“Look at all that you have,” someone once told me this and I nearly spit out my water. Look at all that I have? Do you even understand how HARD I had to work to get here? Do you even understand how hard I WORK RIGHT NOW?
Lucky? My definition of luck is totally different. Luck is something that comes unexpectedly. It’s a win at the lottery or a slot machine. By definition this is what Webster says luck means, “Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions.”
Rather than through one’s own actions…well, I’m clearly not lucky because my way of getting here took more actions than I could even put into this blog post! You’d be here forever, honestly, if I told you all the things I had to do to get here. Right here to this blog post where I remind oyu that I am NOT lucky. I worked really damn hard.
I’d equivalent to climbing a mountain, but sometimes I think that may have been easier.
I had to put so much work into more than my passion, more than a blog post or podcast episode…I had to put so much work into myself and I would say that started with figuring out who I was. I genuinely believe that takes will power. I truly believe putting in the work to figure out who you are is truly a choice.
You don’t stumble upon yourself just as easily as you would by finding a penny on the ground. Finding out who you are and WANTING to see what the TRUE you is like takes some true genuine self reflection. It forces you to go to places you may not want to and acknowledge where you are now versus where you want to go or know you are capable of going.
It forces you to ask yourself things like, “Am I truly happy?” “What will it take for me to get there?” “What can I do to be happy?” “What changes do I need to make to get me to where I know I am capable of?”
I’m not lucky because I asked myself these hard questions. I am not lucky because I wanted to feel better about myself and know who I am. I am not lucky because I knew I was capable of being great and told the mediocre version of myself SEE YOU LATER! It would have been easy to use my past as an excuse. It would have been easy to settle for less. It would have taken a lot less out of me to just say, “I’m giving into the statistics on kids like me and I will just use my pain, hurt, and confusion as a crutch for the rest of my life, but I didn’t. I refused and THAT took some hard work.
Do you see how the grit that came from doing those hard things set me up for where I am now? This doesn’t make me lucky, it makes me a badass!
I know when people say, “You are so lucky,” it is suppose to make me feel “bad” for those who are not where I am. It is suppose to make me think less of myself, be humble and count my blessings and the truth is that I have never been MORE proud of the work I put in to get here. Humble? An antonym for humble is proud and I surely am proud of myself! I have never thought more of myself in my entire life and that makes every mountain and valley WORTH IT. The blessings I am counting are the number of nights I went to bed praying for God to give me the strength to be the girl I am now.
8,214 blessings. 8,214 nights have been spent praying to be where I am now. So, I’m not lucky, I worked really damn hard to get here.