The Fading Fizz of a Million-Dollar Dream
The Silent Mutiny
Four years ago, I started to feel that spark in my life dim bit by bit. I often talk about the Sparkling Water analogy. If you leave a glass of sparkling water on your kitchen counter overnight, it will lose all its fizz the next morning. Not only that, but it is also now slightly warm and tastes disgusting.
Some people also describe this feeling as eating a stale slice of pizza. But for me, the sparkling water analogy fits. So that's when I started feeling it. Like every morning, my glass of sparkling water had less and less fizz.
I remember I was at the Four Seasons in Maryland for a VIP Day with my Business Coach. The suite she had put me in was incredible. I spent two days and one night feeling luxurious AF, and for a moment, I forgot about that nagging feeling in my gut. We planned the next year for my business. The goal was to bring a million dollars in sales. A million dollars sounded appealing. And if you are sitting in a Four Seasons Suite drinking champagne and eating strawberries dipped in the finest dark chocolate along with someone who 100% believes that you could indeed bring a million dollars in sales, it starts to feel believable to you as well.
On that day, my business coach asked me a question I wasn’t expecting. Something along the lines of: what would you do if you had no time, money, or resource constraints?
I blurted out, I’ll write a book.
I wasn’t completely shocked by this admission. I had been wanting to write a book my whole life. But something about it had felt different. I always knew I would write a book someday. At that point in my career, it would have made sense to write a book on business or my niche or the specific framework I used with my clients.
But at that moment, when I answered her question, and she wrote it with a black marker on the big white flip chart that was covering the walls of our Four Seasons Suite, I felt a sudden disconnect. Like I was lying to myself. It felt like the chords responsible for this thought and my logical brain had suddenly experienced a short circuit. Of course, at that time, I had no idea of knowing that yes I wanted to write a book, but no, I didn’t want to write a book about my business or sales or marketing or any other topic that would have an impact on that million dollars of revenue that I was supposed to bring in next year.
I had no idea that just six months from that day, I would lose all my interest in that business or the fact that I had to bust my ass to get to that million dollars. And within two years, I would cease to have that very business.
All I knew on the train back from Maryland to Newark Penn Station in New Jersey was that something felt off. I did not know that there was a silent mutiny going on inside of me. One part wanted to stay on track and follow the plan we had just outlined, and the other part wanted to run and hide.
Some might say that I buckled under the pressure and that I freaked out by the idea of making so much money.
Maybe.
I’ve never made that much, so I don’t know what that would feel like. But over the years, I have wondered why. Why a million dollars? It was such an arbitrary number. Why not 500,000 or, 765,000, or even 899,999 dollars? Why was it necessary that my company make a million dollars in the next year? Whose idea was it? Whose dream was it? Was it mine? And if it was mine, where did the dream come from?
Sure, a 7-figure business would sound nice. A 7-figure business owner would sound even nicer. It would have meant I had made it. I would have finally proved to all the naysayers and doubters that I could do it.
And that right there was the problem. The reason for the short circuit, for the disconnect. The cause behind my sparkling water losing its bubbles.
I was doing it not because I wanted to. Not because it was a lifelong dream to own a million-dollar company. But because I thought having done it would have proven I was enough.
It would be easy for me to pinpoint that moment and say, “This is where it started. My journey home to myself.”
But no.
Perhaps that was the day my soul found a unique opportunity to sneak past the guard at the door of my subconscious and whisper in my ears its true calling. Perhaps that whisper caused me to set down the glass of sparkling water I had been drinking for years and notice that it was indeed pretty flat and that I didn’t need to drink it. Perhaps that realization that my fizz was gone led me on a new path.
But that was not the moment when it started. It started way back. Maybe even when I was a fetus nestled in my mom’s womb with a double X chromosome.
It said, “You are not good enough, but you should try very hard to be”
It never starts with this loud voice that you cannot ignore. It's small at first. Like a pebble in your shoe that you find uncomfortable but bearable. You change the way you walk, you wear prettier socks, and you embellish the shoe with a bow or a diamond. Then slowly it gets bigger and bigger. It shape shifts into a creature who has a constant monologue and a growl. It’s too big for your shoe now, so it lands on your back. But you wear pretty clothes, and you distract yourself with some shopping, or gossip or wine or Netflix, or impossible big-ass goals.
One day, it gets bigger and heavier, that you can no longer walk. You can not put this 100lb monkey down, and you feel weighted down under its pressure. You live with it as long as you can until one day, the stars align, and your soul’s voice becomes louder than the monkey’s growls.
And that is the day you decide you have to put this creature down. It’s not gonna be easy, and it’s not gonna be quick. It may take you four years or 40, but once you hear the soul talking, you can not un-hear it.
Four years ago, on a chilly October afternoon when the leaves had turned orange but were still hanging on the branches, my soul spoke to me in a clear, calm, and yet soft voice. It had taken me 36 years, and it would take four more, but finally, I could no longer ignore that monkey on my back, and I decided to put it down.
