Your Desires vs Their Opinions- Failure and Success

So recently, life happened to me, a wake up call, a gift in disguise and it happened at the right time... Isn't God such a wonderful master planner?! If you're like me, you are probably full of dreams and aspirations, there's even one particular dream that no matter what you do, no matter how far you run, it haunts you, when you see people who are doing what you dream of doing, that tiny voice comes up in your head telling you, you know you are meant to be doing this right? You know this could be you but you're just afraid (the battle of the mind).

Why are you wasting your life? (the tiny voice continues) you know nothing else can truly give you the fulfillment you desire, you know this! because you have gone from pillar to post, spent years doing what you hate and none of it could compare to the 5 Minutes joy you derived from doing that one thing you love the one time you tried it. But you manage to shut that tiny voice every single time, with thoughts like, this is what society and family expect from me, my life is supposed to take a certain path, I'm supposed to graduate, get a job, get married and have kids *the end* If I deviate from this perfect path and take the risk of following my heart with no telling how it's going to end, family will pressure me, society will frown at me atleast until I become successful at it, but what if I'm not successful? Where do I now start from? How do I now begin to pick up the pieces of my life? Wouldn't it be too late then?

Maybe for example, you've always wanted to be an actor, and one day you were on a date with your #MCM and he mentioned he can never marry an actor and you just jejely respected yourself and got yourself a minimum wage 9-5 Job, so that atleast then he would see you as wife material cos you want to get married, he's your dream man (or so you thought) and ofcourse you're not getting any younger. And yes this issue of biological clock doesn't make it easy to follow your dreams, perhaps you've always wanted to go for a second degree or learn a skill cos you finally discovered who you really want to be and you made a mistake choosing the first course of study, so now you want to go back to school but you're 30years old now and by the time you are done with the second degree, you would be 35. Well, whether you go for the second degree or not, in 5 years' time, you would still be 35, so you better get to stepping!

You may have attempted your dreams before and you failed, now you're afraid to try again but did you really fail? Did you FAIL or did you RUN because you faced a major challenge? Did you put your two feet in the ground and say I'm doing this no matter how hard it gets or were you one leg in and one leg out, always with an escape plan? Telling yourself, if this doesn't work out in a year or two, I'll just go get myself a 9-5 job afterall I went to school and I have job experience or I'll just go do something else. Well, if you already have that mindset then you might as well not bother chasing your dreams, cos if you must succeed at it, then you must plant your two feet in the ground, tell yourself, come rain or sunshine I'm staying and there's no going back. I'll rather go down chasing my dreams than to spend another day doing what I despise in order to look good to the society, family or #MCM. You should tell yourself, look I don't even care if chasing my dream is going to make me wait a little longer to get married or if I'm going to lose my #MCM, I am on this journey to discover myself for myself, Me first this time... every other thing can wait, because sis/bro, you gotta take care of yourself first before you can take care of anyone else.

You have nothing to hide, to prove or to defend about yourself, you owe nothing to no one but you, so JUST BE... You may have made alot of mistakes in the past but forgive yourself, it's time to pick yourself up, get up and get back! There's too much a stake for you to stay down. Start treating yourself how you want to be treated, you have to value yourself first before others can perceive that value and treat you accordingly. You could form the habit of looking yourself in the mirror and telling yourself everyday until you master it- "I am proud of you, I forgive you, I love you, I celebrate you, I commit to you, to our dreams" and don't forget to invest in yourself like kilode... Don't be afraid to spend that money on yourself, go learn that skill, go get that second degree, go do that thing, it's a worthy investment baby! You are worth it a million times over!!! Now go take over the world...