welcome to daring to dream a show of hope inspiration and practical advice for living the life of your dreams i'm through the spidey and as a life in transition coach i help people in steps where they are in their lives where they want to be and facilitate the process of taking action to make it happen have you ever dreamed of walking away from your current life and literally starting over well today will be talking with one of my clients who we first met two years ago who did just that she wiped the slate clean leaving a successful career as an i t professional sold her home and hit the road for six months to explore what she wanted to do with her life and where she wanted to live she's now happily settled in a different part of the country and it's creating an exciting new life for herself now that's daring to dream so stay tuned to get all the details of how she did it to inspire you to begin creating a li our guest today is janet corson a daring dreamer who literally started over and created a whole new life for herself we first talked to janet two years ago as she was starting her six month journey to discover where she wanted to live and what she wanted to do with her life she's back after two years to share with us how she did it while km janet thank you so glad you were able to stop by on your trip to the northeast today and and very excited to come back and and hear all the details about your trip in the life that you created for yourself now so why don't we start out by giving our viewers a little review of where you were two years ago when you started this journey i met two years ago in the spring i say i was given the opportunity to start my life over again that's the same thing as saying i got a broken heart and had to recuperate from that and i decided i wanted to consciously heal from that heartache and i had been a lot of time on that and when i was ready i did sell my house and quit my job and put ten thousand pounds of things in storage and packed up my car to go camping across america with my dog the primary goal to find a home and a nice new place for me to start my life again and what was exceptional about that was i had money in the bank i had no debt and i could go anywhere and do anything and had total possibility more recently when with the strife that our economy has it's an exceptional privilege that i had i absolutely but that not only that it takes a lot of courage to pick up and just start over so where did that courage come from to choose to do this well interestingly so many people shared that perspective or response with me about the courage or aren't you fearful and for some reason it didn't feel like i was being courageous i it was more like the next chapter needed to happen and i methodically figured out what choices to make but it was kind of a major battle with fear or muster up that courage sr was more just getting things organized in deciding and i had a lot of planning in place to go but i had no planning for the path and where i was going to end up right which that you know in itself is is a little scary and very exciting there was this time i was camping i started down in florida by myself i had family at the beginning of my trip and i had the aaa map at the picnic table for days i kept looking at it and looking at it where do i go where do i go and finally the marker came and i just drew the picture of where you would and that's the path i took and i was you know different variables that influenced i had a dog in the middle of summer so being aware of that just her well being in the heat the size of town that i wanted to move to whether a small town or a city  degree of revitalization for the type of for the city was important i wanted a city that was revitalizing but that wasn't so well developed that the cost of living was significantly higher  d so i picked a medium sized cities to pick my path fifteen thousand miles wow in six months amazing and tell us to tell some of the highlights of the the six month journey well it was tent camping across america and i'd say one of the highlights is just to realize how delightful the american people really are especially in rural america we have a  hardworking community of people out there it was the election year and so there was a lot about sentiment happening a lot of american ism discussions and that must've been fascinating to experience it was interesting especially in the south at the end when i finally got settled in mississippi within the first couple weeks the first debate with that oxford mississippi morocco it all came to within sixty miles of where i ended up wow but the highlights about on the trip you know learning how to camp by yourself having all your things and possessions in a cubic space with a camping that spread all their things in tents and bicycles and camp stoves all over and when you're on the move you have to keep very consolidated i have a small footprint and watch the radar on the internet and i did have internet while i was traveling and that helped weather a big factor when you're on the road like rye rye so tell us some of the cities that you did visit in considered before you found by well i went down to florida across the florida panhandle doubleback alabama georgia south carolina north carolina back across tennessee down tennessee louisiana texas up texas oklahoma kansas missouri back across kansas colorado wyoming nevada down california which is where i was raised you couldn't go further west in california and i had to make a choice what was my favorite and what happened when i didn't know where i was going in florida i had a recollection of seeing a television show on the food network about a movie star who had a restaurant in this town and i decided i was going to have a hot bath and a fancy dinner because i was single stove  googled it and there it was ninety miles south of memphis clarksdale mississippi it's morgan freeman is the actor who has a restaurant there and i went and had my fancy dinner and  bath and just self mitten with the little town wow it's the so i continued on my way and when i went i was in california i really didn't have any place that jumped out at me but that pairing of memphis and clarksdale memphis being a city that had historical heritage were all wrong and roll music and clarksdale i had been watching on the