What is holding you back from living the kind of life that you really want to live? When I was a teenager, nothing excited me more than the prospect of publishing a magazine. It wasn’t enough to just write for another publication and call myself a published writer. I tried that; some of my work was published while other pieces were not. Plus, I wanted complete control over both the editorial and the business side of a magazine.
So what did I do? I decided to start my own magazine. When I announced my plan, it was met with a lot of resistance. Still, I had the encouragement of my family and close friends to embark on such a large task, especially at 16 years old. I really had no idea what I was doing so it was scary for me. I believe some people allow fear to hold them back from their life dreams. It is so easy to become comfortable in our everyday lives that we forever dim our light to dream, to step out, see what the end will bring.
I was very scared. I was scared of wasting money (and I didn’t have much at all), scared of friends and family seeing me fail and mostly scared of the naysayers’ “didn’t I tell you?” I still trudged on, researching magazine formats, themes, editorial content, layout, pricing, distribution, etc. One of my high school teachers believed in me so much that she allowed the time I should have been concentrating on class work to focus on building my magazine.
Was the magazine a success? It depends on how you define success. I no longer publish the magazine but at the time, it circulated five states and was sold in five local bookstores. But something bigger happened in my life as a result of publishing the magazine. It gave me voice and encouragement. It also led me to a $20,000 college scholarship. It led me to become a Chips Quinn Scholar and to intern at The Tennessean in Nashville. It led me to an interview with Oprah Winfrey’s father who told me that my drive and ambition reminded him of his daughter. “All you have to do is keep up the momentum,” he said. Those were all life-defining moments for me.
I was so worried about failure and my perceived notion of success that it almost made me stop pursuing this dream. There are many of you who are seeking a major career change in life, or who want to start a business, or pursue a hidden and buried talent, but it’s so much easier to say, “well I’m married now, I have kids now, I’m too old to dream, I don’t have the time, I don’t have the money, I don’t have the patience it would take, it’s not realistic, I don’t have the knowledge somebody else has.” So after all of those excuses, what’s left? Two things: first, the comfort of following that same ole day to day schedule, which may or may not ever encourage growth in your life, and second, what Langston Hughes would call a dream deferred.
Today marks the first day of the rest of your life. Today, as you read these words, commit to changing your own outlook. Don’t walk blindly through each day depending on a set routine. There’s comfort in familiarity but remember – even our comforts could be snatched from us at a moment’s notice. Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind, and opportunity waits for no one. Own it and know it for yourself, that you are destined for great things; you just have to boldly walk over and open the door when it knocks. It’s never too late.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Life Lessons
I look forward to going to church each week because I always leave feeling better about who I am and my place in the world. As we sing and as Pastor Cosby speaks, I am searching for my own personal message: what lesson am I supposed to get from this experience. My spirit is filled and the message prepares me for the week ahead.
Lessons, whether the result of something good or bad, are always there to teach us something about ourselves. I call them life lessons. There is a reason for every single experience that we encounter. If I drive over a nail and get a flat tire, my lesson could simply be a test of patience, especially if I’m in a hurry.
Still, there are bigger lessons and people deal with much larger issues and ask, “why me?” At times, it is so difficult to equate serious situations, serious illness, life or death incidents, with a simple, “it happened for a reason.” I’m reminded many times of what Dr. Maya Angelou says, which is to stop and say “thank you” when you are in the middle of the biggest crises of your life. Whenever you are being hit upside your head and you can’t understand why, she says to say “thank you” because you know that your faith is so strong that whatever you’re going through is only there to teach you more about yourself. On the other side of every storm is a greater sense of joy.
In the meantime, don’t allow that outside experience to define you internally. You are NOT your illness. You are NOT your current state of unemployment. You are NOT the person, the villain, the enemy that others try to characterize you as. You define who you want to be in the world. You define yourself. You were born alone and you will die alone so your life is up to you and how you make it.
I thought about this a couple of weeks ago as I found myself standing face to face with a “larger than life” experience for me. For a second, I wanted to crumble and fold up, but then I heard a voice saying, “how dare you!” It shook me at my core because the voice was right. How dare I focus on this one bad situation when God has given so much to me.
As I think about how situations fell into place for me, and how blessed I really am at this stage in my life, I felt ashamed because I was about to allow one problem to define myself and my character. And to do that would be an insult to the many blessings I have received.
And then I started to think about this even more and I began to relate problems and lessons to my overall purpose in life. When we live our lives with purpose – and we actively participate in each day, we realize we are not defined by any single issue or situation. We realize that we are put on earth for a larger reason and at the core of anything we go through in life, is our method of adapting and moving on. We learn the lesson and then we move on from it. Thank you, God, for this day.
Lessons, whether the result of something good or bad, are always there to teach us something about ourselves. I call them life lessons. There is a reason for every single experience that we encounter. If I drive over a nail and get a flat tire, my lesson could simply be a test of patience, especially if I’m in a hurry.
Still, there are bigger lessons and people deal with much larger issues and ask, “why me?” At times, it is so difficult to equate serious situations, serious illness, life or death incidents, with a simple, “it happened for a reason.” I’m reminded many times of what Dr. Maya Angelou says, which is to stop and say “thank you” when you are in the middle of the biggest crises of your life. Whenever you are being hit upside your head and you can’t understand why, she says to say “thank you” because you know that your faith is so strong that whatever you’re going through is only there to teach you more about yourself. On the other side of every storm is a greater sense of joy.
In the meantime, don’t allow that outside experience to define you internally. You are NOT your illness. You are NOT your current state of unemployment. You are NOT the person, the villain, the enemy that others try to characterize you as. You define who you want to be in the world. You define yourself. You were born alone and you will die alone so your life is up to you and how you make it.
I thought about this a couple of weeks ago as I found myself standing face to face with a “larger than life” experience for me. For a second, I wanted to crumble and fold up, but then I heard a voice saying, “how dare you!” It shook me at my core because the voice was right. How dare I focus on this one bad situation when God has given so much to me.
As I think about how situations fell into place for me, and how blessed I really am at this stage in my life, I felt ashamed because I was about to allow one problem to define myself and my character. And to do that would be an insult to the many blessings I have received.
And then I started to think about this even more and I began to relate problems and lessons to my overall purpose in life. When we live our lives with purpose – and we actively participate in each day, we realize we are not defined by any single issue or situation. We realize that we are put on earth for a larger reason and at the core of anything we go through in life, is our method of adapting and moving on. We learn the lesson and then we move on from it. Thank you, God, for this day.
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