Let’s chat a little about courage because following your passions takes a tremendous amount of it. However, let’s not forget that sometimes following your passions looks a lot like a constant stumble forward.
Passion: What Is It?
Passion is the thing that lights you up from the inside. You know, that tingly feeling that starts in your gut and spreads out through your chest and down your arms and legs. Passion feels like a smile that stretches your cheeks so wide that they hurt. Passion is love, highly spirited, and untamed.
Tell me, what is the thing that makes you feel like you can do it for hours upon hours? In the end, do you feel drained or do you feel satisfied and full of accomplishment?
Passion is not the task or job that you sort of like to do nor is it the interest that you forced yourself to like because it makes you a lot of money. No, passion is that thing that you find yourself daydreaming about; you find yourself getting whisked away in the fantasy and suddenly you feel as though everything is right in your grasp.
But then you stop.
Why? Maybe you fear what will happen if you take the leap. Perhaps you’re afraid to be judged by the people around you. Do you doubt your ability to make it work? What was the excuse? Oh right, you’ll start next year because…
The truth is, making the decision to pursue your dreams is freaking scary! But you know what’s scarier? Living your life wondering…what if.
Which is why there’s this little thing called failing forward.
What Does It Mean To Fail Forward?
To fail forward is to start something, no matter how big or small, without any clue what the result will be but instead of giving up, you decide to keep going, keep striving, with the conviction to see it through until completion.
That means, no matter if you stumble and fall, regardless of the naysay and even despite your own doubt and fear, you don’t allow anything to stop you from achieving the goal you set for yourself. And do you know what that takes?
COURAGE. It takes courage to be willing to fail, over and over again. But there’s beauty in failing. There’s beauty in knowing that with every setback, there was a lesson learned that made you stronger, tougher, and fiercer than you were before. As you undertake the journey, as you learn to fall in love with the process, you develop a new appreciation for your inner resilience.
Following your dreams and pursuing your passions is a lesson in self-discovery and self-love.
So I encourage you to take the leap despite the fear.
Here are 3 tools that helped me do the same.
Affirmations
I know, cliché, right? But I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of affirmations. When I first started saying affirmations, like most people, I felt silly.
“Why am I saying these words that I don’t believe?”
But it wasn’t until a full year after I started saying them, that I finally understood what they were doing. You can think of this as ‘my aha moment’. So, let’s break it down, shall we?
To affirm is to agree with and affirmations are constant reminders of a particular fact. In order for you to have the beliefs that you have today, it took constant affirmation to make you believe that you couldn’t pursue your passion. Whether that was in the form of symbols, words, or some other form that consistently drilled those beliefs into your subconscious.
Now that we know how affirmations work, you can use them to help you rewrite your own personal story. Choose positive affirmations that aid you in creating a story that mirrors the life you desire.
Scheduling
Now, while I’m including this as one of the tools that helped me, I think it’s only fair to mention that… I strongly dislike schedules. I’m one of those people who feel like schedules are rigid and unyielding, so for the longest time, I completely disregarded the tool even when subconsciously I knew that I needed some form of organization.
So, why are you even mentioning it, Keaja?
Because…I was wrong. Schedules, while many can be restrictive, have helped provide me with an outline that has allowed me to stay on track with the tasks that I need to complete. I was participating in the vicious cycle of trying to remember everything, forgetting to get something done, getting frustrated, then giving up only to start again with the same bad habits.
Instead, I created lists of tasks that I wanted to get done and I used Notion’s Weekly Agenda to space out my tasks throughout the week. I intentionally leave space on certain days (ex: Wednesday) which creates openings in case I don’t finish all my tasks on a particular day.
I also schedule some time to be creative because it’s so easy to get caught up in all the busy day-to-day life that you forget to give yourself a break. My particularly favorite creative activity is writing stories on Inkitt. If you’d like to read my stories, you can do so here.
Now for the third and final tool, I have for you, my lovelies.
Journaling
The process of writing something down, taking a thought and turning it into physicality has been talked about for ages. To me, it is literally magic.
Not only are you taking focused action by writing your ideas down, but journaling allows you the opportunity to express yourself as you undertake these new trials. It’s a process of getting deep and personal, of self reflection. You’re entering a new phase in your life and you will experience all new feelings and what better way to express them than to write them down so that later, once you’ve gotten through the trials, because you will, you can look back and see how far you’ve come.
I have plenty of journals but my favorite is this one I got from Amazon. I absolutely love the elegant design on the cover and the gold-trimmed pages.
With that said, I wish you all the best as you embark on your journies into following your passions and failing forward. Leave a comment below to let me know what steps you’re going to take to turn your passions into purpose.
