What Will You Choose?

In my last blog post, I talked about decisions. More specifically, I talked about the importance of letting go of the fear of making wrong decisions, and instead, releasing the outcome to the one who is in control.

However, I must note that while yes, I do need to release my need to try and control both anxious feelings and situational outcomes, this DOES NOT give me an excuse to sit back and do nothing while waiting for a miracle to occur in my life.

Following the no-more-worrying attitude, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking, “Well God says don’t worry. He’s got a future for me! So I’m just going to sit back and wait on Him, and not have a care in the world. If it’s meant to be, it will happen anyway.” This thought process is very dangerous to have because doing “nothing” will get you just that, nothing! You can’t sit back and wish for things to happen to you, you must go after them. Otherwise, nothing in your life will change, and you will not experience any substantial growth.

I’ve learned that while I don’t by any means need to worry, I do need to work.

If you are anything like me, hearing the word “work” doesn’t usually produce a happy feeling within you. When I think of work, a few words come to mind: hard, stressful, boring, dreadful, time-consuming…you get the point. Work is not fun!

However, I’ve come to realize that what I do for “work” doesn’t have to follow these terms anymore because now I am only working toward things I love. If I don’t love it, it’s gotta go. I no longer have the time or mental energy to give to things that don’t excite my soul and propel me forward.

Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress, but working hard for something we love is called passion.

I want to be passionate about everything I invest my time in. Why live any other way? Life is too short. I used to think this was a selfish mindset. I used to think it was wrong to love yourself, to put yourself first sometimes. Now I realize why I was never happy and was always feeling mentally and physically drained! It’s because I wasn’t doing what I was meant to, and I was allowing people to suck the life out of me. I had given away everything I had left in me to things I wasn’t passionate about, and I was depleted. This led to a huge amount of anxiety, depression and isolation in my life. It’s not wrong to give to people, in fact I strongly encourage it. But to give, you have to be full yourself first. If you keep on giving without ever filling yourself up, your going to eventually run out of things to give and will wear yourself down in the process.

I have lost a lot of people in my life from allowing myself to finally be who I really am, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. I thought losing them would make me feel lonely and sad, and that’s why I held on for so long. Now that I’ve finally faced my fears and let these people go, I feel happier, my soul feels lighter, and I finally feel free. I’m no longer wasting time giving my energy to people or things that don’t help me grow or to those who bring negativity to my life.

As I said, if we ever want to make our dreams a reality, we have to get to work. And while it doesn’t have to be hard, it can be time-consuming, and may take longer than we would like to manifest. Therefore, something I have to continually ask myself in regards to each of my dreams is: How bad do I want this in my life? Because if I kinda want it to happen, I’m kinda going to put forth the effort to achieve it, and then I’m going to only kinda get some results. I’ve come to find that if I don’t feel like making enough time each day to do something to get me closer to a particular goal, then it probably isn’t really that important to me, and thus, is not worth my time or energy.

A “kinda”  attitude will kill your dreams just as much as doubt will.

How do I know? Because it’s the way I’ve always lived. I’ve always kinda wanted to get in shape. I kinda want to move away. I kinda want to write and start a blog, and the list goes on…

Until I decided I really, truly, wanted these things to happen, they never did. All because I didn’t put forth any long-lasting effort toward accomplishing them. However, once I changed my attitude, and started seeing work as something positive and fun instead of negative and miserable, changing my actions became much easier. The more I changed my actions, the more everything else started to fall into place, and now, I am beginning to finally see my goals manifest in real-life.

When I graduated high school in 2010, I had absolutely no goals, and no idea what I wanted to do. A lot of it was fear-related, but a lot of it was also that I didn’t know myself enough to know what I wanted to do. So I went to school as an undecided major, (which I must add, there is nothing wrong with. I’m glad I started when I did because I was able to complete all the pre-requisite classes I needed to have anyway. Don’t feel ashamed for being unsure!). My thoughts were, “I kinda want to major in _____ but I don’t know,  could I really do that? Me? I’m not good enough, smart enough, talented enough. I kinda see myself graduating, I kinda want a degree…” You can probably see where this was headed. My grades were just average, even though I was capable of making A’s, but I didn’t care. And why? Because I only kinda had a goal. So guess what happened? I dropped out, because I was burned out. It felt pointless, like I was driving on a road going nowhere, so I thought, why bother trying anymore? I just gave up.

However, I eventually decided that enough was enough. I was miserable with my life, and it was headed nowhere I wanted to be. So, despite being terrified, totally unsure, and not at all confident in my abilities whatsoever, I decided to take the jump, and I got back into school. Each day was hard in the beginning. Everything felt overwhelming and my anxiety was sky-high. The only difference was that this time, I really, truly wanted it, and I wasn’t going to let the fear hold me back.

So I let go of control. Control of my anxiety, control of how my body felt, control of the thoughts that entered my mind, and control of the outcomes. I just did my very best everyday; and my best varied from day to day, depending on how anxious I was feeling. But that’s not what was important. What mattered was that I simply made the decision to go after each day with everything I had in me. And now? I’m one semester away from graduating. I currently have a 4.0 for the first time in my life. I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I know I will soon achieve my goal.

In no way am I trying to brag. I just want you to know that this can be you too. I never in a million years thought I could be a teacher or start a blog, because of certain things I thought I lacked, and because of who I thought was. But ever since I changed my thoughts and made the decision to renew my mind daily, my life has been so much better. I just want you to know that if I can do it, then you certainly can too!

Whatever it is that stirs up your heart, whatever you are passionate about, you can do it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have all the answers yet, or don’t know how you will get there. Just take it one day at a time. Give your personal best each day, and always remember, you can’t achieve it all in one day. You will get where you want with this mindset, along with a little bit of patience, effort and commitment. You just have to make that decision. Don’t stay stuck. Put your dreams into action. I know you can’t see all of your steps right now, but trust me, once you take the first one, the second one will appear. Once you take the second step, somehow, the third one will appear. It’s truly amazing to see just how God will show up for you in your life, as long as you take trust Him and take the leap, however small of a leap it may be.

You don’t want to get to the end of your life and wish you had done certain things when you had the chance. You can either live through the pain of hard work on the way to achieving your goals, or you can live with the pain of regret from what you didn’t do. Please, don’t choose the latter! Take the jump. You’ll be so glad you did.

Below is one of my all-time favorite videos about taking risks, stepping out of your comfort zone, overcoming all your fears, and going after your dreams in life. This guy’s message is so amazing and it is what inspired this blog post. I should warn you though- this video might have you in tears by the end! Anyway, I thought I would share for those of you who have yet to see it! Enjoy 🙂

 

As always, feel free to leave a comment or message me if you have something to share or need to talk! ❤

 

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