Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Follow Your Dreams (part two)


Last Monday, we talked about how sometimes blogging can put pressure on us to follow our dreams.  It's a lovely message, everyone agreed, but what if your dream isn't the same as the one being pushed by most lifestyle bloggers out there - or if you can't yet define your dream?  It's easy to feel intimidated by all of this encouragement because it's so emphatic; we're driven towards our dreams at speed by the galeforce winds of good wishes.

So that's what I want to highlight as (part two) of this series: the idea that achieving your dreams not a race.  Last Thursday, Liz over at explore.dream.discover wrote her own post on following your dreams, and I was fascinated by the comments she received.  One of them included a sentence that perfectly captured what concerns me about all the "break free" rhetoric out there:

I think life is just too short to do ANYTHING that doesn't bring us to the highest level of happiness.

Look, I don't disagree at all, in theory.  Life is too short to be unhappy.  But it takes time to discover what makes us happiest, and I think that we often don't want to afford ourselves that space because we feel that we're not living up to expectations if we don't know what we want right now and/or if we don't start going after it immediately.

There are some amazing bloggers out there - women just like us - who have identified their dreams and followed them through with amazing success.  They've put their noses to the grindstone and made sacrifices and now are working for themselves, doing exactly whatever it is that they want to be doing.  (Almost always, these dreams involve entrepreneurship.)  We look around our community and we see that social media consultant, who quit her day job  at 25 and now has a roster of graphic design and blogging clients; we see that wedding planner, who gave up being a lawyer at 27 and now has a schedule packed with top-tier events; we see that stylist, who came straight out of college and opened her own boutique at 22.  And we think, "What's wrong with me?"

These women, these incredible women, who are absolutely to be held up as an inspiration, are not the rule.  They are the exception to the rule.  I'm only 26, so I'm not completely positive, but I'm pretty sure that our 20s is the time where we're supposed to figure out what we want.  It's a decade for us to stretch, to get comfortable in our own skin, to learn about who we are and who we want to become, both personally and professionally.  Most of us, even if we can identify our dreams, need space and time to achieve them.  (Corner office, I'll be coming for you eventually.  Stay there for me!)  And we need to recognize this, because the pressure we put on ourselves to be happy - not to be happy, actually, but to achieve "the highest level of happiness" - can be limiting.  It can keep us from exploring everything around us, from opening up to new possibilities and welcoming unexpected opportunities, because we think, "There is my dream: I will draw a straight line to it and I'll never look away."

If you know what your dream is and you know how to follow it, I salute you; that is an achievement in and of itself and I wish you the best of luck from the bottom of my heart.  But if you're not on that path - if you haven't found your dream or if you don't know how to get there or if you know it will take time to get there - please believe that it's not a race.  You'll get there.  At your own time and in your own way, you'll get there.  And you'll be happier for it.

18 comments:

  1. this reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. life's a marathon not a sprint. i know that's technically making it a "race" (sorry), but you're right, dreams don't always come and go as fast as a sprint.
    i get so embarrassed when people ask me here "what do you do". I can't legally work until Alex and I are married, so I'm like uhhhhhh, I do nothing! And when I can work, I don't know what I'll be able to do! It seems like so many people have their lives together. But you're right, we'll all get there.... eventually!

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  2. Another great post Betsy :)

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  3. YES! This is a great post Betsy.
    I'm coming to the end of my twenties and I'm finding myself accomplishing a couple of big dreams but stressing over the fact that I'm not sure what my next 'dreams' are. I spent 5 years in my first career which always was a dream of mine but my career has taken a backseat to my dream of traveling. Currently, I'm enjoying the path I'm taking and I should be happy with that but I can't help but wish I had something to be passionate about!

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  4. 'I'm only 26, so I'm not completely positive, but I'm pretty sure that our 20s is the time where we're supposed to figure out what we want. It's a decade for us to stretch, to get comfortable in our own skin, to learn about who we are and who we want to become, both personally and professionally.'


    i identify with this completely. and i couldn't agree more. when i was younger, around 23, i was absolutely freaking out that i didn't know 'what i wanted to do with my life.' now that i'm 26, i've finally grown into the notion of yours 20s being the decision time - the experimentation time - the reflection time.


    this was a wonderful reminder of that.

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  5. thank you. of course it's nice to have it all figured out ASAP, but often that's just not realistic!

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  6. thanks, lady :) I guess that's another question - what do you do once you'd gotten to where you want to be?

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  7. SO true. the journey is as important as the destination, to use another quote!

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  8. Gosh, I love your posts. You're so right. I feel like in the blogging world we are constantly comparing ourselves to others our age, and even younger, when we really need to just focus on what is right for US. I haven't really seen any of these posts that you're talking about, but how anyone could criticise the way that someone is living their life just totally blows my mind.

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  9. I have to say, I hope we can keep figuring out who we are after our twenties, because that leaves me with 2.5 months to get sorted! While it has caused me moments (okay, sometimes days/weeks) of stress at not having "figured it out" by now, I've also learned to relish the many different evolutions of me I've gone through, and opportunities I've had because of them. Sure, I'd love to be waking up every day inspired with a plan and determination, but who knows if/when I'll find what makes me feel completely fulfilled? In the meantime, I'm gonna live the hell out of what I've got.
    This wasn't meant to be as defensive as I'm reading it... I wrote earlier to someone that I probably shouldn't be commenting today because I'm feeling cranky, and I think it's still true :/ I meant to be more "I may be pushing 30, but I'm not gonna settle until I've done my best" kind of commenting.
    Oh, sigh. I'm off for a cuppa.

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  10. This is an extremely well written post. I really like to hear what you have to say.


    www.modernworld4.blogspot.com

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  11. I have to admit that I haven't seen posts that come straight out and say "THIS IS RIGHT AND THIS IS WRONG." but there are tons o' lifestyle bloggers out there who do make it clear that they think working in a "traditional" job is letting down the side, and that's a pressure that (a) I don't agree with, and (b) don't think we need!

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  12. girl, you can be as defensive as you want! though I didn't think you were, anyway :)

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  13. Another great one Betsy! Sure it's wonderful to be able to break free and dream big and live big, but I'm sure lots of these young women have parental safety nets behind them, and not everyone does. So the young women who feel bad about themselves and their lives for not living the fairy tale life of many a lifestyle blogger should heed your words, and know that their time will come too, just in their own time, at their own pace, and in their own way :)

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  14. Ah, okay, good point! yes, I can definitely see that. I <3 my "traditional" job! Even though it's a little nontraditional.

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  15. i used to dream of becoming a crab fisherman. twenty years on i am a crab fisherman. Life could not be more perfect. follow your dreams, follow the crab, follow happiness.

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  16. I used to dream about cramming animals full of sand. people told me they were nightmares, but years later i realised i was dreaming of taxidermy. Now i am a respected taxidermist. for years i have been following my dreams and cramming sand into fishes, cats, bats and lizards. life could not be better.

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