Do you remember when you were 5, 7 or 10 years old and something you saw on TV or in a movie or around your neighborhood struck you and woke up your imagination? Then every time you saw or thought about that thing, you would become excited and want to tell the world, “That’s what I want! I want to do or be that!”?

What happened to that desire? Did you do it? Did you change your mind? Or do you still dream about it?

When I was 3, I saw ballet dancers on TV twirling in different colored tutus (long skirts made of netting). I immediately decided I wanted to be a ballet dancer. Not just any ballet dancer but I wanted to be the one front and center in a pretty colored tutu!

I had my first ballet class 2 years later, and I was instantly hooked! At the ripe old age of 5 I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life! I held that dream tightly until I became that twirling tutu, center front. I lived, breathed, ate and slept ballet, showed up at the studio early and left late to spend extra time practicing and reaching for more and more.

When asked to write a history paper in school, mine was always about the history of ballet, history of Russian ballet, Cecchetti’s Italian School, history of the pointe shoe, who was Petipa, Fokine, what was “Swan Lake” REALLY about, and why was “L’après-midi d’un faune” controversial? I was obsessed, and I literally never wavered throughout the greater part of my childhood and into professional life.

But like all athletics, it has an early end. In the prime of life, you become “old” in ballet life while other people in their 30s are raising children and just getting started in life or career.

When athletic life comes to an end you find yourself starting from scratch, unless you stay within the parameters of your profession, like in my case, teaching it and choreography, directing productions, etc. it would be hard not to feel the profound loss. But if you decide to move on to a completely different field, you feel like you are a baby starting over. It is a humbling experience, albeit not a bad one.

However, as important as it is to keep moving forward without looking back, I believe that acknowledging your life and achievements, your efforts and hard work is part of what makes moving forward to something new later in life, actually doable.

What I am getting at is that you can’t erase your personal history and still have a journey to share for the benefit of those coming up behind you, if you are all about forgetting and moving on. Always remember the road you have traveled and where you began and what it took to get there. You take that with you into your new life with lessons learned as well as awesomeness, past and present, acknowledged!

That doesn’t mean you don’t transform! Let yourself become new and awesome in the new space too!

Do you have things in your past life and profession you need to forgive yourself for? Welcome to the club! Get about the forgiving, reflect, and move forward. But again, never completely forget the road you have traveled! Your mistakes and missteps and faults are part of the journey onward.

Just make sure that it is the memory of your efforts you take with you, and not the negative patterns that could hold you back. There is a difference!

When I transitioned for a little while from a career in dance to acting, it may have looked to anyone watching from a distance that I was still in the performing arts so no big change there. Right? That couldn’t be more wrong.

Sure, there were similarities but telling a dancer who has been trained since kindergarten to be silent, aka “Shut up and dance”, followed by the need to use language to express and portray a role in acting, changed my thinking and my way of processing my emotional make-up as well as my sense of myself and connection to my audience. My ability to market myself in a business sense as an actor was something I never had to address in the world of dance. It took me off balance for a while but ultimately gave me a whole new skill set and confidence in myself.

So, when I decided to then go back into choreography and teaching dance for a while after that, I believe the previous struggle to change and adapt, made me a better teacher and choreographer. A couple of years later when I decided to make an even bigger change and buy a business, a small little, barely surviving, metaphysical bookstore and workshop space, I became a business owner, a metaphysical self-development teacher, a sales, buyer and marketing person, and all the things that go with running a business for the first time with a budget for only one employee, I had to stretch myself yet again.

I did it for the fun and passion of the work but was so far out of my league and lacking business knowledge, not knowing how to find a mentor, that I had really no more than a fun break-even business for a few short years but did not ultimately succeed with that business. Great experience! Lessons learned.

One of my mistakes was that I did not take my former personality with my obsession to succeed, work ethic, tendency to immerse myself in something, and my confidence into the marketing of that business. So, my desperation to move forward into something new without taking my best traits and characteristics that had served me well in my dance career, and forgetting the joy of my past, did not serve me well moving forward at all!

So, how on earth does one choose a new dream to follow when they are trying to escape from the biggest part of who they are and acknowledge what success their past brought them?

You do it by not trashing the memories of where you come from in an effort to live in the present and move forward. Find your awesomeness from the past. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater! Take all of you, transformed, into your future!”

Accept yourself! It wasn’t all bad. Even in a great former life and career, you may have had struggles and circumstances, that were horrible and awful. It doesn’t mean that YOU were horrible and awful. Let yourself find the good in you, transform the not-so-great parts, remember your successes, and build your “new house”, your present and your future, from there!

So, tell me, what was your dream? Did you fulfill it yet? Have you ever had to start over in life?