Staying Steady When Everything Shifts
A few years ago, I was supposed to travel to Poland during the summer. This journey mattered deeply to me. It was a way to reconnect with my father, who was born shortly after his Polish parents arrived in France.
He would have wanted to take me there. He died in a plane crash when I was 25.
That summer, I thought I would finally make that journey. But instead, I found myself lying in a hospital bed, severely burned.
What was meant to be a simple lunch at a restaurant turned into a nightmare.
In a matter of seconds, everything shifted. An explosion occurred, and my life changed.
The indescribable pain, the repeated surgeries, the bandages from my chest to my knees, the suffocating heat…
The immobility, the dependence, both hands burned. Seconds that felt like years.
And in the midst of all this, one thought kept repeating:
“This is not where I should be.”
When the Expected Scenario Does Not Play Out
At that moment, I was missing something essential.
I thought I was in the wrong place.
I thought life had made a mistake.
In reality, I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
I was living what I was living, simply because I was living it.
When I booked my flights, sent confirmations, and bought gifts, I thought I had built that future, and that it could not escape me.
Worse, I felt it had been taken from me.
But nothing had been taken.
I had built nothing.
The future owed me nothing.
A construction only becomes real once it is completed. Until then, it is only a projection guiding our actions.
We need these projections to move forward, decide, and act.
The mistake begins when we use that hypothetical future, one that was helping us move forward, against ourselves.
I hurt myself with that imagined future. Unconsciously. And unnecessarily.
Are you, too, hurting yourself in the same way?
When the Trajectory Shifts
When the trajectory shifts, in your life or in your business, the reflex is often the same:
to think that things should not be this way, that this should not be happening now, that you should have done things differently.
Yet, you are exactly where you are supposed to be. And so is your business.
You should not be elsewhere.
You should not be doing something different.
The situation is not meant to be different.
When you plan a trajectory and things do not unfold as expected, it simply reminds you that the future you had imagined was only an illusion.
Not because you did something wrong, but because any anticipation remains uncertain until it becomes reality.
You expected scenario A. You put everything in place for it. And a different scenario emerged.
Do not use scenario A against yourself.
Instead, return to the situation as it is, now. You need yourself at your highest level of awareness, with full clarity.
You are where you are supposed to be.
You are living what you are meant to live.
You are here. And this is where everything begins.
Not Adding Unnecessary Suffering
To support yourself, ask simple questions:
- How can I support myself, here and now?
- What would I say to someone I care about if they were going through this?
- What might this situation reveal in me, and perhaps in others?
What matters is not only what we do, but how we do it, who we are within the situation.
Who do you want to be?
We always have a choice:
to resist, to refuse, to struggle unnecessarily,
or to remain open, curious, and willing to evolve.
And in those moments, everything shifts.
If you are going through a period where everything feels fragile, I support you. Book a conversation.
Stephanie Romeo
Executive Coach
Creator of the KAL™ Method
Host of the French podcast 3 Minutes pour tout changer
