Moving Across the Street: A Leap of Faith That Changed My Life
Sometimes, a simple shift in perception changes everything. Other times, we need an ending, a beginning, or a bold change to create an incremental or quantum shift. For me, a leap of faith to move across the street dramatically changed my life.
What is a Leap of Faith? (And why you might consider taking one)
You’re likely familiar with the term “leap of faith” and have sprung into action without all the details because “it just felt right.” Or perhaps in the process of exploring options, your imagination took hold of something and suddenly you found yourself following your intuition in a new direction towards the unknown. The truth is a leap of faith can be exciting. But it also can be uncomfortable and disorienting. So, why would you consider taking one?
Faith on its own is “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” Perhaps this includes a belief that something greater than ourselves is orchestrating our lives. Perhaps it is built on self-love, personal power or confidence. Maybe it flows naturally through having a support system that has emboldened us to believe in ourselves and our agency to create the life we desire.
It does not mean we sit back and do nothing. Action is required. Yet, ironically in my experience when I practice faith, I find less action is required. It’s as if a shortcut is illuminated in the form of synchronicity pointing to a higher path forward, requiring less effort. When I lean into faith and follow the Divine breadcrumbs that are sprinkled in front of me, I also find that my power and blessings increase. When I’m afraid, do not feel safe or lose my way, one of the first things I pray for is faith. Even when I don’t find my faith, doorways have opened despite myself. It’s as if the greater beyond and those watching over me know how challenging life can be on this earth plane and help me anyway. They believe in me even when I don’t believe in myself.
“As you have faith, so shall your power and blessings be.”
A leap of faith is defined similarly, yet in more practical terms. It is “a belief or trust in something intangible or incapable of being proved”. It is something you do even though it involves a risk, hoping that it will have a good result. AI describes it as “a step taken to change course and break free from current circumstances.” Taking it one step further and even more concrete, a calculated leap of faith considers the risks and potential benefits. Risks include sacrifices, such as money, security, or family, and planning for contingencies. Possible benefits vary but are central to the equation.
Perhaps the law of attraction plays a role. Regardless, becoming aware of how your thoughts, feelings and energy contribute to positive or negative experiences is important. It can help you envision your desires more easily and embody the knowing energy that attracts it to you and gives you the confidence to move towards it.
For some with an entrepreneurial spirit, you may jump when the feeling is right. For others, you may be patient, disciplined, gathering facts, weighing it with your intuition and following the signs about when to take action. You may also avoid them all together and choose to remain in your comfort zone.
Cultivating Faith and Resilience: How to Take Inspired Action and Elevate Your Life
No approach is right or wrong. But, to open to possibility and opportunities to better ourselves and our lives, at times a leap of some kind is needed. Cultivating faith, a support structure and some skill sets will build a foundation for you to make it easier to take inspired action towards what’s calling you. It will also buoy you back up should you fall and help you gather back the pieces of yourself and become stronger and more resilient.
Sadly, systemic injustices exist and create obstacles, even more so for nonwhite bodied people. This can make it harder to follow one’s heart into undiscovered terrain. Yet, I’ve also witnessed those who, despite the additional effort required, seem to be strengthened somehow by the obstacles they face. Their faith and resolve to do it anyway is amplified, including their success.
In any case, even with the barriers to overcome, courage it takes, and potential for missteps along the way, following our gut and taking a leap of faith can elevate our lives. It also opens us further to the mystery of synchronicity and unexpected doorways of opportunity that can create a magical momentum forward.
A Personal Leap of Faith: How Balancing Preparedness, Intuition and Surrender Transformed My Life
Over the years I have soared many times into the unknown. I have tended to take action when my intuition guided me towards something, awed by the synchronistic signs, trusting I would have what I needed on the other side. After some successes, literal and metaphoric falls, I’ve learned that taking a leap of faith requires a delicate balance of preparedness, trust and surrender to the unknown. Here’s what that looks like for me now:
Steps to Balance Preparedness and Faith
Listening to my intuition
Planning ahead in moderation
Practicing patience and faith
Praying for guidance about timing and letting go
Taking baby steps forward
Taking note of the quantum or baby steps of progress once I’ve leapt
Rewinding back in time, my move across the street was also some combination of the above. It was also a pivotal decision affecting me to this day.
Drawing upon Tenacity, Intuition and Faith to Overcome Obstacles
I’ll start with some context for this earlier part of my story. I had been living in transition for 9 years in what was like a forced hibernation without rest. My life was on hold. My self-expression as an artist had come to a crashing halt. What was most important to me had been stripped away. I did not have a support system. I had chronic health issues. I was depressed and had anxiety. This was after breaking both my arms and navigating the complexities of foreclosure and bankruptcy as a first time homebuyer due to the 2008 economic crisis. This was on top of earlier traumas that had not yet been metabolised. Despite losing my home, my income, my voice and my credit, I was also a tenacious one incrementally rebuilding my life from the ground up.
