STEP 1: FIGURE OUT WHO YOU ARE

I’ve always been such an advocate for people taking a gap year after university or a gap year after high school. Just taking a period of time to learn what you like, learn what turns you on, learn what your values are, learn what you’re inspired by, learn the type of people you enjoy spending your time with, and the types of hobbies that you get lit up by.

The more that you get to know yourself on a deeply personal level, the easier it is going to be for you to find a career that suits you. 

Again, it’s so easy to just get encapsulated with what everybody else is doing or what you think success looks like. But all of this is incredibly unsustainable. 

If you go into a career, even if you become successful financially, you may end up burnt out or miserable if it wasn’t something you were truly passionate about. And, vice versa. Maybe you go into something that you think you’re passionate about but it’s just unsustainable because that passion doesn’t last, maybe it’s just something you’re interested in intermediately. 

Spending the time to truly get to know who you are on the inside is really going to help you, not only be able to better connect with your intuition, and I will tell you that intuition inside of you will give you so many answers about what to do with your life. It will also help you to build up your confidence and allow you to get to know yourself better. So you’ll be able to make better decisions about how to spend the rest of your life. 

There are a couple of things that you can think about when you’re going on a journey to get to know yourself. It really is about following your emotions rather than your thoughts.

When I’m trying to get to know myself and know what I like, what vibe I want for my life. I simply just ask myself:

What are the things that I get motivated by? What are the things that give me those tingly feelings inside? What are the things that when I watch them, listen to them, just make me feel like I can take action?

What are the things that I’m jealous of? When I’m scrolling on social media, who are the people that I’m envious of, and what did they do with their life? What does their life look like?

It’s quite simple to distinguish between jealousy from an inspired perspective and jealousy from a self-conscious perspective. 

If the emotion associated with that experience is negative, then you’re probably feeling self-conscious, like inadequate, that’s not a path to follow. But if you’re feeling jealous, but also feeling expanded, there is a possibility in there. That’s a reason for you to explore that a little bit more. Maybe something in that person is something you can see in yourself, a possibility that you can see for yourself. 

And ultimately, the biggest question that you can ask yourself is just what makes me happy?

I know for me what makes me happy is helping people be connected to people and seeing women do epic badass shit in the world. That’s just what lights me up. That’s what gets me into the flow and I figured that out through getting to know myself and getting to know what makes me feel the best.

Before you even think about trying out a new career or starting a new business, honestly, it is more efficient to take the time to actually get to know yourself before you start asking “what is it that I actually want to do?”.

STEP 2: BUILD YOUR COURAGE + OVERCOME YOUR FEAR OF JUDGMENT

The second thing that you need to do is build up the courage to try things without the fear of judgment. 

The reality is, most women that I know, aren’t starting the business or the career of their dreams because they’re so worried about what everybody else around them is going to think of them. 

So many people have these debilitating thoughts that just hold them back from taking action.

You have to work on overcoming that fear. Because. ultimately, the next step in the piece of the puzzle is really starting to experiment with things. But I’ve seen so many women who don’t even get to that phase because they’re just so paralyzed by the fear of judgment or the fear of what other people are going to think. 

You have to work on overcoming your fear of judgment. Just go out there and start building your own sense of self-love, self-worth and self-confidence. 

Because when you do it is ultimately going to help you to not worry so much about what other people think and take action on the things that are actually going to move you forward.

STEP 3: EXPERIMENTATION

This is the most crucial step in the puzzle.

You’ve done the work to start figuring out what turns you on, what lights you up, what inspires you, what motivates you, what are you jealous of, what you are expanded by and you’ve started working on your fear of judgment, the next step is that you have to be okay with a period of experimentation. 

I know that there’s so much pressure in today’s society to be successful quickly. I think that there’s so much misconception around what success actually looks like. How long it takes, how long it should take in order to be sustainable.

Our attention span is minuscule. And therefore, we want success today. We want it yesterday, to be honest. The reality is, it doesn’t work like that. 

The most sustainably successful people have usually gone on quite a long journey of experimentation, taking their desires and passions and dreams and goals for a test ride. 

