Doing hard things. Oof. No ifs, ands or buts about it. There is no question that adulting is hard. When I was rushing to be a grown up (weren’t we all when we were 17ish?) no one told me all of the things I would have to do. All. The. Things. Not only that, now we get to do them in front of everyone else (thank you social media).
I’m annoyed because there are so many coaches, books, blog posts that say follow your passion! Do what you love! Drop your day job to follow your dreams! I am all for figuring out what you love to do, but maybe you should stick around your job while you have bills to pay. Don’t just assume that the universe is going to pick up the tab for your dreams. I know. I’m a bummer sometimes.
I just finished Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and she had some interesting things to say about living a creative life, but most interesting to me was the idea that your creativity can’t be expected to make a living for you. She kept her job/jobs up until she hit mega (unexpected) success with Eat, Pray, Love.
“To yell at your creativity, saying, “YOU MUST EARN MONEY FOR ME!” is sort of like yelling at a cat. It has no idea what you’re talking about, and all you’re doing is scaring it away, because you’re making really loud noises and your face looks weird when you do that.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
Doing Hard Things
When life starts to give you really hard things – illness, family members falling through cracks, depression – yours or someone you love, job loss, medical bills that are out of this world, car wrecks, unplanned babies (love them, but it can be a whoa moment), aging parents, death – you have to deal with them. You don’t often get to just run away and even if you can set boundaries of what you will handle – you still have to do that.
I can do hard things. RT if you can, too! #DoGoodWork
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Life is filled with things you don’t love to do and really hard things. It’s just part of life. We don’t get to just have shiny days with rainbows and lollypops. That would be ridiculous. Part of our journey on this planet is to experience life – all of it – even the hard things. It helps us grow as people and, hopefully, helps us help others who are going through things too.
Doing Hard Things = Personal Brand Development
If you want to think of it as the story to your brand – you can! You have to live life, do hard things, make sacrifices and do things you don’t like to be who you are supposed to be. You are developing an awesome you by doing the hard things. A you that will be authentic, real, and inspiring because you did all of the things.
To help us all out I figured I would start talking about some of the hard things and the things that I’ve learned along the way. After 46 years I’ve learned how to do some of the things and I’m learning the rest of this adulting thing as I go. Some of you got it from your parents… me, not so much. I’m figuring it out one thing at a time.
In the meantime, if a coach, guru, or blog post tells you to shut down your job and go follow your passion for weaving yarn balls please say no. Weave yarn balls (or whatever it is that you are into right now) all you want. Heck, set up an Etsy store and sell them. If they take off like an Elon Musk rocket then you can consider giving up your paycheck. (Remember though, his rocket just crashed on landing… so have a fall back plan – it’s the adult thing to do.)
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