Following your dreams is not for the faint of heart. The truth is a lot of stuff will go right and a lot of stuff will go wrong. At the end of the day, to persevere you have to be able to say, “I’m going for it. I’m taking my leap. F*CK IT.”
Don’t free-fall at 120 mph. Have a parachute handy.
My F*CK IT moments come after consideration, research and asking. In fact, I ask people a lot of things all of the time. People who have succeeded, people who have failed, people who are stagnant – you get the idea – I ask them all sorts of things all of the time. I am bound to make my own mistakes, so to limit my clean up time, I ask others if they did it, how they did it and then, if it’s worth the risk, do it my way. You can’t expect to take a leap and not have some kind of idea where you intend to land and a few of the rocks you might hit on the way down. Jumping with a parachute allows me to pull the ripcord if a decision begins to turn into a free-fall of stupidity.
Following your dreams is harder than you think.
Duh! If it was easy, everyone you met would be doing it. Some people work to get by, some people are in professions because their someone told them it was perfect for them, some are in it for the salary and a very small, small, small, teeny tiny, minuscule amount of people are doing what they feel they were born to do. Following our passions is not easy. It takes plenty of hard work and determination. There are going to be setbacks and misfires and at the end of the day, only you can decide if your happiness and fulfillment is worth it. Get out and immediately find that very small, small, small, teeny tiny, minuscule amount of people who are doing what they feel they were born to do. They are the only ones who truly will understand what you are about to get yourself into and will inspire you when the going gets rough.
I don’t know what it is I really want to do.
Why do you assume that it is one thing? I don’t live my life through one set of eyes. I have kaleidoscope vision. We are not created to be one thing. We are people with many desires. In a given year I have been a mother, a teen mentor, a writer, a publicist, a speaker and more. The mistake I made after college was thinking I had to do or be one thing. I am not talking about splintering your focus so that you are too exhausted to do anything well. Your aim should be living a full life that includes all of the things you care about. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but you, because it’s YOUR life. So stop looking for that one thing to complete you and start asking yourself, “What are things I love doing? If I could get paid for doing something, it would be? If I can carve out an hour of time for myself over the weekend, how will I spend it?” And then, F*CK IT, do it. The longer you sit around thinking about it, the more time passes with you stuck in the same spot.
If you’re worried about what they think, you’re not there yet.
We all at some level like approval. You can sit there and shake your head and say, “not me,” but stop the BS. We like to be rewarded, we like compliments and we generally like when people think favorably of us. As humans we are built that way and it is not a bad thing. However, if that approval or praise you seek ever starts to encroach upon you being who you are, F*CK IT. You cannot, I repeat not, follow your authentic dreams being someone other than yourself. For example, I can go weeks with my head buried in work which results in me not seeing my friends for months. And then suddenly, I’ll come up for air, for recharging, for cocktails, for fun. It’s who I am and I don’t apologize for it because my real friends and family understand. We all have irritating habits, likes or dislikes, places to be or things to do that irritates the crap out of someone close to us. Following your dreams requires a good support system. If they love you, they will understand. If they can’t, F*CK ‘EM.
Around age eight Natasha Clark was told it was a woman’s job to take care of the home and at age 33 she has built a career out of telling women they can do whatever the hell they want. Founder of Lioness, the leading digital magazine for female entrepreneurs, the former news reporter has created a platform to educate, elevate and support female entrepreneurs. In addition to publishing and hosting events for women, Natasha is busy raising a teenage son who also knows how to dust. For more, visit.www.thelionessgroup.com.
Image Credit: www.pinterest.com
