What is your biggest hurdle when it comes to living a more joy-filled, adventurous life?
If that question looks familiar, it’s probably because you answered it when joining the Color Outside Facebook Group. I asked this question purposefully, not simply to be nosy, but in an effort to help you get clarity on what’s holding you back. Once you have clarity, the hope is that being in the community with other driven, ambitious women of color will motivate you to create a plan to climb — no, run and jump — over those hurdles.
To be unapologetic. Accept no bullshit. Radiate joy on purpose. Seek soul-stirring adventure.
That’s the goal.
The answers I see to that question are strikingly similar. Time, money, anxiety, not having support to help with children, a demanding career, and simply being burnt out are the most common.
I empathize with each one, as I’ve been there (and still struggle with them individually, from time to time). I wanted to share with you how I work through them.
First, I ask myself two questions.
1. What options are available to me that allow me to go around my hurdles?
2. What’s my plan to tackle getting over my hurdles?
The first question is powerful, as it allows you to recognize that you can STILL have joy and adventure even while having limited time and money, even with no help, a career that is time consuming, etc.
Maybe you start a gratitude journal, or yoga in the mornings, maybe you switch up your morning or night routine so you get more rest, maybe you go on a walk each day to clear your mind and decompress. The point is, you have options.
Question two is empowering. It’s ‘What are you going to do about it?’ in it’s simplest form. Friends, we know that no one is going to come rescue us. We’ve established that the only responsible for saving us is US.
So, if time is your limiting factor — what will you start to say no to?
If money is what’s holding you back — how will you add more income or free up some of your income in order to #treatyoself more often?
If anxiety holds you back, what steps will you (lovingly) take to start working through it?
If you have no support to help with your children, how will you start to build a community and network of support of people you trust?
The point is, there is ALWAYS something you can do to change your circumstances. This is not the age old ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ ideology. No, this is the ‘You are powerful, smart, resourceful…and we are rooting for you,’ ideology.
You are all of those things.
Now it’s time to live like it.
Joyful. Carefree. Adventurous. Unapologetically YOU.
— N.