How to not give up

It seems, to me, that following your dreams is not without challenges. I’m not sure at what point we loaded it all with pressure and expectation, but suddenly dreaming-catching feels like a shit-load of work.

Not to me anymore. I suspect it did. Sorry, I know it did, I just didn’t take time to work out how I made it go away.

At first I couldn’t understand how to find enough people to work with. And it seemed like a lot of work to find them. Then they came. Then I wondered how doing the thing I loved could be so exhausting? And then I shuffled my schedule and tweaked my support system and it eased somewhat. And then I wondered how if it was actually possible to make enough money to live doing what you love? And then I found someone to help me get centred in my value and restructure my business model and it came together. But it didn’t stop there. It doesn’t stop there. You might have to go around the cycle again. You could hit a plateau, the new normal, and panic. You could get stumped by Facebook algorithms. Your support system could change.

Every time I knew there was something I didn’t yet know, or wasn’t yet doing, that if I changed could be different. But I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And when I got fearful I contracted, and when you contract you can’t possibly see any other answers or options, so I kept doing the same thing for a long time. Usually until it became so unsustainable or painful or desperate I had to change it. But very rarely did I change it a moment before. But at the point it had to change I would actually let go and give it up for a moment. Like giving up but just momentarily (without knowing it’s momentarily). And in the letting go and giving it up, I gave it to someone or something else and EVERY TIME I’d get confirmation in some way that I was on the right path. And I would expand (not contract) and I would get an idea or find a teacher or read a passage in a book or hear a song or have a conversation with a friend or a stranger in the street and I would know what to do next.

I believe that nothing is by chance. Not that I believe it’s all mapped out for us, and nothing you do can change that. I just believe that when you expand, and let go and trust in something bigger than yourself that clarity comes and then guidance and the next best step.

And all dreams need a certain blend, a delicate balance of vision and of specificity to make them real. A creative and magical vision mixed up with goals and targets and timeframes and foundations. And then you put it all there, in front of you and not too far away and you let go.

So it seems to not give up you have a give up a little bit.

You have to give up trying to control how and when it happens.

You have to give up knowing exactly what it looks like.

You have give up the hustle for the clients or the answers or the money.

You have to give up what you know and be prepared to see what you don’t know. You have to give up listening to the voice in your head that discourages you, or tries to tell you that you should know how to do this by now.

You have to give up the fear, or at the very least put it in the back seat with a gag on.

And if you can do those things?

You’ll find what you need to not give up on your dream.