From Stuck to Thriving: What Happened When I Set an Intention, Let Go, and Took Action
There was a time in my life when I was stuck.
The interesting thing is, I’m not sure I fully realized how stuck I was while I was living it.
From the outside, my life probably looked fine. I had a successful career. I lived in Chicago’s West Loop. I had friends and a full life. I was doing what I was “supposed” to be doing.
But inside, something was very different.
I was going through the motions.
I was in a job where I no longer felt challenged or supported. I no longer loved where I lived. My once-quiet neighborhood in the West Loop had become a busy, noisy place. It was a great place to go out and have fun, but it was no longer a great place to live for someone who values home as a sanctuary.
And I swear, every new neighbor who moved in around me seemed to be loud, too!
More importantly, I wasn’t myself anymore.
Looking back, I can see that I was depressed, although I don’t think I recognized it at the time. My eyes looked a little dead much of the time. It became harder and harder to get out of bed. Because I lived close to my office, I would sometimes come home at lunchtime just so I could sleep.
Eventually, I had to acknowledge something:
My life needed to change. And I needed to participate in changing it.
Knowing Spiritual Principles Is Different From Living Them
At the time, I was in the middle of my Spiritual Practitioner training.
I was learning principles that sounded wonderful in a classroom: get clear about your intention, place faith in something greater than what you can currently see, release your attachment to exactly how things must unfold—and then take action toward what you desire.
But there comes a point when spiritual principles have to become more than ideas.
We have to live them.
So I decided to lean into what I was learning.
I got very real with my spiritual advisors, my closest friends, my classmates, teachers, and my spiritual coach.
I told them:
I can’t do this anymore. I need something different, and I’m not sure where to start.
I didn’t have the answers yet. But I finally had something perhaps even more important: the willingness to admit that what I was doing was no longer working.
I Set a Big Intention
With the help of my spiritual coach—and a tremendous amount of moral support from the people around me—I began getting clear about what I wanted.
My intention became:
I will find a new job and a new place to live. I will sell my condo easily and effortlessly to someone I know or meet. And I want next summer off.
That became the story I started telling.
And then I took action.
I began renovating my condo to prepare it for sale. I explored other job opportunities within the bank where I worked. I started considering where I might want to live.
But despite all that action, nothing seemed to be happening.
I didn’t have clarity about where I was going to live.
I didn’t know what my next job would be.
There was no obvious path from the life I had to the life I was envisioning.
Sound familiar?
Sometimes we decide what we want, take the first few steps—and then become frustrated because the rest of the path hasn’t magically appeared.
That’s where one of the most important parts of my story happened.
I Let Go of the “How”
It was late September, and at some point I had what I can only describe as a big let go.
I decided:
I don’t care if I have a new job by next summer. I am taking next summer off. I need a break.
Something shifted when I made that decision.
I was still clear about what I wanted. I wasn’t giving up on my intention.
But I released my attachment to how and when everything had to happen.
And then things started moving.
An Unexpected Conversation Changed Everything
Within a few weeks, I found myself on a recruiting trip at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, my alma mater.
While I was there, I ran into a former classmate.
We had stayed in touch through the mid-1990s but eventually lost contact. Since then, he had left investment banking and become a professor at the University of Illinois.
He told me about his own major career change and then casually said something that would ultimately change the direction of my life:
“If you ever want to change your life like I did, give me a call. I think we might have a teaching position for you here.”
For the next two weeks, I couldn’t get that conversation out of my mind.
Me?
Teach at the University of Illinois College of Business?
What very few people knew was that I had thought about teaching there for years. I had even inquired about it once before but never pursued it.
Suddenly, an opportunity I hadn’t known how to create for myself had appeared.
So I took the next step.
I called him.
“Were you serious about that teaching opportunity?”
Absolutely.
He immediately began setting up informational interviews for me.
I had those conversations in December. I interviewed for the position in January.
By February, I had an offer.
Wow.
One big piece of my intention had just fallen into place.
Now I really had to sell my condo.
