My Life Personally Tailored
It all begins with an idea. Honestly super cheesy, but it is true!
For me, this idea is one of wanting to create a fulfilling, joyful, and beautiful life not only for myself, but for everyone around me and help them with their own journeys.
Welcome to the very beginnings of the written account of my personal journey, a BIG emphasis on ‘journey’ because it definitely isn’t over and is filled with ups, downs, and everything in between.
I hope that in sharing my own life path that it will help you, the reader, take a look at your own journey and see what you feel drawn to, where you feel you need to go, become, or do to not only create your beautiful life, but to help others along your path to succeed in theirs.
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MOST RECENT PIECE OF MY JOURNEY
Now that we got deep real quick because that is how all conversations go with a complete stranger (they usually don’t, but semantics), here is my most recent experience that began as a desire, changed into an idea, and was lead by hope and faith all the way through that became reality.
I believe we all have an innate desire to know more of ourselves, what we can become, and how we can influence the world around us for good.
And I was thinking about it more deeply at the beginning of this year while I attended university to pursue a degree in Graphic Design.
I began intentionally to think about my life, the decisions that lay before me, and what I wanted to do with them, and myself, not only now, but in the future. It is a terrifying feeling to have thousands of options laid out before or maybe the fact there aren’t many choices to make which can also be scary to face.
And I am grateful that I had choices to think over and weigh out, I know that isn’t always the case for people across the globe.
And being human, I felt all the feelings of anxiety and uncertainty as they came to bother me more and more everyday.
It was months of listing out options, seeing the pros and cons of each choice, asking opinions and feedback from people I loved and trusted, and because of my faith (I am Christian) I prayed a lot and counseled with God the most (who has helped me throughout this whole process and my life to be who I am today).
It was overwhelming, I kept trying different paths to only have them not work out or they wouldn’t lead me anywhere. Then I hit the deepest idea that I was nervous to even pursue: upend my life by moving to New York City to pursue the desire to help women and girls through either fashion, graphic design, or diplomacy.
After mulling over the other options, this one kept coming back to me to the point where I saw all sorts of signs that people would have brushed off as coincidences or the fact I was being hyper-focused on it and was a way for me to justify this choice.
All I knew was this felt right and that I needed to live and be in NYC and I knew God knew it. I felt Him encouraging and supporting me to get there.
It was again terrifying, reusing the same adjectives I know, but that is how I initially felt. But the more I put my energy into preparing, learning about housing, and connecting with people who lived there that I didn’t even know, I felt this excitement and push that wouldn’t go away.
The fact I felt joy about it was huge for me because I am a homebody, someone who has to ease into a new change, shift, or up-level. Previous experiences were filled the entire time with anxiety, homesickness, and all of the above.
So this, I knew it was right because I felt drawn to it in a peaceful, hopeful, and joyful way that was constant and steady. The fear was replaced with faith.
For the next few months of preparations including finding a place to live, working to have the income to support me for a time to look for a job out in NYC, navigating feelings and opinions from people around me that fluctuated between supportive and questioning, all of this going on while helping my family with moving and business stuff.
That is a lot. But I knew I could trust God and I had my mother, friends, and other family members behind me. I will always be eternally grateful for each of them for helping me in key ways that made the difference between me getting to NYC than not.
Slowly things fell into place, it was a lot of searching and acting on my end, but I had to be patient with the process. It didn’t fit all nicely together, it was start and stop, pieces would come up, but didn’t necessarily fit into each other, but by the time i planned on moving out, I had the means, the energy, and the ability to move to New York.
It was messy, but I’ve witnessed that even if at the beginning it looks messy, it can turn into something beautiful.
I am aware that this simplified version doesn’t give every single detail, but the principles apply nonetheless.
Each of us can take steps of faith to build a life that reaps the blessings for everyone involved. We can practice trying different paths to see which one will be the best option for us at that moment to move you to the next step of your journey. To work diligently and intentionally to fulfill that choice the best we can even if it doesn’t work out, it helps us get closer to better option.
There is so much learning we can gain from these types of experiences to grow, become, and help others along the way.
So I hope that by reading my story, you got what you needed to take those next steps on your own personal journey, being designed by you.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?'
Actually, who are you not to be?” - Marianne Williamson
XOXO,
CHELSEA