Tag: goals

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My Greatness Far Exceeds Average

May 15, 2014 jcladyluv

“Dare to be unrealistic—Being Realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity”

~Will Smith

I’ve always hated the term average, at least when it referred to me. I think of average as a term to describe someone who is content on things a certain way and never expecting anything greater than that. It is true that I am a person who has a hard time adapting to change and who likes routine but not because I am by any means average. I like to establish some consistency on my journey towards achieving the greatness I know I am destined for. I do believe that having a sense of consistent behavior enables a person to continue to pursue their goals and their dreams. But as far as ever being content, in that regard I welcome change.

I can’t see myself ever just settling for the way someone else tells me things should be, not when I have my own high expectations for where I end up in life. I think that sometimes my expectations for myself might be far too high and that this is the reason that I get so fearful of tackling the unknown, because I am afraid I won’t live up to my own expectations. However, that isn’t a way go about achieving the great things that I am here to do.

People say that some of the things that I dream up in my mind and that I have on my list of goals are far beyond my reach and that they are a bit unrealistic. For a while I believed that they might be right. But what is being realistic really going to get me? Being realistic might maintain my comfort level and keep me in a place of being content but then that’s not what I want. As much as I hate being in a place where I feel unsure and uncomfortable, I realize that often times it is in those moments of being uncomfortable in which I somehow shine and somehow rise above what seems like impossible circumstances.

If I stay “realistic” about things then I will never go after some of these big dreams I have and I will most certainly never achieve the destiny that was meant for me to fulfill. What harm is there in being unrealistic when it comes to your dreams and what you want out of life? After all, it is your life and shouldn’t you want the most that you can get out of it.

I am not here to be average and mediocre. I am not here to satisfy someone else’s standards of living. I am not here to live up to someone else’s low expectations of me. I am here to be great, and to challenge some people’s ideas of what greatness truly is. I am here to change this world in whatever way that I can. I am here to be unrealistic and uncompromising. So the next time someone tells you that what you are aiming for is unrealistic then you tell them, that’s what you’re here for. Take care and shoot for the moon!

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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What’s On the Other Side of Quitting?

May 1, 2014April 30, 2014 jcladyluv

There is nothing that is worth having that comes easy and if it comes too easy then you better beware of the strings that come attached with that feeling of ease. I remind myself of this every time I see someone who (no offense to the less talented) seemingly does not have the talent in one pinky that I have in my whole body achieve their goal (that they just thought up two seconds before actually going for it) practically overnight.

It makes me wonder what the point is of me trying so damn hard and trying to fulfill my purpose because years of dedication still haven’t landed me in the position of the overnight success story. I think about quitting for about 5 seconds (okay sometimes a little longer than that) but then when I think about what is on the other side of me quitting I get right back at it and keep pushing through.

There is no achievement in quitting (unless you’re talking about quitting that job you hate to start the business you love). When you are sitting in the midst of that struggle, and you’re feeling that longing to reach your destination, and you feel like you just can’t wait anymore. Your patience is wearing thin. Just take a minute and think about the other side of the spectrum.

You quitting on your dreams, you essentially quitting on you, leads to a lifetime full of wonder. It leads you to a lifetime full of what ifs and watching everyone reaching their dreams and thinking that should’ve been you. It will forever put you in a place of envisioning something that you just stopped reaching for. It will mean that all of the good in the world, all of the changes that you were supposed to bring about won’t happen now because you quit.

Think about the lives that come after yours that will forever be altered because your dreams didn’t come to fruition and enable them to achieve their dreams. Think of the miracle that achieving your dreams would have brought into someone else’s life if only you had not given up. Think about the fact that victory was probably just around the corner but you just didn’t know it and you gave up right before you could see that light. It costs nothing to dream, to strive for that dream, and to put a plan of action into play in order to achieve that dream. But it could costs everything if you don’t.

You don’t want your legacy to the generation that comes after you to be that you quit and that when things got too hard you found an excuse to give up. Stand up for your dreams, and push your way towards them. Don’t give up. It’s too important for you to reach those goals. Remember it’s not just your life that it affects. It’s the lives of your children, and the generations to come after you. It’s the lives of whoever is meant to be touched by your gift, by your dream, it’s their lives that quitting will affect. When you have a dream, particularly one that services many other people, it is not just about you anymore. So the next time you feel like throwing in the towel take a moment to think about what is really on the other side of quitting.

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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What’s Wrong With Seeing the Glass as Half Full?

