The Courage to Live The Life You Want

Live the life that gives you purpose, passion, and joy

To live a life that YOU feel happy to live must be built on your own beliefs, ideals, and standards. Success, happiness, and self-worth are determined by the goals you set out to achieve and how you spend your time. If today you decided to follow your dreams, what would you do differently?

The average person lives to be 80 years old. When we think about all the possibilities available to us for learning, growing, and overcoming the things that hold us down, imagine what we could create if we spent the right time doing the things that mattered most to us.

To achieve anything in life requires commitment. It means you must hold to what you want to achieve and spend the time going after it. Many people are inspired by what others do, yet they cannot find the motivation to see, live and overcome the things they want to achieve.

I believe fear holds us back from going after the things we want. I also know the importance of having the right accountability and support along the way. I grew up afraid, not thinking I was smart enough and capable of achieving things that others could. I was always timid of others, and I always felt less than those around me.

Schooling was challenging. As a young child, I was diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. I never felt supported. I always believed there was something wrong with me, with my memory and that I could never succeed in education. The belief that I was not good enough, smart enough, and something was wrong with me always led me to give up on myself.

I spent my life afraid, constantly feeling the need to prove myself and my worth. These beliefs led me to alcoholism, drug addiction, and anger. I wanted to be understood. I wanted to have value. I wanted others to know my worth, and it was important to me to feel that I was giving something back in the world.

My passion for learning luckily never faded, yet my belief in myself held me back from wanting to do more. Even though I have spent most of my life reaching for higher levels of achievement, this was to overcome my fear of not doing it.

I fought alcoholism, anger management, a failed divorce, and finally, a business bankruptcy that left me feeling like a failure. Through these experiences and many life lessons, successes, and failures, I learned that my value as a person does not determine my self-worth. I know that success requires risk and that whatever I choose to do with my life will have consequences. I need to prepare myself for as many contingencies as possible, yet know that the further I reach, the bigger the goal I set for myself, the commitment, time, and possibility of not succeeding is always there.

To achieve my goals, I had to re-learn that the process is fascinating, fun and that I have the opportunity to learn about so many things, and at the same time, learn about myself along the way, no matter what the outcomes are.

The most important lesson that changed my viewpoint about myself and life is that no matter what, I need to have the courage to change the things that don't fit my life, the clarity about the commitment, and the focus to follow through with the things I want to do.

When I began to think about all the things possible to learn while having fun in the process, I had more energy, enthusiasm, and joy for the things I wanted to pursue.

Realigning my thinking allowed me to set boundaries and goals that were in line with my values while achieving things without the feeling of needing to please others in the process.

I believe that we can enjoy our lives while taking risks and being outside of our comfort zone. Having courage does not mean that we have to live in fear. We must find the balance between wanting to achieve personal and professional growth and success without surrendering our lives and becoming overworked, overwhelmed, and beaten down in the process.

We all have the opportunity to achieve great things. We must weigh the pros and cons of what we are doing and ensure that the outcomes match what WE want.

Most major careers, schooling, businesses, and opportunities require 10-15 years to achieve competency. If you want to become a musician, doctor, lawyer, therapist, anthropologist, or professional consultant in any industry, you must dedicate the time to becoming good at it.

What do you want to do with your life? Do you need courage, or do you need to make a decision and commitment? The things you continue to think about wanting to do are waiting for you! Are you ready to spend the time to achieve them?