You Don’t Get The Life You Want By Waiting For It

If you know me, you know I love a bit of woo woo witch craft. I am a big believer of energy and what you put out into the world. And with that, a term that’s thrown around all the time is manifesting. So I want to dig into what that really means.

But I also thought that wanting more had to come with certainty. I thought I needed to know exactly what I wanted and exactly how to do it before I could make any action.

When I started powerlifting for example, I thought I had to be strong first.

Before I could put myself online and speak confidently about coaching, I wanted to have as many qualifications as possible.

Before I could believe that fitness could be more than something I loved doing, I had to have the whole life of my career figured out.

And I think a lot of people feel like this in one way or another. How many times have you told yourself you’ll start when you “feel ready”. You will start going to the gym once you “feel fitter” or have lost a bit of weight to feel like you belong there. Or maybe it is that you will go to the free weights area when you are “strong enough”.

And these experiences carry over outside of the gym too. How many of you have said you’ll apply for the opportunity when you “have more experience”. Or you will start your new business venture once you have more money, more confidence and more knowledge.

The truth is, I did not feel ready when I started any of the things that have shaped my life.

But looking back now, I do not think the people who achieve big things are always the people who feel the most confident at the start. I think they are often the people who keep moving, even when they do not feel completely ready.

That is what manifestation has come to mean to me.

I think people sometimes misunderstand manifestation as simply saying what you want and waiting for it to arrive. As though you can write down a goal, say it out loud enough times and somehow the universe will hand it to you without you having to change anything about the way you live.

For me, it has never worked like that.

Manifestation has been about immersing myself in the reality I wanted to create. It has been about making choices that aligned with the person I wanted to become, even before I fully felt like that person. It has been about slowly showing myself that it was safe to want more.

I think it is also putting a level of trust that growth does come with a level of uncertainty. Not every risk pays off, and even the risks that do pay off, don’t pay off immediately. You have to be comfortable in the uncomfortable otherwise you stay stuck in the safety net.

My powerlifting journey started long before I believed I was an athlete

When I first started lifting, I never looked at powerlifting and thought that one day I would break world records.

That would have sounded ridiculous to me.

I didn’t even walk into the gym feeling like I belonged in the weights area. I did not automatically know how to squat, bench or deadlift properly. I did not have years of experience behind me.

In fact, it was the same year I was diagnosed with coeliac disease. In a lot of ways, my body was the weakest it had ever been. I had spent time feeling run down, not fully understanding why I was struggling, and then suddenly having to learn how to manage a completely new reality around food, health and recovery.

At a time when I could easily have decided that strength was not for me, I started moving towards it anyway. I did not feel like the picture of an athlete. I did not feel as though I had everything figured out physically. I did not feel certain that my body was capable of repairing itself. But I kept training, learning and showing up. That is one of the reasons why powerlifting is so important to me. It was not just about lifting heavier weights. It was rebuilding my trust in my body. It was about learning that being at a low point did not mean I had reached my limit. It was about proving myself that I could still build strength, even when I did not feel strong yet.

I was learning, just like everyone else.

I watched people who were more experienced than me. I asked questions. I made mistakes. I had sessions where things felt amazing and I had sessions where I wondered whether I had gone backwards. I had lifts that moved well and lifts that made me question everything. I had moments where I felt strong, and moments where I felt completely out of my depth.

At first, I think I trained because I enjoyed it. I liked the feeling of getting stronger. I liked seeing progress. I liked challenging myself. But at some point, I started to take it more seriously.

I started learning more about technique. I started paying attention to programming. I started understanding that strength was not just about turning up and hoping for the best. It was about consistency, patience, recovery, food, mindset and being willing to work on the boring parts as well as the exciting ones.

And I started treating training like it really mattered.

That was probably the biggest shift.

I did not suddenly wake up one day and feel like an athlete. I did not suddenly become confident enough to chase bigger goals. Instead, I started behaving like someone who had a goal.

I trained consistently. I respected the basics. I learned the movements properly. I paid attention to the details. I stuck with it when progress slowed down. I kept showing up when the sessions did not go perfectly.

Over time, powerlifting stopped feeling like something that belonged to other people and instead it became part of who I was.

That is something I think people often miss when they are trying to become stronger or more confident in the gym. They think they need to become the confident version of themselves first, and then they can start training properly.

But it usually works the other way around.

You do not become strong and then start acting like a strong person.

You start acting like someone who values their strength, and then strength follows.

You do not become confident in the gym and then start using the weights area.

You start using the weights area, learning the lifts, asking questions and gradually showing yourself that you belong there.

You do not become fit and then suddenly find it easy to make healthy choices.

You make small choices that support your fitness, and over time those choices become part of your identity.

You stop being someone who is “trying to get fit” and start becoming someone who values movement, strength and looking after themselves.

Building a business felt the same

The story of EMF Coaching is similar.

I set up this business when I was still at university studying Forensic Science. At the time I thought I had a clear direction of where my life was heading. I had a clear picture of what my life was supposed to look like; finish university, head into a professional career, work hard and become a published scientist.

But even throughout university, something didn’t feel right. I kept pushing it and trying to force myself into this box. I had got myself into student debt, I had to make it worth it. But the more I tried, the more unhappy I became.