April 30, 2014 jcladyluv

I have been called unrealistic at times. I have been called the consummate optimist. I go through things just like anyone else. I have my own personal struggles and things that seem to be working against me. I won’t lie and say that my faith doesn’t get shaken when the whole world seems to be caving in on me and yes on occasion I have fallen into depression because things got too hard for me to really deal with. However, overall, I am a person who sees that glass half full rather then choose to see the glass half empty.

But when there are people in your life who are hell bent on seeing the despair in every single situation what do you do about that? Of course the short and easy answer would be to cut them out of your lives or keep the contact with that person limited. But it’s not so easy when that person is in your family or worse, if that person is your parent. I will never understand how people in your own family can seemingly work against everything that you are trying to accomplish and I have seen people whose families are a true piece of work. A friend of mine once told me some words of advice they received from their pastor that your kin is not always your kind.

Often times the biggest obstacles that we have when we are trying to reach our goals are the very people that we are surrounded by and when it is your family it is not always so easy to separate yourself from them. I believe that in order to be successful you are eventually going to have to remove any toxic people from your life that are not for you and what you are trying to do but the process of removal is extremely difficult when it is family, particularly your parent.

My struggles are not few and they’re not even far between but I choose to see them (most days anyway) as building blocks and stepping stones towards the brightest future that’s possible for me, brighter than even I could ever imagine. Anyone who would rather see my struggles as the beginning of a downward spiral that I am not going to be able to come back from, well they can just keep their distance from me. I don’t need that kind of negative thinking to corrupt me. I battle with my own negative thoughts that pop in my mind from time to time and I don’t need to add anyone else’s.

Where is the harm in me seeing the bright side of things? Why is it that because I don’t view every setback as a complete and total failure that I am suddenly not in touch with reality. One way or the other you have to go after your dreams, even when everything seems like it’s all going down the drain. Even if that means that you can’t include the people closest to you in on that journey. If they are not for you then they are against you. There is no in between. So if you are a glass half full type of person, you are not alone. Take care and stay optimistic!

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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That Inner Voice Is Telling Me Something Different

April 29, 2014 jcladyluv

I stumbled upon a Joel Osteen sermon the other day and he talked about listening to that little voice or that little feeling inside us that is guiding us to what we should be doing. You know that voice. The voice that tells you when something isn’t right or the one that tells you when you should be leery of someone or a certain situation. Sometimes we ignore that voice because we think we’re just being paranoid or we just don’t want to listen to is. Well often times we don’t even realize that that little voice we hear or that feeling of uneasiness that we get that can’t be explained is God guiding us to where he wants us to go.

When I watched this message it came a day or two after a friend of mine advising me that I should basically go against what I know to be right for me so that I can be comfortable for the moment and not be in so much struggle. It came from a place of love (I hope) and not wanting to see me struggle but I keep getting this subtle feeling that that advice just isn’t what is best for me.

Yes it would make things much easier right now. It would give me some solid footing while I still tackled my end goal but in all honestly I think that comfortableness that I would then settle myself into would eventually distract me from my end game. I would get comfortable with being in that ease and that steadiness and then little by little my end goal would get further and further away. It wouldn’t disappear because it is my purpose in this world but it would become faint and a bit of a whisper.

I know myself and while I hate to struggle and would love to get to that place where I can see where all my efforts have gone to, where I can see the fruits of my labor, I need the discomfort to push me the end goal. If I were comfortable in some day to day my dreams would be pushed to the side. I know that they would because it has happened before. It was almost to the point where I never even worked on my dream because I was just trying to stay in that place of being comfortable. I can’t do that again. If I did I am almost positive that my dreams would die and I refuse to let that happen.

That little voice, that little feeling, is what is telling me that the answer to my problems is not to take the easy route, but to tough it out and persevere because the reward for my perseverance is coming. Too many times I have ignored that voice, and the consequences were great. I’m not going to ignore that voice this time. I’m toughing it out and I’m going all in. What has your inner voice been telling you? Are you listening?

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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A Dream Worth Sustaining

April 25, 2014 jcladyluv

I will admit that when the going gets tough I want to get going. I don’t mean that I want to push through and hang in there either. I mean I literally just want to say I’ve had enough, I can only try so much, this must not be meant for me. However when my dream of being a writer comes into play, while I have had those feelings of giving up, my heart, my passion won’t let me.

There is nothing more rewarding in a writer’s career then to have business be doing great and everything is going the way that you want it to. The point where it is hard to be a writer, where it’s almost like you want to ask yourself what the point of it is, is when business is not going as great as you want it to be, or as great as you always envisioned it would be. You always get this picture in your mind, especially when you think of yourself as a pretty awesome writer (in which I do) that everything is going to go smoothly and fall into place just the way that it should. You imagine a booming business in which you have to turn work away because you are just so in demand. When the reality doesn’t match the vision it is difficult to deal with.

