New Beginnings

by Amanda Spurlock

Change. It’s the one constant in our lives that we can truly count on no matter what life is throwing at us. My life took a major change recently. I moved back to the States with my husband after living and working in Panama for 5 years, got a new job, and moved to a state I had never lived in or we really knew much about with the intention of getting our MBAs.

It all started with initial conversations of what we wanted to get out of our lives, and our family. We began chewing on the idea of moving to the States for better opportunities. When we finally decided to make the move, both my husband and I knew we needed to see this as a project. During this time, I truly had to work on Getting the EDGE to make sure we were going to do it right.

We settled on our desired outcome which engaged our mind, heart and soul. It was clear, succinct and was written as if it had already happened. We had several sessions of emptying our heads on topics ranging from what would be our initial expenses, recurrent expenses, housing, jobs, transportation, insurance, savings, cars we needed to sell, education, and most important, how we were leaving our family behind; this one being the hardest.

Once we decided on all the actions we needed to complete, we took each one at a time; sometimes two as we divided the actions and crossed them out when we completed them. We celebrated every success; big or small because we knew this was moving our project forward. Action by action, our project was becoming a reality and we were living it.

It took us 9 months from when we started putting our project into reality in Panama to when we were settled in an apartment in North Carolina with new surroundings, no family or friends for 500 miles, and fresh new beginnings. That project has finalized and we have learned a lot from the experience.

We still have many other projects to complete both professionally and personally. We came here to obtain our MBAs and in the process we have acquired new projects. One of those projects is on our someday/maybe list. I know we will get to it; at this time though I do not have the money to start it.

Our MBA project is still being worked on action by action as there are many to complete before it becomes a reality. It is taking us a little longer than we had originally planned, but one thing we know for sure is we must continue completing each action one at a time as it keeps our project moving forward towards success.