I’ve never been a girl with a passion for pink, make up and laces.

Second-born, after a baby girl, I should have been called Michelangelo (yes I know, don’t say a word). I wore coloured clothes, I played always with boys who seemed to me much more direct and coherent, I watched with my father all western films that exist on this Earth.

I’ve been raised up following the idea that “If you have a problem, you have to roll up your sleeves and solve it“ and I was sure to have completely avoided the attitude of who waits for the prince charming to come and save her.

I’m not talking about love but that mental attitude for which the events of life overlap, not always you like them, sometimes they bend you, but you think you will work this out and, after moments of rage and discouragement, you keep working in order to find a solution, your solution.

So I went forward, confusing and melting in my head the idea that it was necessary to be iron-made in order to be very capable, not showing weaknesses and solve everything by myself.

Then, some years ago, around the end of a tough period, with few energy, I realized it: I was waiting for my prince charming!

I didn’t catch it immediately when it happened, I think it insinuated in me slowly, one doubt at a time, one activity delayed at a time, one justification at a time.

How the prince charming reveals itself? It has different features and wears different clothes for each one.

Mine was like this:

• I want to look for a new job —> but this is not the right moment
• I’m frustrated cause I don’t feel useful, I feel myself without a purpose —> it may be better to get angry with my husband tonight cause he’s tired and he doesn’t infuse me the calm and the enthusiasm I can’t find by myself
• I want to start studying again —> and then who will take care about my daughter?
• I want some time for me alone —> when he’ll do, she’ll do, etc. I will surely can

I was so good in creating them that I didn’t even recognize them as excuses, as expectations that someone else would take the responsibility of doing or deciding on my behalf.

Moving the first hard steps to change the route, I bumped into the book “Six pillars of self-esteem“ by N. Branden.

A phrase unexpectedly smacked me:

NO ONE IS COMING

“(..) I have always been on the lookout for decisive moments when a “click” seems to occur in the client’s mind and new forward motion begins.

One of the most important of such moments is when the client grasps that NO ONE IS COMING”. No one is coming to save me; no one is coming to make life right for me; no one is coming to solve my problems. If I don’t do something, nothing is going to get better.

The dream of a rescuer who will deliver us may offer a kind of confort, but it leaves us passive and powerless. We may feel if only I suffer long enough, if only I yearn desperately enough , somehow a miracle will happen, but tihs is the kind of self-deception one pays for with one’s life as it drains away into the abyss of unredeemable possibilities and irretrievable days, months, decades.

Some years ago, in my office, a client told me “N, it’s not true that no one is coming, you came”.

“Correct” I admitted, “but I came to say that no one is coming”.”

I stopped, motionless for some minutes. I saw in slow motion a film of what I did or didn’t.

It was surely me and I didn’t like this.

Waiting for someone or something to come and change cards on the table is not something you choose consciously and in one fell swoop. It comes beside you, arguing your decisions towards new paths, feeding with your insecurities and trying to keep you safe always in the same place and it finds as a great allied the distorted sense we give to the word RESPONSIBILITY.

We use to think that being responsible of our actions means whip ourselves for mistakes, imperfections, weaknesses. But taking the responsibility of our life entails something more positive and powerful cause it means being completely aware of what we do and what we choose and, at the same time, accepting that we have the power to determine every centimetre of our actions.

And if sometimes we aren’t brilliant due to our decisions, it remains the exciting awareness that taking different ones depend exclusively on us.

I’m not suggesting at all that we have to feel alone and abandoned, and that nobody will support us during the path. On the contrary I’m a huge supporter of the energy and the marvel coming from an unexpected support from people around us. But we can’t receive anything if we don’t choose to take action before. It’s after we decide what we want, it’s after we start doing something, that all the rest follows.

Occasions come, people show up with help, support, motivation and they cheer for you, but if you haven’t chosen to change your mindset, you won’t be able to realise how many times there were helps and occasions that could have made you feel better but you wasn’t able to catch them.

Today, I keep in my wallet a piece of paper with this words: “NO ONE IS COMING” and I read it every time I have to make a decision and I feel that my head starts to make a list with 100 reasons I shouldn’t move.

If you want to investigate with kindness if you are waiting for your prince charming, try to analyze a part of your life that today you are not satisfied of. Make a list of why you don’t do anything to change it. Then read it again and call into question: what you can do today in order to modify the situation even a bit? What it’s in your power to change?

NOBODY IS COMING, but there’s a universe of possibilities and people ready to support you if you decide to take the first step.

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If you feel stuck and would like to change something in your life, but you don’t know where to start from write me to giada.varvello@gmail.com for a first free meeting to discover how I can support you.