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by christina britt lewis  bookshelves before...  so i may have redesigned the bookshelves at my little cottage by the sea. tried not to. lasted almost 2 weeks. sometimes it's hard to differentiate between your inner voice and your inner ocd. tried to force myself to relax, rest, read, write, NOT work. i did come here to write, but writing for me is more therapy than work so that doesn't count. the thing is... when you do what you love for a living... you LOVE to work. work IS my happy place. that does not mean it is always easy. starting our lives over and building this company is the hardest thing tim and i have ever done. but nothing feels more fulfilling than accomplishing something hard. nothing brings more happiness than a job well done. deep satisfaction comes when you can say to the world "look what i made!" we are psyched to teach you how to start your own thing! we can't wait to tell you how to be a voice, not an echo. but a few of you have written and told us you can't find your voice. you don't know what you love. you are all grown up and still don't know what you want to be. you don't need to know how to start, you need to know how to know what to start. we hear you. know you are not alone. i did not rearrange my bedroom growing up. i did not know what i wanted to be. that sense of a "calling" is a very rare thing. for me, it was a choice, not a calling. and there was some trial and error involved. ask yourself these questions... what do you feel naturally good at? what comes easily to you? what subjects did you like most in school and why? what kind of activity are you doing when you lose track of time? when was the last time you felt really proud of yourself and why? there isn't one right answer to anything, but these questions can point you in a good direction. my first attempt at doing what i love was a little catering company. cooking comes easily to me, but i hated working weekends and cooking huge amounts of food. i learned that the thing i love isn't so much the cooking, the thing i love is long candlelit dinners with my people. i learned that i love creating a warm and welcoming environment at home. cracking lobsters at the crack of dawn on a saturday morning until my hands hurt, not so much. ask the people who love you. sometimes they are able to give you insight into the things you can't see for yourself. there are so many great books too. cole loves this one... bornforthisbook.com and please consider this... not everybody wants to work 80 hours a week for themselves to avoid working 40 for someone else. and that's what it takes. it's a dedicate your whole life to it sort of thing. tim has a day job that makes him come alive. kelly could rule the design world on her own, but loves a steady salary and lots of work-free vacations. be easy on yourself if being part of team and not going it on your own is your thing. we need you too. we need all of us. be who you want to be. not who you think you should be. only you know what makes you come alive. if you are waiting for some aha! moment or voice from the sky or sign from above, stop waiting. it doesn't work like that. like just about everything else... this is a choice you make. and only you can make it. so choose. and then start. we'll help you with that part. it's not as hard as it seems. if we can do it, you can totally do it. don't ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive and go do it. because what the world needs is people who have come alive. - howard thurman and us xo... christina and tim Comments are closed.
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