Even when it’s your own family.
So firstly, some back story.
I’ve failed a lot in my lifetime. I dropped out of college, I dropped out of sixth, I dropped out of learning to drive, I had children young, I haven’t travelled, I’ve lived in poverty, I married a partner who isn’t necessarily accepted — a lot of wounds, collected over the past decade, creating scars glinting silver, that I will bare for the rest of my life.
Fast forward to now and my life experiences have shaped me into a person that I would never have dreamed of becoming; I learnt patience through having to sit tight through the storms, I learnt love and compassion, as well as empathy whilst raising my children, I started to value more than just stuff and possessions. I went through a complete metamorphosis.
But the scars are what people see, they are what people know, and it’s never easy trying to push past the disbelief, it can be especially painful when those people are members of your own family, your in-laws or even friends. When people don’t feel like you can do it, when they question your choices, your dreams, and just generally tend not to agree with you, it’s been one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to go through.
Your dreams are not a waste of time.
My dream is to travel the world with my family, to eventually live off grid and to create and make art for a living. Our dreams are never a waste of time, and if like me you’re bold enough to chase after them, you will come up against resistance.
Resistance can take many forms; jealousy, their own conditioning, frustration, but sometimes just sheer narrow mindedness.
If you fail — they will see it.
Failure is a funny thing, its deemed as something that builds strength, and resilience;
‘Each mistake teaches you something new about yourself. There is no failure, remember, except in no longer trying. It is courage to continue that counts.’
Chris Bradford
I myself believe this to all be true, obviously we can’t be perfect first time around, or even the second, or maybe even the 33rd time — there are times where we need to accept its just not meant to be, but there are those times when your guts in your throat (because that’s how much you believe) that you just keep going. When you do fail however, it will get noticed, unfortunately some people revel in being right, in sitting back and seeing your whole world crumble. Others aren’t so obvious and just want the best for you, so when you do slip up it’s best if you return to civilization.
So yeah it’s true, failure can give you some pretty thick skin, but nothing can give you thicker skin than falling on your arse, and defending yourself against the naysayers at the same time.
Even if you succeed, it’s all about luck right?
So you’ve cradled your dreams, they’re there, you haven't let go. Your skin resembles that of an armadillos, you fought through your failures, you kept going and closed your ears to the disbelievers. Then there’s a light, some hope, a breakthrough. But it’s all just luck right? Even when you get to the top, whether it’s a new job, new home or you may have even started up your own financial advisory company from scratch with just a few pounds in your pocket, all that hard work, success, wasn’t down to you, it was your circumstances, or right place, right time, it’s still not that that one brilliant thing came out of you.
For me I moved out, a two year long battle of trying to complete my house sale, with tears and stress that made half my hair fall out, but it was all for a purpose; equity, that we worked for, and built on for over a decade, that was going to pull me out of poverty. But afterwards? We are still seen as poor, and incapable of being smart with our money, something I thought was amazing, merely shrugged off, and left to die at the side of their subconscious.
All that’s left is a choice.
You can either succumb — and believe me I’ve done this so often already just to maintain peace and as I did, dreams withered and died each and every time, as did a part of myself.
Or you can just keep walking, something my husband is particularly good at, he just keeps going, like a rare and beautiful bird that cannot stop flying, his dreams are as pure as breathing is to many, and to stop would be like caging that bird, to never be able to fly again. I hope that one day I’ll soar up into the sky too, and reach my own dreams.
Aspiring to make everything you ever wanted come to fruition will always amount to a degree of negativity; it becomes increasingly, agonising to keep getting up to only withstand all the fire that comes from above.
But it beats sitting in a cage.