Because again, I see so many people hurrying towards success that they’ll almost choose anything. It’s like desperation. It’s like jumping into whichever relationship just comes first. You’ve got to raise your standards a little bit more. And you’ve got to be okay with going on dates with your dream career, testing it out a little bit. And when things don’t serve you, it’s okay to let it go.

What’s the rush? This is your life, you don’t have to have everything figured out yesterday. When you’re thinking about your dream career, you’re thinking about something that you have to do, everybody has to work. That’s just reality, that’s just being an adult, why not do something that you thoroughly enjoy. 

But to get to the point where you do something you thoroughly enjoy, you have to test things out.

Just start creating content online and see if you enjoy doing the research, speaking about it. if you want to go into a career in marketing, do an internship, just test things out. Consume content on the internet and if you can’t consume five to 10 videos in a row, then you’re probably not that passionate.

STEP 4: LET THINGS GO

I think one of the biggest things that hold people back from even starting a business or applying for the job of their dreams is what if it doesn’t work out? What are people gonna think of me if I quit this business? Or if I look for another job? Who cares?!

This is your life! Do you want to be doing something for the rest of your life that you don’t enjoy? Do you want to be holding yourself back from success because you’re afraid that you might quit? 

Who cares if you don’t enjoy something, it’s not the end of the world. I know so many stories of successful entrepreneurs and so many of them tried so many different things before they truly got to the one thing that was right for them, but that means they had to quit. They had to give up on all of those things prior to that.

There’s no point in spending the short amount of time that you have here on this planet doing things that you don’t enjoy. Especially when it comes down to your career. 

It’s not like it was once where there were only a few careers available to us, especially for women. There is literally an abundance of opportunity. You can do anything that you want to do. 

You want to teach people stuff on the internet, you want to sing, you want to pursue music, you want to be an actress, make a YouTube channel, there are just so many things that you can do, and very few gatekeepers standing in the way.

Be okay with this sustainable journey of trying and failing and giving up and trying something else until you find the thing that just works for you.

STEP 5: RESILIENCE

Now, of course, within that, there needs to be a certain level of resilience, which is my last and final point. You can’t just quit on things immediately because they don’t work. 

There’s a big difference between disinterest and apathy and fear. When something’s not working out or when you’re just disinterested in it, you will have a general sense of apathy. You’ll realize that this is just not for me, it’s not lighting me up, it’s not serving me, I don’t really care that there are other people successful in this industry. That is when you know that maybe it’s time to let that thing go, and that’s okay. 

But you’ve also got to weigh that up with am I sabotaging because I’m being lazy, or because I’ve got fear that I’m not going to be successful? If truly in your heart, you can feel that you still really want something but your mind is telling me it’s not really my vibe, that’s a different story altogether. And of course, you need to go back to your personal development work to keep sticking at it. 

If your heart and your intuition is telling you something like I truly want my life to look like x, I want to be in this career, I want to have this business and the people that are succeeding in this area. Gosh, they inspire me but I also am kind of jealous like all of that. And you’ve got to build your personal resilience. 

Success does take time, take it from me, someone who’s been on the internet creating content for over six years now, who has been in my business for four years, he’s been doing marketing and social media since 2013. I promise you that success and good success and sustainable success. It does take time, you just have to build your resilience, you’re going to go through a process of learning. 

You can go into your dream career, you may have to learn new systems, getting along with new people in a new environment and that will take time for you to adjust and get good at what you do. 

If you’re starting a business, maybe you have to start from ground zero and you’ve got no audience and no customers, you’ve got to be okay with just going along with that journey. 

I think we’re all so desperate for success to be this instant thing but it’s just not how it works. Nor do you want it to work like that. Because a lot of people who achieve success too fast burn out too quickly and then have to start from scratch. 

Be okay with the journey, be okay with the process of experimentation and be okay with the period of time where you’re learning and growing, maybe feeling like you’re speaking to no one because there’s nothing wrong with that everybody has been successful has been that it’s all about experimentation. 

Really, at the end of the day, get to know who you are, what you want, what lights you up, what motivates you, what you desire, spend the appropriate amount of time that you need, don’t rush this stuff, okay? 

This is a big decision to make. Get to know yourself and go through the process of self-development. Overcome the fear of judgment, go through a period of experimentation, don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to quit on things but build your resilience. 

This is how you’re truly going to figure out what to do with your life.