My reality, lately, has certainly not lived up to the vision that is in my mind and at times it is almost disheartening and quite frankly almost impossible to push through and keep moving forward. Nothing is going quite the way I planned but I guess if it were easy then it wouldn’t be worth it, right? This weekend I have to work out some ways to readjust my strategy and to think of other ways to turn things around. Maybe all the extra sleep I’ve caught up on this week was to allow me to spend my weekend strategizing until I find something that works. I don’t know what that will be but I know that I haven’t come this far to give up now.

No matter how many steps forward I feel I should be, one thing is for sure, I am much further along in my journey than I would be if I had given up a long time ago. I found this inspirational video done by Morris Chestnut on declaring your dreams that I think will help motivate me through my weekend. Hopefully it will help motivate you through yours as well. Take care and hustle hard!

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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There Are Some Habits That Need to Be Broken

April 23, 2014 jcladyluv

This morning I woke up before my alarm clock even went off. I woke up refreshed and feeling like I had to get busy writing. Of course my morning routine must first require me to get my daughter dressed and ready for school and eating a good breakfast so those immediate desires to write had to be held off for a little while. Now yesterday I posted about 5 things that I needed to work on doing in order to make myself a better writer and I really think that acknowledging those things and putting a plan in motion to work on those things made a big difference.

Yesterday was the most productive day I have had in my writing in a very long time and it felt good. Of course another thing that wasn’t on the list but that I noted needed to be changed was my sleeping habits. I went to bed before midnight last night (which if you know me, you know is damn near a miracle) and that was really early for me. Just in that one day of going to bed at a decent hour (when I actually got tired instead of pushing past my sleepiness and working anyway) I was refreshed and woke up before a clock told me it was time to get up. I don’t feel tired (yet) and I feel energized.

Sometimes we try to resist change thinking that our old patterns will always work for us. My late night hours and all-nighters might have been what I needed to do at one point in time, a long time ago, and they may not have seemed harmful then but I was doing more harm than good trying to maintain those old habits. It is true that old habits do die hard but in order to make progress sometimes they do need to die. I am steadily working on changing some of those habits that just weren’t working for me anymore and I am intrigued to see what making those changes will do to enhance my creativity and my writing career.

Take some time today and evaluate what habits you are holding onto that you may possibly need to break. Are you holding back your own progress by holding onto those habits that you think are still working for you? Make sure that you are forming new habits to match the new levels that you are reaching in your life and in your career. Take care and don’t get stuck on those old habits!

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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Springing Into Overdrive

April 10, 2014April 9, 2014 jcladyluv

While Spring is the time of year where everyone seems to have that sudden bursts of creative energy it seems to be that time of year when I start to reflect on what I haven’t gotten done yet. I know, it seems like a negative thing, it really does. However, if you think about it, it could be the swift kick in the pants that some of us procrastinators (at least me anyway) need to get into higher gear.

I have a lot of things to carry out this year and because I set unbelievably high goals for myself on a yearly basis that even the most brilliant and best-selling novelists might not be able to get achieved in one year, I am realistic enough to know that every single item on that list will most likely not be carried out. However, I do know that over half of the things are able to be completed if I just stop my procrastinating ways and do what I know needs to be done.

What needs to be done is a lot less sleep and a lot of early rising mornings. This is hard for me to fathom because I barely sleep as it is but I remember the days when I used to pull all-nighters and slept even less than I do now and stuff got done then. But I have come to the realization, as May approaches and almost half the year has flown by, that if I don’t start sleeping a lot less in order to work a lot more than I might not even get half the things on my list accomplished. I can’t accept that.

So springing into action is what I will be focusing on and getting into overdrive. Just hope I don’t burn myself out in the process. But all sacrifices will be worth it in the end, right? Well I hope that your creativity has sprung into high gear and that you are getting all that you need to get done. If not, then let’s get moving, the year is only going to move faster from here on out. So stay driven and keep that butt in the chair, writing!

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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I Was This Close To Just Giving Up

April 9, 2014 jcladyluv

I want to give up. I want to just throw my hands up as I am knocked down by life yet again and admit that I’m just plain tired and that I don’t have any fight left in me anymore. I want to just succumb to being average and stop trying to fulfill this extraordinary shit that I thought was my damn purpose in this world. I want to just stop having faith in the future that I can’t see ahead of me because how do I even know that any of that shit is going to happen anyway, just because I believe that is what is meant for me. I want to just say my mother was right and I am never going to amount to anything. I want to just say the hell with everything because I just can’t keep trying anymore and keep continually being disappointed every time I think everything is about to turn the corner and it doesn’t.

