and by the society over the years. You know it, it’s the voice that tells you that you are not good enough. That little voice that tells you that someone else has the secret sauce and you will have to live without it. That day I decided to free myself from that voice! Even if it would take me the rest of my life I was going to kill ‘The Controller’ and find the sauce!

I have never taken the ‘safe’ path in my life and I have always been happy to rebel and challenge the conventions. Yet, I have not been able to completely shake that voice until this spring when we founded DrivenWoman. Imagine hiring a contract killer, surely he’d get the job done in a shorter time than 9 years later!! But it doesn’t matter, only thing that matters now is that ‘The Controller’ is finally dead.

I would have never got here unless I started taking steps – big and small – to remove that lid that was constraining my energy and freedom. And most importantly I started immediately! Not maybe tomorrow, but now. When I got home from that off-site I packed my bags and moved out. I was married to A Controller. (I loved him dearly and he is a wonderful man but he thought he knew the best.)

Many radical life-changing decisions have followed, the common theme for all have been to abandon the ‘safe’ and move towards the unknown, outside of my comfort zone.

It is a bloody long way to the top, or where ever you are going. You can do what ever you want with your life, it’s just going to take time. So it’s best to start changing it today and not spend another day procrastinating. Not a single moment.

Don’t wait that someone will bring you that secret sauce. The sauce is waiting for you, all you have to do is to start walking towards it.

ps. At DrivenWoman we are not too keen on quotes, other that those of our own, but here’s one from Eckhart Tolle, the author of ‘The Power of Now’ that fits the bill: “Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.”

~ Miisa