This is probably one of the more personal video blogs I’ve recorded – simply because it shows that I’m right there in the trenches with you guys.
I’m still figuring out my finances on a daily basis.
I’m still paving the way for my career.
I’m still building the side hustling.
I’m still clueless about what I want in a relationship.
I’m still not sure about where I’m going or what I really want to do.
I still get overwhelmed sometimes.
Hell, I’m not even sure where I want to live.
A year ago this would have driven me completely insane. I would have put way too much pressure on myself to make as much money as possible in a month, work my ass off at a job I wasn’t all too happy with and take on way too much all because I thought it would get me closer to my goals.
Granted, I made a lot of progress last year – I got a full time job, I came up with a savings plan, published an ebook and started getting healthy – but it wasn’t all necessarily for the right reasons. It was all because I wasn’t all that happy with where I was at the time and I thought “The more work I do, the better off I’ll be” without realizing that I had taken those words to an unhealthy extreme.
Does this sound familiar to some of my Type-A readers? Or, what about the other approach, where you’re just so overwhelmed that you become stagnant? I bet that covered whoever was missing.
The fact is that I was too busy trying to envision a future self rather than just enjoying the fact that I live in a beautiful vibrant city, my family supports all my whims, I have great friends all over the place, my job is actually pretty great and there’s just a lot of love in my life.
I was focusing on how I had to move back home after college, how all my college friends were getting married (even though I’m comfortable with that not being any where in my near future), how some of my friends were living in incredible cities and traveling the world and how others had gotten a job after college much faster than I had.
I was focusing on past hurt and confusion. I was playing the compare game and I was future tripping, a deadly cocktail for the Quarter Life Crisis.
That is until I woke up one day and decided to do something about it. It wasn’t until January of this year when I realized it’s not necessarily all about the money, it’s not about your job title, it’s not about when you get married and it’s not about running yourself into the ground. Sure, you have to work hard to get where you want in life, but true happiness, the kind of happiness that lasts, isn’t in outward circumstances. True happiness lies within the self.
True happiness is being of service, self-care, and loving everyone as much as you can. Success comes in different forms for different people and love is all around us if we just learn to be receptive to it. Happiness comes from being okay with where you are right now.
So how do we become happy if we’re so far from what we consider ideal? How do we find happiness in everyday life if we’re so overwhelmed by the mountain of stuff we want to do? How do we find happiness if we’re surrounded by fear?
By realizing that everything is progress.
Every step you take to change the conversation in your head, to work toward a big goal, to get your money together or to get healthy is a huge thing to celebrate! Like Jenny blake says in one of her latest interviews, you’re on the playing field instead of sitting in the bleachers.
If you need a bigger kick in the pants or just some incredible inspiration, check out the full interview below. Jenny Blake addresses a lot of what I’ve talked about in this post and certainly a lot of what we all deal with as millenials. Pure gold as usual.
Enjoy!
