It's Never Too Late

It's Never Too Late

by The FlyLady, Marla Cilley

The other day this quote came in an e-mail and it got me to thinking. The quote was attributed to "Unknown." I always like to research quotes to make sure I give credit where credit is due.

"It is never too late to be what you thought you could have been!"

As I was searching, I found a very similar quote from George Elliot: "It's never too late to be what you might have been."

George was the pen name of a female writer, Mary Anne Evans, who lived in the 1800s. Evans wanted her work to be taken seriously.

Isn't that all any of us want - to be taken seriously? That is hard to do when you have no faith in yourself. I believe that a lack of faith is really just fear of not being good enough. This is that nasty perfectionism coming back to bite us once again.

This quote spoke volumes. Both of them give us hope. When we were children we had our dreams. Some of us knew from an early age what we thought we wanted to be when we grew up.

Then life happened and those dreams got pushed to the back burner. There was dinner to cook, laundry to be done and dishes to be washed. Some of those "Life Happenings" were our family telling us our dreams were not realistic. That is, if we even had the courage to voice our dreams aloud. Those dreams were dashed regardless of whether we ever told anyone. We were the ones who allowed the negativity of perfectionism to stomp our hopes and dreams.

Well I am here to tell you that it is never too late to figure out what you want to be when you grow up!

When I was in high school, I didn't have dreams! I was just doing my best to take care of my sisters and survive. I made good grades but college was never expected or talked about. Then I got married. I was back in survival mode. There was no time to think, just get things done. Years passed. I was good at every job I did, yet none of them were my passion. I still had no clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. My life was still in survival mode.

It wasn t until I got rid of my clutter that my life's work found me! Robert and I married in 1996. He had a houseful of clutter and so did I. We put our clutter together and then went to estate auctions and bought more. Our home was piled high and we had the paths that you see on those TV shows.

We were suffering from CHAOS -- Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome! January 1, 1999, was the day I committed to taking the babysteps to get our home in order. I never dreamed that my clutter was holding me back. It took me nine months of daily decluttering to finally feel peace and find my purpose for living.

So you see it is really never too late to be what you thought you could have been; even when you don't know what that is! Your dreams are hiding under your clutter!

For more help getting rid of your CHAOS, check out the Flylady's Web site and join her free mentoring group at http://www.flylady.net/. You can get her book, "Sink Reflections," published by Bantam, and her New York Times Best Selling book, "Body Clutter," published by Fireside. Copyright 2010 Marla Cilley Used by permission.