But I was reminded by a friend yesterday (we’ll just call him Mr. J) that I can’t think that way. I can’t have a defeatist mind set. I have to just accept what has happened, or the changes that are occurring, especially the changes that aren’t good, determine the solution, and then fix the problem the best way that I can, the best way that I know how. He reminded me that you can’t just let life knock you down and then lay there and not get back up. If I were to do that, then the devil wins and he is smiling because he knows that he overpowered my will to serve out my purpose.

The devil has been extremely busy with me these past few weeks, hell months, and I’ve been told that when the devil is really busy with you, that not only means that you are doing something right but that you have a hell of a victory coming your way. If that is in fact true then my victory is going to be unbelievably sweet. It’s hard when you fall to not just want to stay down because getting back up is hard, particularly when you keep getting knocked back down before you can even catch your breath and get all the way back up.

I couldn’t have wrote this post yesterday because I felt completely defeated and everything in the first paragraph of this post was what I was feeling and what I was going to accept. However I reminded myself this morning that I am not average, nor am I meant to live anything but an extraordinary life. I am not a quitter, I am a fighter by nature and I could never look at myself in the mirror if I didn’t give this absolutely everything that I’ve got and nothing less. My mother is most certainly not right about me because I will amount to everything that God has predestined for me. And I may not have complete and total faith in mankind and the man-made obstacles that are going to fall in my path but I do have absolute faith in God and his power to remove those obstacles when he sees fit.

I would say that I picked a profession that lends nothing but struggle and rejection (at least in the beginning) to it but it was what I truly believe I was placed on this earth to do. It picked me, or should I say God picked it for me. I just had an opportunity that I felt would’ve been changed a lot of things for me, for the better, pretty much snatched away from me. It was made even worse by the fact that the friend who came to me with the project (admittedly because she knew it could possibly be a game changer for me) didn’t fight for me to stay on the project, as I felt she should have. Everyone wants to say that perhaps that was God’s way of saying that opportunity wasn’t meant for me and I’m still very far off from believing that this opportunity wasn’t meant for me but I will say that I am not going to let this new fall keep me down. It is their loss, not mine.

So if you too have been thinking about giving up this week, or this month, I am here to say I understand exactly how you feel. I also know that if you do, you will never forgive yourself and you will always be left with this feeling of what if. The wondering will end up crippling you because you will forever live in the past trying to guess what would’ve happened if you had just hung in there a little longer. Just don’t quit. Don’t give up. Keep fighting because it won’t always be this hard (I have to believe that) and on the day when everything starts to fall in place you will look back on this time period where you had the crazy notion to give up and be thankful that you didn’t. So just hang in there, the victory is coming!

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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Don’t Put a Ceiling Where No Roof Should Be

April 3, 2014 jcladyluv

I was told once (okay well more than once) that I was inspiring. I was told that my words inspired others. I suppose if I weren’t a person who had become accustomed to believing that everything someone says to me is usually a lie, I might believe them. Or at least maybe it wouldn’t have taken me so long to believe them. I got to thinking this morning, if so many people that society considers ordinary because their names are not up on billboards somewhere (yet) can inspire me and get me motivated, then why isn’t it possible that lil ole ordinary me can do the same for someone else.

It makes me more mindful of the work that I am doing, of the words that I am saying and of the persistence that I am putting into getting my goals accomplished because if I can inspire someone, anyone else, to believe in their dreams and to live by their own standards and not the standards placed on them by society, then I will be making great strides in serving the purpose that God put me here on this earth for.

I grew up being told by the one person who was supposed to always believe in me, that I was never going to be able to accomplish anything, that I was never going to reach my destiny because society was never going to let me, and because I wasn’t good enough. I had to somehow keep myself motivated and inspired, to even have the courage to go after my dreams. It’s a lot harder when you don’t have anyone inspiring you or at the very least, cheering you on. So I am glad if there is anybody that I can be an inspiration to and I embrace that responsibility with open arms.

So for any of you out there who is thinking that what they are doing doesn’t matter to anyone and that no one is watching or paying attention. Trust that there is someone that is being inspired by what you are doing, by the persistence that you are showing, by the dream that you are building up. It might even be someone like me. Never underestimate yourself, or the power of your vision, or the effect that you may be having on others. I have been underestimating myself for far too long and it is time that I stop doing that. It’s time that you stop doing it too. Stay inspired and stop putting a ceiling where no roof should be!

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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