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Meet Lisa Taylor Huff --
the original "Bold Soul"
One minute, I was
single, over 40 and living the most boring life imaginable... the next I was
living the life of my dreams in Paris, a successful writer --
and married
to a Frenchman! How did THAT happen?
It wasn't magic...
although sometimes it FELT (and still feels) like magic.
I'm not much
different than most people -- including you. I'm brilliant at a few key things,
fairly good at a lot more, and lousy at others (cooking falls into this latter
category!) I have always had dreams and plans for my life, just as we all do.
The dream I can remember having the longest was that I wanted to travel a lot,
live in Paris, and become a writer; that dream began in my 'tweens and stayed
with me for about 35 years before I fulfilled it!
 But
before I ended up living "la vie en rose" in Paris, I was living in New
Jersey, within a few miles of the same place I'd grown up. The life I was
living was probably fairly typical, perhaps even desirable by most
standards: I worked in a big corporation in Information Technology, had friends
I spent time with, occasionally went on dates or found myself in semi-steady
relationships, and every so often I went on a vacation. At one point I even
bought a lovely 2-BR condo that even had its own white picket fence, and I
thought, "Wow, I'm livin' the American dream!"
Somehow, though, it
wasn't enough. I didn't understand for a long time why I always felt so
dissatisfied with a life that other people would have been perfectly happy
with. My friends and my younger sister were meeting guys, getting married and
starting families. They bought houses in the suburbs. They carpooled their kids
to soccer practice and rooted them on at football games. As time passed, I met
someone I thought would be "The One", but after a year or so together, things
ended (for reasons I now realize were for the best for both of us). And over
the years, I kept wondering why I couldn't just be happy with the same kind of
life everyone else around me seemed to want. I only knew that I wanted
something more, something different, something even a-typical. I wanted to be
one of "those people" who was doing something more extraordinary with their
lives.
It took me a long time to realize that I wasn't to blame for my
sense of dissatisfaction, just as my friends and loved ones weren't wrong for
loving their traditional lifestyles. You can't blame people for being who they
are! It wasn't that one way of living was wrong and the other was right; it was
that I was trying to fit myself into a lifestyle that just wasn't ME. It was a
matter of the square peg and the round hole; a city girl vegetating in the
country because that's where she's been dropped, a world traveler trapped in
one place for years because she didn't have the nerve to leave her comfort
zone.
And one day, I finally got it. What would really make me happy
was being true to myself. To stop living on the fringes of other people's
lives, doing what I thought was expected of me because it made someone else
happy or comfortable even when I was miserable. To take back my life and
redesign it the way I wanted it. THAT felt exciting to me, and it felt RIGHT.
It felt... BOLD.
The only thing that really sets me apart from the
masses of people out there who are not happy with the lives they are presently
living, is that I simply CHOSE not to live that way any more. In all
seriousness, that's it, that's the secret -- THE POWER OF CHOICE. Our lives are
a reflection of our choices, nothing more. Even not choosing is still a
choice!
 Well, something
definitely had to change. The clock was definitely ticking as I crossed the
mid-life line into my 40s. Four months after I turned 40 (by treating myself to
a short trip to Paris, my favorite place on earth), the world itself turned
upside down with the events of September 11, 2001. It was after the 9/11
attacks that I realized we never know how much time we've got left... and that
I was wasting a lot of time doing things that weren't part of my higher purpose
and weren't making me happy. If I knew that tomorrow would be my last
day on earth, I'd want to know that I'd lived my life fully, with as few
regrets as possible, and with as much fun, adventure, love and soulfulness as I
could handle. Along with that, I wanted the work I was doing to be meaningful,
to reach people and serve to transform lives
And Living Boldly®
was born.
I began actively reinventing myself (not for the first
time and probably not for the last, either) and reinventing my business. I
figured out what I liked and what worked well, and kept that; and the rest, I
started to change, one step at a time. I knew I wanted to write more, and to
have a portable business that would make it possible for me to work, travel and
live anywhere in the world I wanted -- like Paris! So I took my combined 20+
years of computer programming, strategic business planning, business and life
coaching and web design experience, and I leveraged it to design a business
model that would let me have the kind of lifestyle I wanted.
It wasn't
always so easy or straightforward, though. I had to figure out a lot of things
on my own, because the business model I was designing didn't exist in any sort
of one-stop-shopping, completely systematized "turnkey" package. (Here's a
hint: it does NOW, because I figured it out!) I made mistakes, wasted time and
money on more than one occasion, and learned by doing it myself. When I found
tools or resources that worked (or failed miserably, I made notes of what
worked and what didn't. I looked around for role models and mentors who could
share their own experiences, both good and bad and I learned from them,
too.
Finally, I was "ready"... well, as ready as I could really ever be.
And I packed my bags and moved to Paris, where I knew no one but where I had
Internet access in my adorable apartment in the 15th and where I could continue
to run my business from across an ocean! Other than having to adjust client
meetings on certain days because of the time difference, the rhythm of my
business flowed as well in Paris as it had when I was still in New Jersey --
because I'd designed it to work that way!
In Paris, I spent hours
wandering around with my camera, delighting in the ancient architecture and the
"café lifestyle". I made friends and developed a social life. I worked
when I wanted to work, knowing my business was there to support me. I even took
a two-week "vacation" around Europe, soaking up the ambiance in Switzerland,
Italy, Austria and Germany as well as other parts of France. And about a year
after arriving in Paris, my life took a miraculous but unexpected turn when I
met the man who would become my husband! It was, literally, love at first
sight, and it didn't take long before we decided to merge our lives together --
me as the never-married American entrepreneur and writer, and he the father of
three great kids who are now my step-children. I went from being on my own to
having a ready-made "turnkey" family!
And my business has come along for
the ride. With the flexibility of the business model I created, I was able to
make some adjustments to allow for the new demands on my time and energy that
came with becoming a wife and mother, and still the business has continued to
grow, evolve and expand -- the innovative spirit in me constantly pushes me to
develop new products and services that might help others live the lives of
their own dreams, and I have a fantastic time doing it. Now, Paris is my
permanent home, and I run my American-based business from the beautiful City of
Light!
 Whenever I tell others my personal story,
they are utterly amazed at how I was able to do all of this -- the usual
response is: "Your life is just like a movie!" And my response is: yes, it IS
amazing, but it's not only POSSIBLE to do things like this, it's EASY when
you're clear on what you really want, and when you have the right SYSTEM, TOOLS
and SUPPORT to help you create it.
The Living Boldly® home study
products and private coaching programs are here to help YOU create your own
bold life story. And it all starts with the CHOICE and the COMMITMENT to
invest in yourself so that you can reinvent your life to your own custom
specifications!
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness
has genius, power and magic in it."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
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 And now, I look forward to the opportunity
of becoming YOUR partner in helping you achieve your dreams. I invite you to
experience Living Boldly® for yourself, in any (or all!) of the following
ways:
Yours in the spirit of bolder
living,
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NO EXCUSES™ Coaching
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