Moi by Loc Boyle

Dear J,

Thank you for your lovely letter and for sharing with me your hopes and dreams. I hope you don’t mind me answering this as an open letter but I figure it might be able to help others who are feeling stuck and lacking confidence.

How to make your dream come true and jump from one life to another?? Ahhh the million-dollar question.

Here goes:

I quit my life almost 13 years ago.

Amidst sobbing gulps of dissatisfaction, I found the courage to say ‘no’ to a life that was eroding my hope. Hope of a life full of emotions, excitement, adventure, meaning, and love.

I walked away from the only life I knew, my beloved family and friends and years of unhappiness to go find the right life for me.

I have had the chance to live every emotion invented, I have curled up on the bathroom floor sobbing with fear, screamed at the top of my lungs with joy, flashed danced with happiness, and had the chance to stare life right in the face to find out what is important. And life continues to surprise me.

Moulin Rouge Copyright Carla Coulson

I have been asked a million times how I made it happen. There have been many ingredients, time, energy, passion, persistence, learning, hard work, making mistakes but one of the most important ingredients was ‘believing’ I could do it.

If there is one thing I wish I could give to you (and all my fabulous followers) is the gift to believe in yourself and your dreams. My life change(s) happened because once I was out of mental jail (allowing myself to think I couldn’t go)  I knew just one thing, I wanted to do something that I loved. When I finally walked into a dark room and had the biggest love rush of my life I believed I could become a photographer. I am just going to say that again ‘I believed I could do it.’

 Backstage Moulin Rouge Copyright Carla Coulson

I remember the first day I said I was a photographer. It kind of just slipped out. It felt strange rolling off my tongue for the first time, I was a long way off having my first story published and finishing photography school but that was what I was and wanted to be. Every time someone asked me what I did I said ‘I was a photographer,’ the more I said it the more I believed in my future.

This was the first time in 13 years that I felt proud to tell others about my profession. When I had my own business I did anything to avoid talking about this topic and instead the very first time I said the magic word ‘photographer’ I had the opposite reaction, all of a sudden ‘I was cool’!

 Shay Stafford Lido de Paris Copyright Carla Coulson

I believed I could make it work because I trusted myself. I had a life philosophy of doing things the right way, for the right reasons and I in my old business I would never have let a client down. Now that I had a chance to do what I wanted to do with my life I was never going to let myself down. I trusted myself to do it.

I wanted this new life so badly I learnt a new craft, I made a plan, I made sacrifices, and I have worked every day to make it happen. This has taken blood, sweat, and tears (buckets of them) but it has happened. I put my trust in myself and you should put your trust in yourself.

 Moulin Rouge Copyright Carla Coulson

There hasn’t been a day that has gone by that I haven’t pinched myself and thanked the universe for this new life.

If you feel you are living the wrong life take steps towards a new one. Surround yourself with your future dreams, make an inspiration board that you will look at every day with the photos you love, the direction you want to go in, the place you dream of living, the people you want to eat with, dance, and love and make your future happen.

Backstage Moulin Rouge Copyright Carla Coulson

I continue to believe that all is possible if you make a plan, believe it, implement it and work at it every day, your dreams will come true.

Believe in you, trust yourself and the rest will happen.

“It’s difficult to believe in yourself because the idea of self is an artificial construction. You are, in fact, part of the glorious oneness of the universe. Everything beautiful in the world is within you.” Russell Brand