And if you ever listen to you intuition, your gut will tell you when it is not the right thing, I promise you that.

I knew that coaching was something I cared about deeply, but I also did not see it as something that could be my whole career. It was something I started alongside everything else.

I was working night shifts in the labs, trying to build a business in the gaps between long days, tired evenings and a lot of uncertainty.

I remember sitting on breaks and working on coaching resources. Replying to messages. Writing programmes. Planning content. Learning more about coaching. Trying to work out how I could make this thing real.

And at the time, it felt like there were two completely different versions of myself in conflict. It wasn’t that I didn’t to turn my back on science, I still love science to this day and believe it shapes my coaching career a lot. But sitting in a lab all day without the direct contact with who I was supposedly helping felt disconnected.

There was the safe version. The secure job. The predictable income. The path that made sense on paper.

But it didn’t feel right in my gut.

The other version of me wanted more. I wanted to coach, I wanted to have hands on experience with people and see how my work was directly making a positive impact on their lives.

The problem was, as always, myself. I did not allow myself to believe that this was something I was allowed to do. That this version of my life could be a reality.

I think that is something a lot of people can relate to. You can want something deeply and still struggle to believe that it is available to you. You can have the ambition, but not the confidence. You can have the idea, but not the proof. You can see the bigger picture, but still be terrified of taking the first proper step towards it.

That was me for a long time.

I did not know whether coaching would become a viable business. I did not know whether enough people would want to work with me. I did not know whether I was making the right decision by stepping away from something secure.

I had all the same questions that most people have when they are trying to do something outside of the expected path.

What if I fail?

What if I am not good enough?

What if people do not take me seriously?

What if I make the wrong choice?

What if I want more than I am actually capable of creating?

But eventually, I realised that waiting for certainty was keeping me stuck.

I was waiting for proof before I allowed myself to believe in the possibility. But the proof only came because I kept showing up.

I kept showing up for my clients. I kept showing up for my own training. I kept showing up online. I kept learning, improving, taking feedback, making changes and putting more into the business.

I showed up before I had proof that it would work.

But you know what? Every time I did show up, a shift happened. Every time I showed up, I had more evidence that I could handle the next step. Every client I coached. Every programme I wrote. Every conversation I had. Every time I had to learn something new. Every time I put myself out there. Every time I chose growth over comfort.

It was another reminder that I was more capable than I had given myself credit for.

Wanting more does not make you ungrateful

I think one of the reasons people hold themselves back is because they feel guilty for wanting more.

They tell themselves that they should just be grateful for what they already have. They convince themselves that wanting more means they are dissatisfied, selfish or unrealistic. We have been told that it is selfish to want more, to be seen. But I do not think that is true. I think that you can be grateful for where you are and still want to grow.

You can appreciate your current life and still want to create a bigger one.

You can be proud of where you are and still want to be more aligned to where you want to be.

Wanting more doesn’t always come from dissatisfaction. Sometimes it comes from recognising your own potential.

Powerlifting taught me that.

Every time I lifted something that had once felt impossible, it changed the way I saw myself. It reminded me that the limits I had placed on myself were often based on who I had been in the past, not who I was capable of becoming.

Building a business taught me the same thing.

I did not need to have everything figured out before I started. I just needed to be willing to become the kind of person who could work things out as I went.

Showing your nervous system that growth is safe

Something I have learned over the years is that sometimes we confuse discomfort with danger. When you are going after something, it is normal to feel scared. Our body can react as though it’s under threat.

We feel nervous. We overthink. We procrastinate. We convince ourselves that we are not ready yet.

But often, we are not actually unsafe.

We are just unfamiliar with the version of ourselves that wants more.

There will be a gap between the version of who you no longer are and the version that you are becoming. That will come with a feeling of feeling unsettled, and perhaps a bit of discomfort. But that does not mean you should run away from it.

Sometimes it just means you are growing.

Every time you take the next step and realise that you are okay, you build trust with yourself.

Start acting like the person you are becoming

This does not mean pretending you are already at the finish line.

It does not mean forcing yourself into routines you hate, copying somebody else’s life or pretending to be an expert when you are still learning. It means asking yourself what the version of you that you want to become would do next.

Every day, ask yourself what action can I take today to bring me a step closer to who I want to be.

Would they book the gym session?

Would they train even if it was not their best day?

Would they ask for help instead of staying stuck?

Would they stop speaking to themselves like they are incapable?

Would they take the small opportunity instead of waiting for the perfect one?

Would they show up, even if they felt nervous?

That is where the shift happens.

Not in one massive decision, but in the small choices you repeat over and over again.

I certainly did not know that lifting would lead me to competitions, world records, coaching clients, travelling, building a business and creating a career that feels genuinely like mine.

I just knew that I wanted more than the version of life I had settled into.

And little by little, I started behaving like someone who believed more was possible.

So whether your goal is to get stronger, feel more confident in the gym, compete in powerlifting, start a business, change career or build a life that feels more like you, do not wait until you feel completely ready.

Start showing up for that version of yourself now.

Let your actions catch up with your goals.

Let your nervous system learn that growth is not something to fear.

And let yourself become someone who is no longer scared to want more.