I often talk about change a lot. I mentor youth and I have a lot of friends going through so much in their lives who come to me for an ear or advice and often times, the first thing I quote is Winston Churchill: "if you're going through hell, keep going." When your life isn't working, when things are not moving in a positive direction for you, when you can't remember the last time you were happy in a relationship or in life, then you, not the whole entire rest of the world, but you need to figure out how to make changes so that you can start the journey to the next chapter in your life.
When I talk about it, undoubtedly, someone says, "well, you make it seem so easy, like change is easy. I have this, and that problem, and my mom says, and my boyfriend does, and I can't, and etc," but never do I ever say any of this is easy because it's not.
If you are a person who wants easy, stay where you are. Do the same things and just hope things get better or improve for you. Wake up every single morning of your life and complain to everyone who is still willing to listen that the world isn't fair, but when you wake up tomorrow, you'll be in the same place, and the same exact situation, still wondering why nothing is working and nothing is improving, and that's not on the world, that's on you.
I definitely had a plan for my life. I knew in middle school what I wanted to be and with that plan in place, the goals were clear to me, and I chugged along and worked extremely hard to get to that place, to accumulate the accolades, and to be what people expected of me, but the day of my college graduation, I was very unhappy. It was such an incredibly disheartening feeling to be sitting among my peers, all successful in our endeavors to obtain our degrees, and not feel an ounce of joy. I knew even before my college counselor announced to me in her office that I'd completed my credits and had essentially earned my degree with honors, that I wasn't ready for what was beyond the college doors. My degree was not what I wanted to do, but I felt stuck. Everyone was so happy for me, but it didn't feel good.
I struggled hard. I didn't want to go to graduate school and just waste my time, so I had to find a job, and that took months, and then it was just something to pay the bills. Life didn't become easy. The brochures promised that with a college degree under your belt, you get the step up in life. The doors will just swing open and you'll be paid more, and it looks great on resumes, etc, but what I was met with were either you don't have enough experience in whatever the jobs were, or you have too much and we don't want someone who's basically too smart for the job and that they couldn't control. I was in no man's land, and it sucked hard.
After years of slogging through and just doing what had to be done, I'd had enough. I think most people get to this point where they feel like, this, and whatever that this is, isn't working. Then the hard task comes in figuring out how you're going to either make it work or blow it all up and start over again, and I chose the latter. Believe you me, everyone fought me on it. Everyone discouraged me and told me to just put my head back down and stay buried in the sand, and I listened to those voices for a while, but every night, I wasn't happy. Every morning, I wasn't happy, and I was that person not moving, not growing, not changing, and so I started one foot at a time. I left my job, and started on a journey to start my own business.
It was a version of hell how many hours I had to put in. I never seemed to have enough daylight or enough rest at night, but just like that middle schooler I once was, I put my focus on it. So many nights, quitting seemed like the option, but what would that do? I would literally ask myself, if I gave up now, how would my life improve tomorrow, and the answer was always, it wouldn't. I started to think of myself as a person who could do this and I forced that message down my own throat because a lot of times I didn't believe it, but if I put one foot down and followed it with the other, tomorrow and the next, I'd be one step closer and closer and closer to my end game.
This whole process is never going to be easy, whatever it is you are struggling with: family issues, a bad relationship, a crappy job or finding a job, personal issues, wanting to do better and be better for those around you--whatever it is, the change begins with recognizing it's not going to be easy, but that you can start today to work on it, and find your way through your own hell. The process isn't some magic pill where just because you try, things will be perfect---you can't go in expecting everything to just work out for you because you put your hat in the ring, but you can take your lumps along the way and keep going because you want more for you, because you believe you deserve more for you and you are trying to make it so. Don't give up on yourself and believe it's not worth it, because when you quit, you'll never know in the end, what's actually possible for you if only you'd have kept going.
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very nice work :)
thank you