Aaah, grow up already.

It was my 35th birthday yesterday.

Thirty-five.

Twelve years too old and five years too young to say that age ‘is just a number.’

And here’s my birthday revelation: I’ve been waiting to get to an age where people don’t think I’m too young to do what I’m doing (whatever that happens to be).

And I realised that it’s time I stopped waiting.

As, well, thirty-five is pretty adult, I reckon.

I was telling my coach last week that I didn’t have any background in helping people to be calm and confident in crisis and conflict. You know, something that would sound good on a bio.

She very gently beat me up about that.

‘How about the past seven years of getting people to love public speaking?’ she asked. ‘Any parallels there? Stressful situations, being conscious and awake? At all?’

And yesterday after making morning tea but before opening my cards, I started writing a chronology of my life.

I spotted some highlights.

You know, reading Shakti Gawain at the age of seven.

Reading How To Talk So Kids Will Listen… age 12 (and leaving a note to my parents saying ‘Maybe you should read this.’  Subtle.)

Doing affirmations (admittedly not in the healthiest of ways) from age 12 and for years. (Not any more, but, sheesh, I was up in the middle of the night, in bed, writing and writing and writing…)

Sending myself on a rebirthing camp age 16. (Naked fire-purification, sweat lodge, shaved head and all. My poor mother.)

Seeing my mother through her divorce.

Training as a holistic aromatherapist.

Working as a travelling trainer, living on my own in tiny towns for a month at a time, age 20.

Sitting and talking with mothers whose children have just died.

Four years tailing the two main NLP guys in London and asking days of questions. (I’m not an NLPer now, but hombre it taught me to see and hear.)

Working as a training manager in the City and single-handedly learning and teaching every soft-skills topic on the planet.

Running my own (successful) business for seven years now, four-and-a-bit of which has been 8,000 miles away from my home town.

Creating a presentation skills masterclass that has mythical status inside the largest bank in the world. It really does.

Being fully trained over a period of two-and-a-half years to help people have life-changing realisations as I cleanse and consecrate the energy in their home. (I was a registered Space Clearing Practitioner with Karen Kingston for a while, there.)

Hauling my ass through years of painful sobering up around money and procrastination. I’m pretty good now, thanks for asking.

Meditating most mornings for seven years.

Being in an astonishingly happy relationship for almost eleven years and counting.

And thirty-five years of being gentle and fascinated.

So, in short, enough waiting already.

Enough invisibility.

Enough excuses.

Time I grew up. In a good way, of course.

Who’s with me?

Smiles.

Waggles eyebrows.

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