This is two months past due.
I’ve had to make some choices this year after I was slapped in the face by life. I learned the hard way again that you can only go so long adding more and more responsibilities and projects to my life before I burn out or have to remove something. Over the past 6 years, I keep repeating this cycle of becoming more and more excited about new stuff I could do then crashing hard and having to start over again.
I kind of got ahead of it this time. Kind of.
I went into this year on the right track. I was speaking, dedicated to creating regular blog posts and videos for all of you, running my marketing firm with a small number of monthly clients, and having fun with my podcast. It was the perfect balance for me to do what I love with time to invest in other projects. But things can only remain perfect for a certain amount of time. I want you to know that a lot of this is my fault. I don’t like sitting still. I like taking on new challenges and figuring out exciting problems. Doing the same thing every month for a year sounds like torture to me. That why I have periods of getting behind on things like writing (yikes, the last post was March? How did that happen?). I want to do something new which takes me away from what I’m already doing.
I’m getting better. Mostly.
I try not to put so much pressure on myself. I know I’m only 22 and have so much time to figure this out. So many times in the last month I keep repeating my rule “the goal isn’t to be perfect today, but simply better tomorrow” in my talks and podcast. This has mostly been to remind myself of this. I’m a perfectionist, which not only hurts my own mental health, but keeps me from being transparent with all of you, my friends. This is one reason I’m writing this. I want to be more transparent with you even if everything isn’t going great. My goal is to be unashamed to give you a solid hope for your mental health journey. I need to remind myself of that more.
I’m also quite an extreme person. This means I like going all in or do nothing at all. Be past my max stress level or abandon everything. And sometimes, let myself into a state of pure mania or let myself fall back into depression without doing much about it.
I promise I’m doing better.
I write this not to worry you but show you the reality of living with mental illness on top of the drive to succeed at the very top of life. And to wrap up what feels like a journal entry (which is something else I need to incorporate more regularly in my life), I want to guide you through what I’m doing now to show you that I am in fact making moves to be better at this.
I took a step back earlier this year to see what I was doing with my time and energy. Then I asked myself these two questions: Am I passionate about this? And if not, do I need to do it to survive?
What did I eliminate from my life? Doing any kind of monthly social media or marketing work. I could barely get tasks done on time. And while I still enjoy the field of marketing, the grunt work that went on day in and day out was exhausting me without giving the satisfaction of accomplishing something. But, that was my main source of income (this is the reality of some decision I had to make and you’ll have to do the same), so I had to replace it with something. Now I had a challenge to solve, and solve I did.
If you haven’t seen the video yet, I joined the team of eTherapyFinder, a wonderful new company dedicated to making therapy speedily accessible no matter where you are. It’s the perfect compliment to my skills and passions, and I’ve loved the impact we’ve already had in such a short time.
That was exactly what I needed. I’m also flexing my business arm with other great people through different opportunities that come up with coaching, sales, and web design. But that’s all now on a much smaller scale to give me time to breathe. Everything here is going to stay the same though. I’m slowly getting back on regular blog posts (I have some plane rides I’m writing this on right now that gives me a chance to focus on this without being pulled in 50 different directions).
So make sure to catch my next videos and podcast episodes for more regular inspiration, and remember (yeah, remember this, Luke).
Be unashamed.