And Then Came Another “Coincidence”
I had previously spoken with neighbors who had expressed interest in buying my condo, but the timing wasn’t right for them.
I figured I was going to have to put more effort into selling it, so I found a realtor and scheduled a meeting.
About two hours before that meeting, I ran into another neighbor in the hallway.
I told him it was nice to meet and know him, but I would be moving soon. In fact, I explained, I was meeting with a realtor that very afternoon.
He expressed interest in the condo.
He brought his wife over to see it immediately.
By the next day, we had a deal.
I had a new job.
I had a buyer for my condo—someone I had met, just as I had envisioned.
And then another realization hit me:
I can quit my job whenever I want.
So I gave notice.
My employer allowed me to choose my exit date.
And there it was.
The summer off I had asked for—plus part of the spring.
I left my banking career in April, moved to Champaign in July, and started teaching in August.
The Destination Wasn’t the End of the Story
I ultimately spent six years teaching at the University of Illinois.
And while I have since moved on from that chapter of my career, I am incredibly grateful for it.
Teaching strengthened skills that are central to the work I do today. It expanded my network and brought people into my life who remain important to me. And it gave me experiences that became part of the foundation for the coaching, teaching, speaking, and corporate wellness work I now do.
But perhaps the biggest lesson wasn’t about changing careers or selling a condo.
It was about learning that feeling stuck doesn’t mean you are stuck forever.
Intention + Faith + Action + Support
You might read my story and think:
Well, Denise, that’s a nice story. But something like that couldn’t happen for me.
My question is:
Who says?
Your transformation probably won’t look like mine. It shouldn’t. Your path is yours.
And setting an intention doesn’t mean sitting back and waiting for the Universe to deliver a new life to your doorstep.
Look at how much action was involved in my story.
I renovated the condo.
I explored opportunities.
I traveled.
I had conversations.
I made the phone call.
I went through the interviews.
I hired a realtor when I thought I needed one.
I gave notice.
I moved.
But action wasn’t the only ingredient.
There was intention.
There was faith.
There was letting go.
There was action.
And there was support.
I didn’t do it alone.
I had a spiritual coach, advisors, friends, classmates, and teachers who supported me while I was trying to see a possibility that I couldn’t yet fully see for myself.
And I think that piece is important.
Maybe You Don’t Need to Know the Whole Path Yet
When we’re stuck, we often believe we need to figure out the entire plan before we can move.
Where will I go?
What will I do?
How will I make it happen?
What if I make the wrong decision?
What if it doesn’t work?
But what if you don’t need to know all of that yet?
Maybe your first step is simply becoming willing to say:
This isn’t working for me anymore. I want something different.
Then you can begin exploring what “different” actually means.
What do you want to experience?
How do you want to feel when you wake up in the morning?
What would thriving look like for you—not according to someone else’s definition of success, but according to yours?
What beliefs or patterns might be keeping you where you are?
What action can you take now?
And where might you need to loosen your grip and allow a path you haven’t considered yet to emerge?
Those are the kinds of questions that can begin changing a life.
Are You Ready to Go From Struggling to Thriving?
Today, I have the privilege of helping other people navigate their own periods of change.
I don’t have a magic formula that guarantees everything will unfold exactly as you envision it.
What I can offer is a combination of the spiritual and personal-growth tools I’ve studied, the coaching and teaching skills I’ve developed over decades, and the perspective of someone who has had to use these principles in her own life—not just teach them to others.
If you’re feeling stuck, going through the motions, or sensing that there is something more waiting for you, perhaps it’s time to explore what’s possible.
You don’t have to have the entire path figured out.
Sometimes you simply need a clear intention, the willingness to take the next step, faith that there may be possibilities you can’t see yet—and someone to walk beside you as you discover them.
If you’re ready to explore moving from struggling to thriving, I invite you to book a Discovery Call with me here and check out my video about this experience here.
I’ll be straightforward with you about whether I believe I can help you reach your goals. And if we’re a good fit, together we can begin envisioning a life in which you aren’t simply going through the motions.
A life where you are truly living the song of your soul.
Take the story one step further.
