On this journey, you have clear checkpoints. Every week as you perform, you will get feedback from the judges on your performance. If you dance good enough and both the judges and the public reward you for that, you dance for at least one more week. That extra week allows you to incorporate the received feedback in your practice sessions and your next performance. 

But most of our journeys have no fixed end date and also no week to week checkpoints. Certainly not the journey of our life. We do have an end in mind, at least I do: I will die! But I have no clue when that will be. It might be tomorrow, it also might be more than half a century away from me. 

So how do you start on the journey of your life? When you put the question out like that, it becomes a very complicated one. Do you mean the journey of your entire life, the next five years or just living day by day. Today, tomorrow, the day after. This is one of the reasons why we don’t take immediate action on the things we want. Because there is no pressure, only the pressure we put on ourselves. And why would we? We can also start tomorrow, or the day after or even in 5 years from now. 

I was born in 1972 and when I grew up, in general people were talking about their retirement as the moment that life begins. When I retire, I will travel around the world. When I retire, I will spend more time with friends. When I retire…, well, you fill in the blanks. This message always felt like you had to postpone the good things in life till you reach the age of retirement. Until that moment, you suck it up, you work hard and earn the money to live the life you want for now. So, as a result people feel the solution is early retirement. Because then they can start living the life that they want earlier and stop doing the things that they don’t like. 

I never believed in this construct. Life is to be lived, every day. That includes work. My father is 84 and he still loves to work on the farm every day. Well, better to say: He’s obsessed with it. His work is his life. And I guess that’s also not what I envision. A healthy balance between work and life benefits both our career and our private life. It benefits not only ourselves but also the people around us. 

My motto has always been: “If I think or feel that I am going to regret later in life not doing something, I will start doing it as soon as possible”. I changed my career from a dancer and finance professional into starting my own Interior Design firm. And now I’ve reinvented myself as a coach and maybe even as a writer. And I combine that with renovating our own country house. Because we really enjoy doing things with our hands and figure out how we can accomplish things that we didn’t know we were capable of doing. I don’t know what’s more to come. But I really believe that trying and failing is more fulfilling than not trying. Because only when you try, you will be able to achieve.