How Much Is Still Inside Me?

There are times in life when everything simply follows its usual course. You work, take care of your family, deal with whatever needs to be done, and don’t spend much time wondering whether your life could still take a completely different direction.

For a long time, that was true for me.

During the pandemic, I came across the idea of buying an existing business. It was something I had never considered before, but the thought of taking over a company and continuing to build it immediately fascinated me.

What interested me wasn’t money or success at any cost. It was the opportunity to grow, to learn something completely new, to take on responsibility, and perhaps discover abilities in myself that had never really been called upon in my everyday life.

I started learning everything I could about the subject. Ideas began forming in my head, and I wanted to do something with them. For the first time in a long while, I was truly excited about something again.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out the way I had hoped. Despite all my efforts, the business purchase never happened.

I was deeply disappointed and, for a while, genuinely sad about it. When you put so much of yourself into something and have already started imagining the future that might come with it, losing that possibility feels very different from simply letting go of an idea.

Still, something unexpected happened.

The original plan had failed, but I couldn’t simply go back to the person I had been before. I had learned too much about myself along the way.

I now knew what it felt like to be excited about something again. I had experienced what it was like to learn new things, step into unfamiliar territory, and consider possibilities that had never really had a place in my life before.

And then another question appeared: If this wasn’t the right path, what was?

I didn’t have an immediate answer, and perhaps I didn’t need one. I only knew that I couldn’t simply tell myself, “Well, that didn’t work, so I’ll just carry on exactly as before.”

Maybe it was because I had learned to allow possibilities back into my life. Maybe trying to buy a business had opened something in me that I could no longer simply close again.

Around that time, Italy began coming to mind more and more often.

It was the country of my roots and had always been part of my life, but now I began thinking about it differently. At first, it was just a thought that kept returning. Over time, that thought became a real possibility, and eventually, a decision.

Of course, not everyone needs to buy a business or move to another country in order to make a change. For one person, it might be a new career. For someone else, it could be a project, a trip, a long-postponed dream, or simply deciding to finally try something they have been thinking about for years.

Maybe change doesn’t always have to begin with wanting to turn your entire life upside down. Sometimes it starts simply by taking seriously an idea that refuses to go away.

How I eventually came to make my decision, the doubts that came with it, and what happened afterward became the story I later told in my book, Courage to Be Free: My Journey to Italy.

When I look back now, I don’t think that the plan that failed simply brought something to an end.

More importantly, it set something in motion.