Scary but worth it

Don’t apply this to horror movies.

It can be difficult to get past the thing that scares you. The longer you put it off the more your reasons not to do it grow.

You come up with excuses like:

I won’t be good at it.

People will laugh.

Someone else would be better suited.

I’ll do it next time.

I didn’t have enough time.

And sometimes those excuses are totally valid but sometimes they’re just easy ways for you to hide away and tell yourself that it’s not possible for you.

If you think you won’t be good at it that’s normal when you’re doing something new and ‘anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you can learn to do it well’ so give yourself time.

If you think people will laugh, let them laugh. The only reason it doesn’t feel good is because you’re paying attention to it, so stop.

If you think someone else would be better, ask yourself why. It’s easy to believe that others are more talented or more capable than you are when the truth could be that you’re just more consumed by fear.

Don’t be so reliant on next time as that time might never come. Plus to quote a song from Cheetah Girls 2 ‘why wait, now is the right time’.

Lastly, not to make you wanna through up by being cliche but we all have 24 hours in a day. Granted you might have kids, a full-time job, be in education and also be a carer to a family member so things might seem impossible but life is as life does.

You have to make the best of your circumstances and find a way to make them work for you.

If not let the dream go.

And so there’s no denying that overcoming your fears can be scary but it’s also worth it.

If that’s not a reason to try, I don’t know what is.

On being content with not becoming a writer

Or at least trying to be.

I remember being around 16 or 17 telling a classmate about my writing hobby and that I had thought of doing it as a career. At the time I was pretty lost with regard to career plans and my civil engineering dream was becoming less and less likely.

My classmate on the other hand was an excellent academic – who went on to study medicine.

He told me (in a roundabout way) that sometimes when you try to turn your hobby into your career it ruins it.

At the time I think I said something like yeah you’re right. But in my head I thought but I wanna be a writer and over half a decade later I still think that.

However, despite wanting to be a writer, I’m now 2 years into a career in transport. For the most part, I’m pretty happy with where I’m at and that has made me realise that more than wanting to be a writer what I really want is to write.

And I do write.

Every.

Single.

Day.

Looking back from a place of lack

It’s more than just comfort and familiarity but it’s both of those things too.

When you move on from something and you haven’t reached the place you moved on to, it’s totally normal to look back at what you left or let go of.

And when you’re in a place of limbo, perhaps feeling a little dissatisfied with where you’re at, you might find yourself looking back from a place of lack.

Then suddenly that thing you chose to leave looks golden and bright. You find yourself wondering why you even moved on in the first place.

But deep down you don’t really want that thing, you just crave certainty. It’s much easier to take a step back to the familiarity of what you know than it is to keep going and venture on into the unknown.

Easy access

Blogs, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Podcasts and Facebook.

There a tonne of ways to access peoples lives and see what they get up to. You might do it with people you know, strangers or people you used to know.

But I think an important question to ask when checking in on other peoples lives is why?

Why do you need to know what this person is up to, what they’re wearing, where they’re going, what they’re buying, how they’re feeling, who they’re spending time with etc.

Granted, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You might be looking at someones outfits for inspiration or maybe you’re just into fashion.

However, I think the problem lies in having access to strangers and people you used to know.

Strangers because having excessive amounts of information about people you don’t know, people that don’t know you exist and people you’ve never met can be unhealthy.

People you used to know because there’s a reason people leave your life and you’re meant to let them go, not hang on by a technological thread (no matter how tempting it gets).

Yes, you have easy access to tonnes of people and it can be a pretty amazing.

But more isn’t always better, sometimes it’s best to just leave it alone.

Good thoughts and bad habits

I think this statement is true for a lot of people.

We all know what we need to do in order to reach our goals or get things done. It’s the doing it part that hold us back.

You’re working on a project and maybe you spend a morning planning and preparing what to work on for the week ahead. But then when it comes down to it you’re scrolling through meme accounts and reading the lyrics to your favourite rap songs.

You’ve got good thoughts, you know what needs to be done.

You’ve got bad habits and you often find yourself procrastinating until it’s too late for things to go well.

There’s a discord between what you know and what you do.

You have to find a way to bring your habits into harmony with your thoughts.

That’s one way to transform your life.

Negative indulgence

Thoughts on how we sometimes make ourselves feel worse.

In a recent moment I found myself choosing to do something that wasn’t making me feel good.

Now the details aren’t important but the lesson I learnt in the moment is.

Imagine you’re doing something and you it doesn’t feel good. On one hand you can stop, let go of the feeling and focus on yourself.

But on the other hand you can negatively indulge and allow yourself to feel bad.

It might seem strange that someone would choose to feel bad. But something I’ve learnt is that when someone has an internal belief they’ll be drawn to things that support that notion.

Take not feeling good enough as an example. If you heard people talking about you saying unkind things and you already feel bad about yourself those words only reaffirm your existing feelings.

But I think if you do feel good enough you’re less likely to give attention to something that goes against how you feel because that isn’t beneficial.

So the next time you find yourself indulging, ask yourself how it’s making you feel.

Who’s it for?

The answer might surprise you, or not.

By ‘it’ I mean this blog, the words, my writing.

I used to think that it was for you, that I was doing this because I had some great message to share with you and that it would hopefully inspire you in some way (or something along those lines).

But then I started reflecting on what I was writing about and how I was feeling each time I let the words pour out.

That’s when I realised that it was for me. I write for myself. Sure I want you to read it and I’m happy when you do but my musings of fear, challenges and the dreamlife are things I write because of the life I have lived.

I find it helpful to write a couple hundred words on overcoming a difficult situation because it serves as a reminder that not only is it possible, but that I’ve actually done it.

And when I think about all the pieces I’ve written it’s a reminder of the journey that I’m on and all the ‘gemms’ I’ve learnt along the way.

Some days the ‘gemm’ might be something I noticed whilst I was on the train and other days it’ll be an epiphany that changes the way I live my life.

And perhaps a few years ago I wouldn’t have had the confidence to share these random short pieces but I’m glad that I decided to start doing it.