Sometimes, initiative can be about taking your fear and excuses and kicking them straight to the curb.

About four years ago, I was laboring in a job that wasn’t making me happy. That’s not an uncommon tale. But yet I kept going to work every day, thinking something would change. And it didn’t. And it didn’t.

Until one day I took my best friend to lunch, and she asked me - point blank - why I didn’t just quit. And oh, I had a litany of excuses: money, security, the typical stuff. Until I realized - smack in the middle of that conversation - that nothing was changing without my creating momentum.

So I walked in and quit. On the spot. Defying convention and the meager three months’ income I had in the back. Defying my status as a single mom with a mortgage. Defying my own notions of what kind of a professional I was or should be.

Four years later I’ve launched a successful business, landed a job that taps my passion, written a successful blog, published my first book…and gained a definitive sense that *I* am my own catalyst for change. The initiative I took then for *myself* will always remind me that I’m the one driving this train, and that I’m accountable to the person in the mirror most of all.

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Amber Naslund is a communicator, mom, musician, business strategist, VP Social Strategy for Radian6 and co-author of The NOW Revolution. Most days not in that order.