For the first 5 or so years of displacement, I lived and worked part time in a new acquaintance’s basement behind a sheer red curtain.This was alongside boxes of my belongings. (I am now life-long soul friends with her and her family) It was nicknamed the “Zen Den.” It was resplendent with frequent very dead, very smelly mice and a dog named Eddie that would pee on the curtain and draw blood on my ankles and fingers as he gnarled a protective growl. He followed my every move with the girls I was caring for. The family had two adult twin girls with Rett Syndrome that required 24-hour care. As part of my resurrection, I learned how to care for them and fell in love with them. I worked 12-hour days Friday - Monday initially earning $13-14 / hour. The rest of the week I was renting a third floor bedroom in someone’s home where I worked nonstop to try and rebuild the training/photography business that I had founded in 2000.
By 2013 or so, I graduated to a one-bedroom apartment in Saint Paul. It was a great 3rd floor apartment with a lot of light and a bird’s eye view of the neighborhood. However, my office was in my bedroom. My studio was in my living room. My life was still in storage. I continued living paycheck to paycheck without credit. It was here that I started to unravel deeply ingrained messaging of unworthiness and that being an artist was not a valid direction to pursue. Albeit proud of the clients I landed, I went back and forth between having short-term training gigs where I had income and no time to create, to living off my savings from the gig back down to nothing but having time to create. In the end it was all isolating, exhausting and stressful. I was depressed, had anxiety and still trying to move forward. Even so, as I and the needs of my life and business grew, I was outgrowing it.
Although my pocketbook said absolutely not, I began to dream of a more conducive space to live and work. I started exploring live/work spaces that had less than 4 flights of stairs to walk up and down multiple times with groceries, laundry and equipment. I imagined further it would not only be functional, it would have a plot of grass to sit outside and be light-filled to grow my financial and humanitarian wings to a higher ground. My current computer, car, camera and wardrobe were nearly obsolete. I did not have the video gear to launch the new direction I was dreaming into.
I discovered I could not afford to make a move. Nor did I have the money to buy the equipment I needed or someone to fall back on to help me. Getting a loan or charging a credit card was not an option. Yet, I had a deep knowing that I was meant to move forward and not be stuck in place. It had already been so many years living at poverty level with my life in storage. My faith had been tested to its edges, my body and spirit wearied. Yet even in the discomfort of my life I hoped one day that my suffering would somehow serve others, once I got my feet on the ground.
I beseeched God and practiced letting go and trusting it was possible to have what I needed financially to live, heal, be who I am. I wanted to feel less alone and become who I was meant to be. I thought to myself, it must be possible, otherwise why would I still be here. Every time when I was about to give up, I’d have an encouraging dream or vision, or I’d notice a signpost that gave me hope to keep going. I kept discovering strengths I didn’t know I had.
A Door Opens: Choosing Faith Over Fear
I started having dreams where I would be moving into a magical space versus trying to find my way out of a shopping mall (a recurrent dream where I was basically lost in a creepy maze) This sparked my faith and imagination during my waking hours. One day, my neighbor Dawn with whom I’d built a kindly, trustworthy relationship, asked me if I was looking for a bigger place. She and her husband Gary had just bought the duplex across the street and liked the idea of having an artist, me, someone they could trust in their new rental property. I had been watching them remodel the place. I confess to daydreaming a bit about whether it could be mine, but didn’t really think that was realistically possible.
I was right, the monthly payment was well beyond my means. Saying yes would mean paying rent for my current and new place for two months. My part time caregiving job had ended, so it would also require borrowing money from acquaintances, having clients pay in advance and not knowing month by month if I would have enough to cover my increased rent and expenses. At the same time, I would have a space where I could potentially generate more income using my front room as a studio for client and personal projects. I would also have an extra bedroom I could set up for Airbnb or short-term rental.
From a practical lens of my current reality, it was not a realistic choice to make, but for the future I was imagining, and the possibilities this move across the street could provide, I knew it was right for me. I chose faith, followed the signs, took a deep breath and said yes.
From Anxiety to Alignment: Finding the Boost I Needed
Anxiety was my companion as I ramped up my conviction and efforts to grow a client base and have air bnb guests. It was working. But by month 6, I still only had what I needed to live and nothing more. In order to invest in the equipment I needed and cover my expenses without it continuing to be at the expense of myself, I somehow needed a bigger boost of income. I beseeched God again to help me create a way.
