Life, Lately
Introductory musings about personal development, creative expansion, feeling satisfied with less, & finally feeling like I have a handle on life. (Don't tell my 22-year-old self)
Dear Fatima,
Something feels like its shifted in me in the past few years. I’ve seen people joke about their frontal lobe fully developing & clicking into place, but I never thought I would feel such a difference between my early 20s & my late 20s.
I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting recently about the first few years of my entrepreneurship journey and how far I’ve come, despite not making a lot of forward external progress (internal progress is a completely different story). The lofty goals I had as a young entrepreneur at 22 years old still feel so far away as a slightly-less-young entrepreneur of 26. If you told me at 22 years old that I wouldn’t have achieved all of those goals by 26, and worse yet, that I got a dreaded corporate job at 25, I probably wouldn’t be where I am now. I was running on hope & faith at that point, and hearing that I didn’t achieve my amateur idea of success by the ripe old age of 24 or 25 or 26 might have been enough for me to give up my dreams of entrepreneurship entirely. (I’m being so serious right now, lol)
Four years seemed like so much time, & so much work. I was already exhausted & burnt out on being broke. I had a terrible sense of urgency that kept me trudging forward despite the fatigue, and I desperately tried to hide the fact that I was starved for success. I woke up anxious almost every morning, dreading another day of trying to figure out how I was going to avoid defaulting on my student loans. And somehow, simultaneously, I knew that there was nothing else I wanted to do more than this.
Not that I particularly loved the struggle or the havoc that was wreaked on my body by consistently high cortisol levels, but I loved the notion of running my own operation (and still do). I loved the idea of getting to choose every single aspect of my life & work, and I was absolutely terrified of what not doing that would mean for me.
In that way, I had a very all-or-nothing way of thinking. If I wasn’t growing, I was dying. If I wasn’t succeeding, I was failing. And so on and so forth. If I couldn’t achieve what my heroes had achieved by the age of 26, then was I really cut out for this?
I used to talk so much about building a strong foundation for your brand. But looking back, I realize now that I hadn’t built the foundation for myself that I thought I had. It didn’t feel like it then, but my world was so small. I was so eager to succeed, but I lacked the humility & patience to start from the ground up.
I wouldn’t say I was afraid of hard work, but I think I was afraid of working hard and ending up nowhere. Little did I know that when you work hard, you always end up somewhere, even if it’s not the place you originally imagined. Sometimes, it’s just different. Other times though, it’s better.
And while I honor younger Taylor for all the hard work she put in to get me here, I wish I could just shake her & tell her that 4 years is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of our life. Even if I could though, I know she wouldn’t listen—she’s always had this annoying thing where she ignores good advice until it makes sense in retrospect ;)
Sharing all this with her then would have made her feel patronized. Having someone share a similar thought with me now would make me feel less alone—like a kindred spirit. And that’s called growth.
Four years ago, I was always grasping at straws. I was always so hungry for more. Nothing ever felt like enough, & I constantly felt like I was running out of time. It’s easy to drown in the details when you haven’t learned to see the big picture.
But I’m telling you, something has shifted in the past few years. I feel expansive, and I feel more at peace. I feel like I have all the time in the world.
And this feeling would have terrified me as a 22-year-old.
After being immersed in online hustle culture for so long, I would’ve been so in my head about my “lack of motivation.” I wasn’t in a place where I could trust myself to take a step back & enjoy the journey. Hustle & comparison was all I knew, & if I wasn’t driving ahead at full force, that would mean I didn’t want it badly enough. And if I didn’t want it badly enough that I was willing to risk my finances, relationships, & health to succeed, did I even want it at all?
(It is honestly scary to think about how the online coaching industry altered our mindsets sometimes…)
Four years ago, I’d be ashamed to admit that I could be satisfied with less. Now, I’m satisfied with being satisfied with less. I’ve learned to romanticize the ordinary, and now I find so much joy & peace in the little things.
Does that mean I’ve given up my dreams of being a successful entrepreneur? Absolutely not, and especially not with you at my side! But I’ve learned that I can be content with where I am, on the way to where I’m headed. And what is the destination worth without a journey full of joyful memories?
So while I never physically felt my frontal lobe click into place (like so many people on tiktok have claimed…), I have felt a sort of metaphysical expansion, so to speak. I’m no longer running out of time—in fact, I now have an abundance of it. I’m no longer constantly chasing after things I don’t currently have—rather, I’m genuinely grateful for what I do have & I’m content knowing that more is finding its way to me as we speak. I’ve expanded my capacity to hold space for both my peace & my ambitions, where before, it felt like they could not co-exist.
All that to say, I’m truly loving this season of life, and I’m so glad that we can be along for the ride together. Tell me, did you ever feel your frontal lobe click into place? Looking back, can you pinpoint a time in your life where you felt like you had ascended into a different & better version of yourself while still honoring the versions that came before?
With love,
Taylor