There’s a follow up/additional quote I want to discuss from Saturday’s (I guess now Sunday’s second piece) pertaining to creating the life we want.  For context, the quote I got from Vanessa Fontana was from Stassi Schroeder’s podcast which I only just started listening to because I’d previously liked her work.  The girl may come across as entitled and vapid because of the topics she takes on, however, she takes those topics on seriously and, if anyone spends any time looking at what she creates, they will see the amount of work and effort she actually does put in.  It doesn’t matter if she’s talking about clothes or celebrity gossip, the woman is an multi New York Times best selling author, she hosts multiple podcasts across multiple networks/services, she is/was a TV personality, a model, she has her own holiday for Pete’s sake, and she grew way the fuck up all in the public eye all while becoming a wife and mother, touring her book etc., etc.  No, she isn’t unique in living that type of multi-entrepreneurial type life (and like I talked about the other day, she CHOSE to do all that) but due to the nature of her focus, it shows that even the seemingly insignificant stuff can be taken seriously to create an empire.  Creating the life we want takes work, and that’s the point: no matter what it is we want, there is work involved.

Schroeder-Clark says, “Everything worthwhile is hard, it’s not easy to get everything you always wanted. If it was, everyone would have everything they wanted. It’s difficult, it’s arduous, it’s a pain in the fucking ass, you’re going to deal with strife, with pain, it’s hard.” There are pieces of everything we do that feel more like work or feel more difficult than others. Some people may thing she is a poor example to use to have this discussion since, let’s be honest, she certainly isn’t saving the world, however, I think she is a great example because she shows that hard work and focus, even on the seemingly insignificant, can take us far.  As I spoke about yesterday, alignment brings obstacles at times, even in things others don’t consider important.  It isn’t up to us to judge what’s important or significant.  People could argue that painting is superfluous yet anyone who stands beneath the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling or walks the halls of Versailles, or who looks at the cave paintings of the first humans instantly sees the depth of humanity in that work.  It might not be life-saving, but it is certainly life-giving so it isn’t up to us to judge the significance of anything.  When Kim Kardashian said women don’t know how to work, it infuriated me—and it still does—because her context of work is VASTLY skewed to what other women do so I’m sensitive to the examples we use when it comes to the reality of our daily lives, so I apologize if this still isn’t resonating—I still feel this is timely and useful to hammer home the discussion on working to create the life we want.      

Some of us may look at people like Schroeder-Clark and think she’s a spoiled brat—and she owns that herself as well.  In the spirit of honesty, I understand why people thought the same of me because, on the surface it looked like I had everything I wanted.  The truth was I gave up everything I wanted to make people accept me a certain way—if I gave up my identity, I wanted to control their perception of me.  My frustration came from that sacrifice and I used to think everyone did that—they gave up what they wanted for the sake of others, like life was some giant game of manipulation and I lived that way far longer into adulthood than I care to admit.  No one wants to take advice from a spoiled child.  The truth is, it was never just about me getting what I WANTED, I grew up in a family that demonstrated work/creating an empire brought what we wanted.  I used to think that we were all (every person) meant to have every little thing we ever envisioned in our lives and I spent a lot of time whining about the small pieces that seemed to slip through the cracks for me.  I spent a lot of time angry when every little detail didn’t fall into place.  I spent a lot of time angry at people for getting annoyed with me because I wanted all those details correct.  Looking back I can fully admit I WAS angry/furious when things didn’t go right and I thought I was justified feeling that way because I’d always been taught that when we do what we’re supposed to the result is assured.  I thought assured meant it would turn out exactly as I envisioned so I took the little things as a personal injury or testament that I wouldn’t “get what I wanted.”  I can see where that would stress people out—and it did.  I also realized that a pattern of my younger days was to use that “emotional distress” of not getting my way to justify my anger and it created a pattern of not focusing on the big picture because I wanted the immediate gratification of what I wanted right in that moment—also a misconception Schroeder-Clark faces.

I share all that in this rambling bit of work to say our experience is all relative.  We get what we put into this life and, if we want something specific, it takes specific vision and work to get it.  I share this also as a reminder that “assured” doesn’t mean “exact.”  I 100% see the moments I persisted in something because I thought I was right and it was worth it but I also 100% see when I should have bowed out.  Given time, some of those things were proven true and I was right—and had certain people played along earlier, we would have saved ourselves a ton of time.  That doesn’t make me want to say “I told you so.”  It makes me feel tired.  So this is a reminder that we all need to weigh the worth of what we do with our hearts—life is work no matter what it is.  It isn’t up to someone to determine the value of what we do.  Only we know that value in our hearts.  But we need to know what we do is worth it in order to continue to pursue the vision we hold.  If we get lost along the way, we may need to break again and start to rebuild—and that’s ok.  That’s the arduous nature of getting what we want.  It’s a refining, a redefining, a recreation of what we thought we wanted.  Some days are easier than others because the vision is clearer.  Some days we have to sift through the dust a bit more until we see what we’re working with.  Either way, don’t let the rubble get in our way.  The diamond is still in there.