A past colleague suggested I send my resume to some consulting firms that she had worked with in the past. I didn’t really want to do another consulting gig, but it was the only way I could imagine. I contacted several firms, but they did not have any projects that fit my skill set. One day however, I got a call from a very stunned recruiter who described a gig that was custom made for me. Normally they would not have even accepted the client because it was not in their area of expertise, but he remembered me.
I knew it was mine. I didn’t get the offer at first. But, I still knew it was mine. Two months after the interview I checked back with the hiring manager at the exact moment when he was about to call me and offer me the contract. The young woman with a lower salary requirement they had hired had quit and the gig was mine. It was even better because she had done some initial groundwork to make it easier for me. I got a full-time corporate client pioneering and becoming a one-woman video production division. Just before the pandemic it became a 32 hour per week job with benefits. This sweetened the deal and finally gave me a little more space and time to work on my personal creative projects, tend my health, my trauma, and care for my mother at the end of her life.
Comfort, Growth, and the Call to Evolve
So, here I am today across the street in the live/work space I imagined, with the boost of income I needed and the tools to live into my vision. Yet, my vantage point is now looking back at the life I’ve lived, having been here now for several years. I originally wrote this article shortly after moving. However, I am now interweaving my past words with my present ones. Ironically, I find myself at a similar threshold 8 years later, beginning to outgrow the life, work and space I’m in.
Once again, I am listening to promptings calling me forward into the next iteration of me and what’s next. Looking back, I find comfort seeing how this past leap absolutely transformed my life in good and hard ways as the excitement and discomfort of the unknown tugs at me to do it again.
Materially speaking from my original imaginings, I have done many photo / video shoots, hosted gatherings, created art, napped in sunbeams, taken hot baths, played with kitties, meditated, danced, lunched on sunny front steps. I have built a pace of grace work from home life as a single woman with cats. I went from hovering at or slightly above poverty level for many years following a vision to having a steady paycheck and being debt and credit free, saving for retirement following a vision.
I have tasted the bitter reality of not having what I need and the sweetness of having all that I need and more. Both my arms work mostly great. I am continuing to heal and unravel limiting beliefs and patterns from the life and trauma I have lived. I have found appreciation of having but a glimpse into what it must be like to live impoverished with trauma nonstop without a better future in sight. I acknowledge the privilege I have and the resilience I’ve gained through the challenges that came close to crushing me and my spirit.
Listening, Healing, and Building
This beautiful light filled space has been a sanctuary to my being and allowed me to regenerate, calm my nervous system and start to feel safe in the world. I am continuing to learn, heal and grow. No longer in survival mode (although my body still sometimes thinks I am), it has also given me the space to listen more with great attentiveness to my heart. I have cultivated friendships and the beginnings of community. Little by little, I feel less alone. I have a deepened relationship with myself, my Creator and my creativity, an unexpected bounty of walking through the fire.
At this crossroads, this has meant disciplining my time these past several years to incrementally build what is becoming Fire to Gold: An Alchemy of Women’s Stories. On behalf of Fire to Gold, my heart is calling me now to another configuration of my life / work / space / finances where I have what I need for my material needs and to birth her. For now, little by little in between my job, saving as much as I can towards retirement, living my daily life, and navigating a volatile presidential cycle which is simultaneously creating devastation on a global scale and being a catalyst for long overdue evolution forward. I am creating this beautiful body of work full of humanity, developing the infrastructure, and imagining into the network and resources to launch Fire to Gold. I am deepening my faith, courage, safety and strength to do it. I am remembering the leap of faith I took across the street and into the corporate contract that brought me to this place and space to ready myself to do it again.
Questions to Consider for Taking an Intentional Leap of Faith
What leaps of faith have you taken? Is there one calling you now to change course and break free of your current circumstances? Perhaps you are comfortable just leaping. If not, here are some questions to consider to do so more intentionally:
What is your heart calling you towards?
How might you call upon something greater than yourself? What does that mean to you?
What are the risks of following your heart?
What are the potential benefits?
What kind of risk taker are you? What can you learn about taking risks to grow this in yourself? What is your comfort level with discomfort? How can you expand that?
What sacrifices might you need to make? (such as money, security, family or planning for contingencies)
What knowledge/skills/qualities do you need to cultivate? (faith, intuition, self-reflection, self-care, confidence)
What kind of support system do you have? What can you do to cultivate one if you do not have one?
What obstacles do you need to overcome?
How can you take care of yourself along the way?
Taking a leap of faith is an act of courage. It requires faith. It requires listening within and following the signs without. It requires taking care of yourself. It requires action, discipline, patience and fortitude. It can change your life.
