Google “Finding Yourself”
When you’re feeling lost, what do you do? I’m not sure what you do, but I turn to Google to just get a standard barring and convince myself that I’m not overreacting. Just remember WebMD is not allowed.
The Research
Back to the search, I started with “Finding Myself” which led me to “Who Am I,” “Finding My Purpose,” “How to Figure Out Who I am Outside of My Job Title,” and on and on. I made it down a Google rabbit hole that I just continued down until I found some worksheets that I thought would help me dig deep and find out what I stood for. After finishing the worksheet I made up combining questions from all the different sources I scoured through, I started to figure out who I was at my core. What was the essence of myself without family, friends, my job, my family history, or anything else? If it was just me on a secluded island who was I? What did I love?
Worksheets
I’m a sucker for a good worksheet. I started grabbing questions out of sites that made me think or ones that I immediately didn’t know the answer to. This allowed me to create a worksheet that I could work through for my own sake and hopefully get me closer to finding myself at the true core. Finding yourself is not easy and something that takes more than a week, but I figure it’s gotta be a good place to start.
Jess and a Gut Check
By this time Jess and I have been meeting and gut checking with each other for years now. We hold nothing back and are super honest with each other. She’s more than just a best friend to me, I consider her family. Let’s be honest. So, I send over the lines I’m working on for “my new self” and I get back a text saying that these don’t sound like me. My first reaction is dammit.
As we always do, we elaborate with each other. She started to tell me that while I was hitting on the luxury parts of myself, I was missing the edgy, fun side I have the rebel in me. This made me revisit and examine what I was saying, where I could bend the rules and what I needed to do to inject the rebel side of me that exists.
After all the revisions, questioning myself, doubting myself, hyping myself up, and exploring what things would look like I found a style that fits me. Something that can flow from my everyday life, into my style, and out through my art collections.
External Explorations of Finding Yourself
Now that I’m pretty happy with where I’ve landed on the true me, the core of who I am as a human being. I needed to test it out and make some hard decisions on what it is that I’m doing and what I offer currently. The beauty of this community I’ve been introduced to is when this lockdown started, everyone started saying how can I help? What can I do? Two of my absolute favorite people in the world, offered their time to just talk through what you have going on and give you some advice. I had done the worksheets, I had found myself in a pretty decent place of who I was at my core that made me feel comfortable.
Stephanie Riel
Stephanie is a woman I worked with in another life and has since started her PR firm, called Riel Deal Marketing. She was setting aside some half-hour-long sessions to talk about where you are and what you can do with your business in this current Rona time. I signed up to meet with her and we jumped on a Zoom call.
As we started talking, I realized how all over the place I still was and had to tell myself to calm down, just breathe, and just focus on the important things. Which for me at the time was my big hairy audacious goal of being featured on the cover of vogue and selling my work.
Throughout the time with Stephanie, she helped me find some resources and outline a bit of a plan of action for my goals. This is why having someone from the outside help you with your goals. Their outside-in view might see something you’ve been overlooking because you’re too close.
Teri Fucking Crenshaw
I was listening to a Foundress Instagram Live Teri Crenshaw was on and she mentioned that she was meeting with people for 20 minutes and they could get clarity on one thing they were kind of dealing with. After meeting with Stephanie, a question started entering my brain and nagging at me.
I was saying that I do gold, sign painting, and calligraphy. Then I was thinking about adding chalkboards on top of that. Mostly because the calligraphy was something that is easy for me and chalkboards are something that I can do and be good at. But it all started to feel scattered, even if all of it was surrounded by the core of lettering. But I had to make a decision, did I want to be known for lettering, or try to be known in a world of lettering that is becoming more and more saturated by the day, or did I want to focus and become known for the one single thing I love and get lost in when I’m doing it?
When I write it that way I kind of facepalm because it seems like a stupid question, but at the time when I was asking it, I felt conflicted. The days in between making the appointment and having the conversation with Teri, the universe was giving me hints to the answer.
This was a good thing because when I was on the phone with Teri, I could focus on what comes after the decision was made to drop all the other things that were taking my time instead of just focusing on the gold.
The conversation was nice and so incredibly helpful. Teri shared some of her experiences with me that inspired me to continue down my path confidently. I don’t need all the other things and as I start to just focus on gold exclusively I will lose some but ultimately will attract my true tribe.
Finding Yourself Wrap Up
This week has been a huge work week for me. Work meaning on myself and I am grateful for every moment of it. I used to be the Queen of trying to do anything and now I’m going to be the Queen of Focusing on My Specific Niche. I feel confident in the marching forward with recognition of who I am at my core and what things go with that to allow me to live the role model life daily. It’s going to be a lot of work, but I finally feel confident in moving forward in a decision.
If you’re feeling lost, overwhelmed, or maybe even just a sense of doing things because they are things you “have” to do to keep up with what you’re seeing in the world around you, take a moment for yourself. Take a step back, just breathe, and go back to the core of you. What do you stand for when there is no family, no friends, and no job.
If you’re interested in getting the finding yourself worksheet I developed myself for you, I’m giving it away for free when you join my newsletter.
