If You're Going to Fall, Fall Forward

About a year ago today, our dream of moving to Mexico almost died before it even got off the ground.  

After going through an extremely long and highly stressful process to get our house sold that took almost eighteen months, in July of 2019, we finally got an offer on our home we could live with. The path through the sale process had been grueling. Getting that offer felt like the kind of relief that's hard to even describe.  

We'd expected the sale of the house to take no more than ninety days. So, we felt really comfortable making a downpayment on our property in Mexico with an agreement we would pay the note in full upon the sale of our home within six months. But you might know the story. It didn't sell as planned. For a full year past our agreed-upon closing date, we made two mortgage payments and held the deal on the Mexico property together by a thread that got thinner as the months passed.  

When we finally got the offer and the house came off the market, we started the very intense but truly joyful process of managing the final stages of an international move. The plan was to close the last day in July and leave by August 5.  

The day before we were supposed to close on the sale was my husband's last day at work. I'd planned a special dinner out to celebrate him being free at last as a surprise. However, when David walked in the door at the end of his last workday he didn't have the glow I expected. As he was cleaning out his desk at the end of the day he got a phone call from the realtor who flatly explained to him the buyer's financing had fallen through and just like that the deal was done. Sixteen hours before the sale was supposed to be final the bottom fell out. 

At that moment, almost everything we owned was already packed into a moving truck and my husband was unemployed. Complicating things the buyer didn't even know this had happened. She'd signed all the closing docs in advance of a trip to Africa.  

Through a fit of burning tears, I emailed our would-be buyer directly and explained to her with the least amount of drama I could muster that we were f*cked. Then we went to our "celebration" dinner where I cried ugly tears in public and consoled myself with two stiff drinks as we sat in stunned silence for a long time - while lovely people eating dinner tried to avoid staring at me sobbing. Before we left that restaurant we made a decision that changed everything. We decided to proceed as planned even though everything had fallen apart. We decided to fall forward.  

Good logical sense would have probably been to unpack the moving van and send David to work the next begging for his job back. However, falling forward meant acknowledging our dream had come apart and deciding to navigate that fall in the direction of our dreams instead of falling backward which would have meant unpacking that truck. 

Before we got home from dinner we got an email from the buyer saying, "I don't know what happened and I don't know how but I will make this work." Frankly, there were exactly zero reasons to believe that was going to happen. 

Everyone knows we moved to Mexico in August, but almost no one knew did so, with the house still on the market, moving into a home we were buying with money we didn't have. The story of how it all worked out is longer than a single post. It was a long and winding tale that is worthy of a novel I won't make you read now. The important part here is, it did work out, perfectly, with the kind of precision timing that can only be described as miraculous.  

David and I often laugh about it now - because you know, in hindsight it is kind of hilarious. It is hard to quantify how irrational it was to make the decision we did. We left everything and everyone we knew, left our home, and we left the country with nothing but some frazzled faith that things would somehow work out.  

Looking back, knowing all the chapters that would be the novel of our move to Mexico, I can clearly see nothing actually went wrong. Everything was being perfectly scripted to get us more amazing than we thought was possible. However, on that day, there was nothing left of our dream but the dream itself. The only options were to give up entirely or fall forward.  

A lot of people feel like they are falling these days. Well laid plans are coming undone. Things we thought were working out, aren't. And yet, I'm seeing a pattern emerging in the chaos. While some people are in free-fall, a lot of people are landing in places that look like miracles on the map. Those people who've lost sight of the shore in what feels like a sh*t storm but have landed in something that looks like paradise all intentionally navigated the crisis by falling forward instead of back.  

I'm not suggesting that anyone do something that looks as irresponsible as we did. 

What I'm saying is: 

You can lean into your dreams even when it's precarious. Maybe the more precarious it feels the further you should lean into what you want even if it means you will fall - because falling forward might just be an easier way to get where you want to go than the route you originally planned.

Lisa Hayes, The Love Whisperer, is an LOA Relationship Coach. She helps clients leverage Law of Attraction to get the relationships they dream about and build the lives they want. Lisa is the author of the hit books, Score Your Soulmate and How to Escape from Relationship Hell and The Passion Plan.   Lisa also trains the worlds best coaches at www.thecoachingguild.com.