internet that summer and they had invested in a revitalization effort there ninety miles south of clarksdale they're the home of blues music gospel music there's a native american heritage civil war heritage it's known as the golden belt buckle of the cotton so there was a lot about the potential terrorism in that town and my interest in entrepreneur is that i felt you know there might be possibility there i also felt like i could find a place to temporary live within eighty five pound dog and i pulled into town on saturday at noon and i talked to teo at the rock n roll museum who got me to roger who got me to bubba who was at an ole miss football game with his daughter or miss football games or you know like a be you football game and i ended up at the shack up in i rented a room for the first time shack up in is a on a cotton plantation they preserve some of the old sharecropper shacks and made them into hotel rooms cottages and i became a hotel clerk at the shack up in so all of this just seemingly fell into place it did but i spent a lot of time working on my choices and working on what i wanted and i had a very conscious goal of working through lists of what was important to me and i can recall times of being at the campsite in my work was to read my papers and read my scribble notes that i have of my personal interests in consolidating those where i into what makes my ideal town you know what kind of groceries or diet or food or i housing costs or housing styles what i want to have for myself and you know i can dig up that list and do a comparison of where i ended up and i'm you know  seventy percent match on where i ended up that's amazing using so so the six month journey wasn't just you know kind of meandering around the country enjoying yourself it really was a specific intention of figuring out what do i want where do i want to live and in what's going to be the best place for living i was aware of the privilege i had of having ultimate choice in so often especially coming out of such a world class city of boston where people are just buzzing moving getting to work sitting in traffic five lanes wide i knew i could choose and take the time to choose did what kind of hobbies do you like what you want to spend your time doing do you want to be in corporate or do you want to be in small business you want to be in small towns or big cities where you want to make the big bucks or do you want to just  enjoy kind of a hobby entrepreneurial type thing and right and make that choice of entrepreneurs and versus corporate salary and you know there are some ironies of where i ended and i ended up with a corporate job in a small town fascinating area lucky in a village to do that yeah definitely so you first went clarksdale and then carried on your journey to california and so how much time did went by before you actually decided clarksdale was where i'm going to end up well interestingly on my way back i experienced emotional drain and many people ask me where you ever lonely out there it was me and my dog in campsites across america and i wasn't lonely i was content i had my lifestyle i had my game plan i had practical timelines on my destination i never went more than four hundred miles a day and sometimes i was in a place three days ten days over ny and moving on a varied all along the way and  decided that i would go to clarksdale because really nothing else jumped out and really i went there to test it and see you know why not i felt like when i woke up in florida and said i'm going to go have that fancy dinner that that was a path that i shouldn't ignore and when i was in california i felt like that was the only thing that was really strong and interesting to me and i was i loved the jam in the rough that clarksdale was a love that memphis was a world class city with historical reputation yet not like austin texas where austin texas got a little more time to get in memphis so tell us about your life now what kind of life have you created in the last two years well as simple life actually my commute is one point three miles down a tree lined street in little downtown clarksdale my corporate office is above the general store and but i have a corporate position i'm the chief operations officer for an investment management company it's an amazing it is amazing and my first project was to implement accounting software which for me was great fun probably nobody in that town would have been appropriately fit for that job and i got that opportunity and how did that come this amazing job at raymond which is the talian restaurant that's been there for forty years and there was a christmas party and i just met  woman who owned runs this management company and i she asked me what i did and it was just an amazing fit wow incredible so it wasn't like you were pounding the pavement looking for jobs and had your resume out there and it just it came to it did but to be fair the community of clarksdale was so small and the immigrant community  people like me who have come and found the charm of the town is you know maybe fifty people and so people talk and share and when there's people who have resources there's people who need help and i did a couple odd jobs and then it worked out but i'd say i kept the train moving forward you and i started working together before i got to  talking about the loneliness and where it kind of got to a place in california that i just needed help kind of getting back on track and writing my six months it was i was tired and i needed and i still had the mystery i had gotten as far west as i possibly could and i didn't have an answer and so that's why i chose clarksdale memphis as the starting place i started working with you and just narrowing and fine tuning what my desire and intentions would be and there was some strong theme that are still here there today that are have been simmering in the background and continue to evolve but still have not happened and other situations like the corporate job that i have that i could have never predicted i would ever achieve that small town and it's been given to me and  o i just have a very unusual i had bought my house before i got in that job so i had made that commitment to the community and to say there and i was invested in the face  f the right writing would come and worst case ninety miles