WHAT DREAM ARE YOU SECRETLY GIVING UP ON RIGHT NOW?
I bet there is one. Don’t worry, you are not alone. We all do it and half the time we don’t even realize we’re quitting on a dream.
How do I know?
Because a few months ago, I almost gave up on a dream that I had been working on for years because in the homestretch I started to doubt that my dream was possible.
Four years ago, I moved from LA to NY to start a new life. My goal was to live with my good friend and her family for a while, regroup and save money to buy a house.
At the time, it almost seemed like an impossible dream. I’d never owned a home, didn’t have much money and my credit was a mess, but I didn’t care. I wanted a house that was all mine. A place that was very me that I could decorate any way I wanted.
Well, over the past four years, I took the right steps toward buying a house. I focused on my career, made more money, cleaned up my credit and saved for a down payment. I connected with a local realtor and started to scan the Internet for houses. All the homes that I fell in love with were out of my price range but that didn’t phase me. I believed my house was out there.
At the beginning of this year, my friend and I discussed my timeline for moving out. We decided that I should start seriously looking for a place in the fall and move out at the end of the year or during the first quarter of 2015. It seemed like a good plan. By July, I had saved enough money for a down payment and gotten my credit score high enough to qualify for a mortgage. I had done everything right. I was excited. My realtor and I started to really look for my house.
Now, the truth was, there weren’t a lot of houses in my price range. I was looking for a home about an hour north of New York City, which is a fairly affluent area. Despite this, I was optimistic and believed I would find something.
Then in early August I saw a small lake house I liked. It wasn’t lakefront, which I wanted, but it was cute and good enough. I put an offer on it. It was a foreclosure and an investor had also put in an offer at the same time that I did. We were competing for it. Well, after two weeks of waiting and worrying, the bank took it off the market and we both lost the house.
I was disappointed. Although, I will share that I had settled a bit with the house. I liked it but wasn’t fully in love with it. It was smaller than I wanted and it wasn’t lakefront. At that point, my inner dialogue went nuts: This sucks. I can’t even get a house I sorta want. WTF. I’m never going to find my house. I was crazy to even think I had a shot of buying a house I love in this area.
In that moment, I gave up on my dream. The dream I had been working on for four years. I didn’t tell anyone. I just quit in my head. I continued to look for houses online but also started looking for cheap rentals in NYC and Westchester. I had a backup plan. If I didn’t find a house in the next few months, I’d just rent some inexpensive apartment and push off buying a house for a couple of years. Also during that time, I started to convince myself that I didn’t really want a house. It was a lot of work. I could put the money toward something else. It was a stupid dream.
In the Handel Method®, we call the voice in your head that is sabotaging your dreams the DOUBLE AGENT. It’s the voice of doubt that convinces you that it’s ok if your dream doesn’t happen. It wasn’t really possible anyway.
THE DOUBLE AGENT BELIEVES THAT IT’S PROTECTING YOU FROM GETTING HURT OR DISAPPOINTED BUT IN REALITY IT’S JUST KILLING YOUR DREAM.
I didn’t even realize that my Double Agent was working against me. And one of the scariest parts about my Double Agent is that as I listened to that voice, I started gathering evidence to prove that my dream wasn’t going to happen. As I continued to look for lake houses, I was only finding really expensive homes I didn’t like and couldn’t afford. My Double Agent was winning.
Now, during this time I went away on vacation. It was over the Labor Day holiday and I was alone in nature on a stunning morning and I had a revelation. I realized I had quit on my dream. And I knew from past experience that dreams do happen if you do the work and go after them 100%. I wasn’t doing that anymore. I was being a Double Agent.
I came back from my trip and told everyone I was believing in my dream again and I was going to make it happen. Now, don’t smirk, but two weeks later, I found my house. I’m serious. It was the second house I saw after coming back from my vacation. It was a lakefront house on the border of NY and CT, an hour north of New York City. I fell in love with it the moment I walked inside. It was adorable. It had tall ceilings, an open kitchen, a huge fireplace, hardwood floors, lots of windows and a deck with lake views. It was my house!
Now, there was one slight issue. The house was way more than I could afford. But instead of getting discouraged and giving up again, I stood in the kitchen with my realtor and did the math. Then I had her call the seller’s realtor and make an offer that was 75k below the original listing price. Ballsy, I know but it was what I could afford.
A couple of hours later, they rejected my offer. But I stayed believing. And guess what?
THE NEXT MORNING, THEY CALLED BACK AND ACCEPTED MY OFFER.
That was over six weeks ago. My house closed last week and I’m moving into my new home this weekend. If you had asked me at the end of August if I was going to own a lake house I loved and be living in it before Thanksgiving, I would have said you were crazy. Thank God, I stopped my Double Agent from destroying my dream of buying a house.
Where is your Double Agent wreaking havoc? Pick a dream and make it happen, with expert coaching and group support all the way!
Peace,
Katie