Have you ever been so busy you just didn’t know whether you were going up or down?
I have.
I was so busy trying to build a life that was better than the one I had that I didn’t stop long enough to see where I actually was. I didn’t even know what I wanted. I wasn’t sure what I needed.
I just knew I was living my life every day—doing things to help everyone else while not doing much to help myself.
I wasn’t really living my life.
I was surviving my life.
I wasn’t happy with where I was, but I didn’t know what I wanted instead.
I thought I knew when I became a realtor.
I didn’t.
So, I tried interior design.
Nope. That wasn’t it either.
Eventually, I had to slow down long enough to figure out what I actually wanted.
What Did I Really Want?
When I finally slowed down, I realized I didn’t necessarily want a respectable career with an impressive title.
I wanted to do something that would help people stop feeling like they were a nobody.
I had spent much of my life trying to make everyone else happy. Looking back, I can see that I made a lot of decisions based on what I thought other people wanted from me instead of asking myself what I wanted.
I decided it was time to change that.
Now, I wasn’t trying to do something illegal or immoral. 😂 I simply wanted to start making choices for my own life.
And I knew I wanted to help other people realize they could do the same.
I wanted people to know they were here for a purpose. I wanted them to understand that God doesn’t make mistakes, and neither were they some accident that ended up here without value or meaning.
For a long time, though, I think I confused finding the right career with finding my purpose.
I wonder if you’ve ever done that.
I kept thinking, If I can just find the right thing to do, everything will finally make sense.
It didn’t.
Instead, I felt like I was spinning my wheels. I was surviving my life instead of living it.
I was watching my life pass me by—and I was in it.
Maybe Purpose Isn't a Job Title
Maybe purpose isn’t always about what we do for a living.
Maybe it’s about what keeps pulling at our heart no matter what we’re doing.
I knew I wanted to help people, but I still didn’t know exactly what that was supposed to look like.
Should I go back to school and become a psychologist?
Should I keep taking classes and become the best life coach I could be?
What was I supposed to do with this desire to help people?
When I looked back over my life, I started seeing a common thread.
I knew what it felt like to believe I wasn’t good enough.
I knew what it felt like to think I was a nobody.
And I knew what it was like to make decisions based on what other people thought I should do instead of asking myself what I wanted.
I didn’t want other people spending their whole lives doing the same thing.
I wanted people to know they had value. I wanted them to know they were good enough to pursue the life they wanted—not the life everyone else had chosen for them.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that was what kept pulling at my heart.
I wanted to help people figure out what they wanted.
So let me ask you:
Have you been living the life your family wanted for you?
Have you been doing what everyone expected you to do?
Have you built a life that looks perfectly fine from the outside but feels mundane to you on the inside?
Here’s something I’ve learned as I’ve transitioned into different parts of my own life:
We don’t necessarily know what we want right from the start.
Sometimes we have to try a few things.
Sometimes we have to change direction.
Sometimes we discover that something we thought we wanted really isn’t for us at all.
And that's okay.
I Didn't Figure It Out Overnight
I didn’t wake up one morning and suddenly know exactly what I wanted.
It was a process.
I wanted peace in my life.
I wanted to start enjoying my life.
I didn’t want to just survive anymore.
I wanted to live.
So, I started taking classes to learn how I could help other people recognize their worth.
I started taking one step at a time.
I began reaching out to people in different groups. I found a coach who showed me how to start meeting people who could help me grow.
Then, while I was inviting people to attend a class, I met the person who would become my mentor. That relationship eventually helped me publish my first book.
My coach was helping me make connections. My mentor was helping me with my website, the technical side of my business, my writing, and so much more.
The funny thing is, I still didn’t have some big master plan.
One thing just kept leading to another.
The more groups I joined, the more people I met.
The more people I met, the more I learned.
And those relationships helped me see possibilities for my business—and for myself—that I hadn't seen before.
I wrote a book when I never really thought of myself as an author.
My mentor helped me hone my writing.
I started speaking when I never imagined speaking would become part of my life.
People I met along the way helped me develop that part of myself too.
Then I started creating programs because I wanted to take what I had learned and use it to help somebody else.
I believe something happens when we genuinely set out to help other people become better, feel better, and recognize their own worth.
People start showing up who help us become better equipped to help them.
Every step taught me something about myself.
I learned that I was resilient.
I learned that I was pretty good at pivoting—and walking away in style. 😂
And I learned I didn’t have to stop just because one thing didn’t work.
Some things worked.
Some didn’t.
Some things I thought I wanted turned out not to be for me at all.
But there was a difference now.
I was finally making decisions based on the life I wanted to build instead of trying to become who I thought everybody else wanted me to be.
Somewhere Along the Way, I Started Trusting Myself Again
That may have been what I was missing most.
I had to learn to trust myself again.
I believe there comes a point when we have to stop looking outside ourselves for everyone else's approval and start trusting ourselves enough to become the person we want to be.
Not who someone else wants us to be.
Not who we think we're supposed to be.
Who we want to become.
I think that’s one of the biggest differences between surviving your life and actually living it.
When you’re surviving, you’re just trying to get through today.
When you’re living, you start asking what you want tomorrow to look like.
Maybe you don’t know what you want yet.
That’s okay.
You don’t have to have the whole thing figured out.
I certainly didn’t.
You don't need the entire plan before you take the first step.
Maybe you just need to slow down long enough to ask yourself one question:
If nobody else got a vote, what would you want your life to look like?