and you're in a city size that potential for a career so i didn't feel scared and i felt like in our work together what made such a difference was your ability to really set intention and get clear about what you wanted not in a specific way of saying i want to be the c e o over a company but just really be clear about the type of environment you wanted the type of things you wanted to be doing and then continuing to believe that it was possible yeah a couple things one big lesson especially after being a single income provider in my past was there's only me i need to take care of right and you know with family and social community oftentimes we extend a responsibility to take caring taking care of others that fundamentally is socially created it there's two aspects of it one is deciding where you want to go and kind of finding that balance of drive and letting things land in your path  i think i really worked hard on that skill i applied a lot of consciousness to awareness to watch things land in my path and then to act on them and run with them and it has proven greatly rewarded and i don't it's hard to explain sometimes i describe it as an in a vandal ism because i'm such a strong believer in the power of intention i could tell a story after story of little funny examples of how you know gosh i wish something and then it solves itself in front of me quite effortlessly and it's a really nice gift i like to call it and you know bread crumbs from the universe and literally when we set an intention the steps will fall on our path and if we're paying attention which you were and we pick up that bread crumb and take it even if it doesn't lead us where we think it might it's still moving forward towards what you want to create and you became a master at that i did and then interestingly there's other things that i haven't done at all so ever been in my new home two years and i haven't sent out the note to tell everyone where i landed and i just in my readiness i'm not ready to deliver that grand message so many people asked are you going to blog or are you going to be communicative and the truth is i have not been blogging or because i felt that would make the trip for them and not for me me and i really have kept it to myself i've made a huge group of friends in clarksdale and expanded that community but haven't pulled my past community into my new community yet and i don't feel short on that i feel like the day hasn't come the power of intention hasn't set it up for me yet and we'll see where that go and i really i admire you for honoring your needs in that you know of making that decision that this is about me it's not about me sharing information with other people and it could have easily become that you know in a in a journey like this because people love you know we're all voyeurs we love like watching someone else do it and it's such a trend now with the social media with reality shows exactly in the internet and yeah so if you were to give advice to someone who may be at a point where you were two and a half years ago feeling like there's got to be more that i need to change what did vice would you offer them well i think the first piece is invest in a healthy closure i vowed not to be a forty something better divorcee and i think i've been fairly successful at that you know that part of me is a big chapter of my life i was married seventeen years but i don't have hate or anger that lingers on two years three years actually been five years now so i spent a good two two and a half years on the healing of my spirit before i had the clean slate to go and you know with i know how unusual my situation was to have such a clear slate and so somehow in people's busy world if they're able to kind of bring the pain part to closure in order to have a stage for the next chapter would be a big that's because and till you deal with that and and let go of any pain or anger you really really can block you from moving forward so that was that was very  and you be able to do what you've done i think and then being truthful to yourself about your interest it's very easy to be influenced by the media by social norms by social trends  family by family and it takes time and effort and solitude to identify what really is your true interest i and things might get exposed that you don't even know i didn't know or my interest i didn't know i like blues music and blues music in clarksville is the entire world i mean  turner sam cooke muddy waters are from this town of large scale and legacies were literally born there and so it has become a hobby to listen to music and then be able to drive up the street to this and see legacy or go down south to new orleans you just have this history and culture that i an amazing influence and are really getting in touch with with what interesting  to me your passion yeah and the small business has been a really fun thing for me and that's where i found in clarksdale is my way of being of service to the communit many people can give back to clarksdale it's a low income the delta in mississippi is very low income and so there's always opportunity to get back and  mentoring on small business and extending that experience from my corporate world into an entrepreneurial world is where my fun will be and i'm just now getting to a place where that is possible and i have the time for it and then you are coming in to where i can do that work right so it sounds like that's maybe your next tree it is the next step  story and how your life has unfolded so beautifully i'm i'm really proud of you and i'm honored to be a part of your journey and look forward to hearing about all the amazing make in your life if you have a dream for your life that you haven't realized what are you waiting for whatever may be holding you back i want to challenge you to take one simple step today take a moment to write down a dream have for your life the simple act of writing it down will bring it to life in your mind each day spend at least five to ten minutes adding to what you've already written to further clarify the dream and begin listing small steps could take to move forward on your dream if you'd like more information on steps you can take to dare to drain check out my website at student the spidey dot com thanks for joining us and i'll see you next time on daring to dream