I will start this out with some honesty: THIS IS HARD. I do not mean blogging or writing itself, though they pose their own challenges as well. What I am referring to is just getting this website running, building and maintaining lead generation funnels with social media, and all the while constantly wondering why I am so hard on myself.

The reality is, I am just entering and beginning to invest in and dive into these skills practically. Sure, I may have spent the last few years fantasizing about marketing, how to sell things, what I could sell that doesn’t feel empty, and listening to what I know feels like everyone’s opinion in these spaces to the point I feel like I know it all.

The hard truth of the matter is that during that time, I should’ve been acting and learning. I would have found out a lot sooner how difficult it can be to just host a website when you have never done that before. This goes for all things in life—starting over can present so many difficulties and fears. With those, we as humans also get to experience intrigue, interest, excitement, and abundance for the opportunities that await us.

What skills do I have yet to develop? What mountains can I overcome? How far will this path take me? Am I wasting time? An endless amount of questions lies in front of us in every opportunity that comes to us, no matter how small or big.

For me, it’s throwing caution to the wind and saying I can learn how to create—whether this be in content, blog posts, marketing strategies to companies I support, affiliate sales, or even selling my own products (I am so excited for this as someone pursuing natural, sustaining products to bring to you one day). I have chosen to become a creator. THAT IS HARD, for anyone to stand up at any point in time in their life and try to make the decision to invest in new skills.

This can even cause some to let go of a lot of the skills from how they spent the years of their life leading up to that point. How do you choose to sacrifice income potential that is guaranteed? Someone can be supporting family, friends, their own lifestyle—whatever it may be, you have value built into every small part of your life that defines who you are and your own internal value. This is how I felt and feel looking at society and why people choose to take the paths they do.

Now I know spending portions of time in locations that provide me better ability to live and a higher quality of life sounds amazing, and that’s because it is. Well, for me it is. You can’t forget, though, what that means: not having the full support you could have, telling everyone you care about no, feeling like an outsider, letting go of a lot of the things that built my internal value, trusting blindly, and having faith in myself (God only knows how little faith I had in myself for my first 26 years of life).

Even now I sit here writing, doing all the things I said I would. I made my website look okay enough to allow myself to write a post and do something. I post and am growing my social media accounts slowly but consistently, as that’s the only reference I have, so I keep stepping in that direction—helping and guiding others around me in any way possible, trying to start/support businesses that help people live how they are meant to and deserve to.

But I sit here, and I will not lie to you: sometimes the most self-deprecating, self-loathing, degrading thoughts I personally could imagine. I will not bring to specifics the thoughts I have had, as I believe in a serious value and importance of words to be shared, even just thought. This is not to say my thoughts are worse or better than anyone else’s—they are just my thoughts and experiences that have brought me my own challenges.

I am not in the game of comparison because it has never served me. I don’t know your truth or the truth of anyone else, not your losses nor your victories. What I may determine as a victory or loss for myself is measured in a completely different way for each individual.

Am I in victory right now? I would say yes. That is only due to my belief in wisdom, learning, and experiencing things that are new. On the same coin, yesterday could have been a failure because I did nothing new. For me, THAT’S WHAT MAKES THIS HARD, but it’s also what makes it worth living—the idea that anything could be learned from, built upon. Anything has that potential.

People say they can’t find their purpose, or some drive that fuels them through all the hurdles of life. I am sorry to say that truly doesn’t exist, at least not for me and not for anyone I have ever met—not millionaires, not financially free people, not people who never work. Even drug addicts have to smash face-first into the darkest side of the swinging pendulum as the high wears off. Nobody is immune to the ebb and flow of life: pain and pleasure come, frustration and bliss, challenge and reward.

In my experience, the best thing that one can do is learn to understand how these come to fruition in your everyday life. Once you start to grasp that, leaning into the challenges, frustration, and pain can lend so much strength. In biology, evolution is the change in characteristics of a species. Does that not show you the potential of humans? We can pick how others view us based on how we present ourselves. We can determine our own thoughts, writings, teachings, hobbies, interests, and the food we choose to fuel ourselves with.

I am sure some of you are tired of hearing how much people want to lean on and identify with individual characteristics. It upset me for a long time because I had none of my own—no real hobbies, no real community, no real support. I was going through life seeking validation, attempting to paint on whatever mask the person in front of me wanted in order to have the least friction possible.

In the end, it failed me miserably. What am I saying—in the beginning and the middle, it failed me as well! The truth for me has been that I got that validation sometimes, but everyone saw through me. I lied, crafted stories, and leaned in and out of parts of my life to make them unarguable to someone. I believe my inauthenticity in my early life played a large role in why I didn’t develop many friends, friend groups, or confidence in myself.

I still find those challenges brought to me today. I do my best to navigate them and embrace who I am through them fully. I make mistakes still—I just try to learn from them a little bit faster than I did yesterday. THIS IS HARD. Life is hard, but life can also be rewarding.

If you find yourself looking around wondering where you are, why you struggled for so long, feeling pulled along by other people’s directions, feeling lost, then this is for you. I only write from a place of my own relatable feelings. Everything I say I have lived in my own way.

I think the best thing anyone can do is to invest in themselves a little more. I mean intentional, long-term characteristic changes to the self that you truly desire. Don’t commit to anything less than a year. If you see any progress after a year, never stop. It compounds, and the ball rolls faster over time. Go searching in life. If everything is hard sometimes while you wait, then find the rewards worth waiting for.

Discover what characteristics and attributes make you feel something. For me, some of those are: giving love, spreading abundance, listening to understand. Keep it simple. Find the rewards worth struggling for. Don’t lie to yourself. Always embrace your truth, and be clear and honest with the world around you about what you are doing. Live for yourself so you have the ability to live for those you care about.