The Birth of Candice Murray Journey

Hi!

Let me tell you the story of how I DIDN’T figure out how to jump from my corporate career that was feeling emptier by the day, to starting my own purposeful business.

Sowing the seeds

I haven’t had a white picket fence life.   There’s been joy and cool experiences, but also a lot of really hard stuff to overcome.  The great times have been, well … great, but the gold’s been in the tough times.  They’ve been the making of me.

I’ve been a personal and professional development nerd for 20 years. I’m always learning something … usually multiple somethings. 

It’s an exciting time to be alive … we’re only scratching the surface of human potential. We’ll see massive advances in understanding this incredible technology we’re gifted … our brains, minds, and bodies.

And I fully intend to be smack bang in the middle of the fun!

Life 2.0

When I was a little girl, I never daydreamed of my second marriage ending, but that’s where I found myself in early 2015.  While it should have been a devastating time, I decided to use what I’d learned to ‘create’ instead of ‘ruminate’.

I set about building a life that I loved and was fully responsible for.

By early 2020 I had built a new life, brick by brick. I was a happy, independent woman with a great job at Microsoft.  I knew how to set goals and achieve them, and I was on a great roll with big aspirations.  I was proud of my life and how I showed up in the world.

My life’s biggest challenge

Then, two weeks before New Zealand went into its first Covid lockdown I had a surgery that changed everything in the blink of an eye. I developed a severe nerve pain condition. That was definitely NOT on the vision board.

My continual overworking and stress had led to my body finally saying, 'enough is enough!'. The surgery was the final straw that broke the camel's back.  

As the country went into Level 4 lockdown, I was in my own invention … Level 5 lockdown.  I found it funny that people were moaning about the restrictions.  I was like “you can go for a walk and  to the supermarket?!”.

Microsoft was awesome, supporting me to work from home when I was up to it.   I’ll always be grateful to good people there.

I’m not going to make out like I was Nelson Mandella in his prison cell loving on the whole situation, but I did have lots more good days than bad ones.  My family and friends scraped me off the floor, healed me with love and cheered me on every step of the way.

It was a hard slog, three-year recovery journey, but man I got a PhD in mindset and gratitude.

The call

And then this happened.  You know the pattern … massive life challenge = re-evaluation of life.  Yep, that was me.

This feeling within me to do something truly meaningful with my life was growing by the day.  It was starting to hurt me to ignore it. 

Trouble was, I had no idea what this would look like, or how to get there.

The ‘big leap of faith’

Come mid-2022 I shocked even myself by deciding to take “a year or so off” to create space so I could find my new path. 

I deliberately pushed myself out of my comfort zone, learning and transforming more in that single year than the decade before.

I got stronger and spent many months travelling around my beautiful country, New Zealand.  After visiting more than 50 other countries, I loved seeing the off-the-beaten track gems of my own. 

I went from the lows of an ambulance crew carrying me out of my home on a stretcher, to the highs of climbing mountains.  It’s still on my to-do list to send an email to the surgeon who told me I’d never recover.

Sealy Tarns Track, Aoraki Mount Cook National Park, 2023

The experiment

I never tried to logically nut out my new business or path. My life became an experiment to see if my chosen process of “NOT trying to figure it out” would work.  My formula was:

1. Getting clear on the feelings and building blocks of the life I want.

2. Spending time in nature and giving myself space to see what would drop into my consciousness.

This process was backed by science, but it took guts and belief. Not once did I doubt it would work.

In early August 2023 the energy suddenly shifted from “dreaming and being” to “creating and doing”.  The first sparks of an idea for my own business, Candice Murray Journey, exploded in my head.  My experiment had worked. 

The landing

As I look back on my decision to leave Microsoft, I couldn’t be happier.  I landed exactly where I’m meant to be. But it wasn’t luck. I directed this. It was a controlled landing. It was like I had unknowingly been training for this all my life.

And the feeling of working with people every day to help them overcome their challenges and step into the best versions of themselves?  It’s everything I could have hoped for, and more!

Here’s to your own imperfectly perfect journey,

Candice