Tag: journey

At Times the Horizon Seems So Distant

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Horizon in the distance

“What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the Soul of the world tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up, it’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon’.”

~From “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho

 

I saw the above quote on a friend’s timeline in my seemingly constant Facebook surfing (which is really great for inspiration by the way) and it struck a chord with me. It’s kind of like those quotes that say don’t give up because success is right around the corner except in this quote it is much more profound and hard hitting. I won’t say that I am a person who gives up a lot because I am still not where I thought I would be, and long after the period in which I thought I would be there, and I still get people who tell me to just go back to working a regular job so I could live a much more comfortable lifestyle. Yet here I am, still going for it and pursuing it, one crushing blow after another.

But I’m not going to say that I haven’t had constant moments of doubt and wonder about whether I should give up. That quote hits home with me because I feel like I am constantly being tested, and not to sound too melodramatic, but I feel like the tests come at least every other day and they don’t ever stop. It is said that the bigger the battle the bigger the victory that God has in store for you and I just keep thinking that God must have one (excuse my language) hell of a victory waiting for me at the end of this part of my journey.

I suppose one would think that the constant testing is to make sure that you are absolutely certain about what it is that you say you want, what you say your dream is. We as a society tend to expect immediate results a lot. We want what we want, when we want it, and exactly the way we want it to happen. I suppose it is natural to have a plan and to actually expect that plan to go accordingly but in such an unpredictable world with surprises at every turn, we can’t allow ourselves to be so thrown off course that we simply stop moving.

I sometimes feel like this journey for me is like a trek through the desert. I keep seeing mirages of what I think is about to be my breakthrough. I see glimpses in the distance of what my future will look like but those glimpses seem like they will take forever to reach. Oftentimes it seems like I am standing in some figurative form of quicksand where I am sinking faster than I can find some far away branch to grab ahold of. And even when some spiritually appearing hand pulls me out of that quicksand the well of water sitting underneath the shady palm trees (my dream) still seems so far off in the distance that I feel like just giving up and succumbing to dehydration and heat exhaustion.

But I am still here. Through every test that the Soul of the world seems to be giving me, I am still making my way through that desert. I may still be seeing mirages far off in the distance but I know that the well of water and the shady palm trees are there and I will get there, eventually. I don’t want to be one of those that collapses along the way and finds the well and palm trees right at the edge of their fingertips at the point that they gave up. I plan on being the one who survives every tests and who makes it to the well. And if that well is dry, I plan on being the one who treks on until I find the well that is full, of all my dreams and all that God has in store for me. I am told that I am stronger than I give myself credit for and looking back on just how far I have come in this journey of mine, without giving up even once, I am starting to realize that maybe they are right.

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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Staying Focused on My Own Journey

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My own Journey

An old friend of mine posted some words of wisdom on his Facebook page today that resonated with me. His post started off with these words “Ignore the comparisons and expectations knocking at your door. The only person that you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday. Prove yourself to yourself, not others.” It went on to say more but I stopped there because it dawned on me that while I have gotten out of the practice of trying to impress and prove something to other people around me, I haven’t quite managed to prove the things to myself that I need to. I haven’t quite lived up to my own expectations, both of others and myself.

I have a huge amount of goals for a huge, damn near impossible dream that I have had since I was younger, and where I am now at this exact point in time is not where I imagined I would be right now. My own expectations have not been met and the terrible realization is that I only have myself to blame for that. I have something to prove to myself about my real intentions towards my dreams and about my true ability to be able to get what I need to get done to accomplish those goals.

I make comparisons all the time (subconsciously) about how far someone else has come and about the life some others around me may have. It’s not that I want their life per say, but rather that I see that they are where they want to be in their life and I am not quite there yet. But there’s this quote that reminds me that I can’t drive myself crazy with where someone else stands in their life. It says “don’t compare your chapter 1 to someone else’s chapter 20” and I am guilty of doing that a lot. I take someone else who is in their home stretch of their journey and compare it to me being in the middle of mine.

I have to keep in mind that I’m just in the middle of my journey and I haven’t even begun to realize the blessings that are going to come my way. When that frustration starts to set in and I look around at everyone’s seemingly perfect circumstances I have to be reminded that I don’t know what is going on behind their side of the fence. Their grass might not be as green on their side as it appears and as long as I continue to water my side of the fence my grass has the potential to be just as green, if not brighter.

So I’m going to stop looking over on other people’s paths and stay focused on mine. I can’t afford to be forced into a detour because I simply wasn’t focused on where I was going. I’m going to work hard on staying in my lane and looking straight ahead. What’s for me is on my side of the fence, not over in someone else’s yard.

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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Fear Will Not Defeat Me

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Fear will not defeat me 2

I admittedly was a tad bit naïve to think that this going back to basics challenge was going to allow me to somehow negate the usage of the computer completely. Obviously my research is done using the computer, my social media marketing is done with the use of the computer, and of course eventually even what I write on paper has to be typed up on the computer at some point, perfect example, this blog post. I know my plan was to go paperless for the month but I can’t get away from the computer at all. However, I have been writing more using my paper and pen and writing out ideas and plans and it was has been more than I have worked on in a while.

I am discovering things that maybe subconsciously I already realized but just didn’t want to admit to. I always knew I struggled with my fear. It can be quite paralyzing at times. And while I also knew that confidence was another issue of mine, I didn’t even factor in courage into this journey of mine and whether I have enough of it to reach my destiny. I have always said that I may not be confident in myself in regards to anything else but when it came to writing, I was confident in my ability to write.

What I realize now is that this was a lie I was telling to myself. If in fact I was as confident in my ability to write as I have always claimed to be then why do I always stop short of submitting my work and putting my work out there? As I am finding my creative spark again and having a bit of a creative breakthrough I am getting real with myself and the fact that I have to just let go of all of this fear and embrace some courage and confidence. The courage to put my work out there to as many people as humanly possible, and confidence in the fact that although everyone may not love my work, my writing is still good enough.

I have been defeated by so many people and so many things and I think that all of the defeats stacking up really started getting to me and took the fear that I’ve always had and elevated it to the level of being paralyzed by it. Most of all I am realizing that what I have been defeated by most of all is myself and my own negative thoughts swirling around inside my head. So I am going to let the fear go (it will not happen overnight) and just trust in the talent that God instilled in me and trust the purpose that he gave me and embrace everything that lies in store for the journey to my dreams, good or bad.

Yes I included the bad because I know that without the obstacles that are thrown at you along the way you may never know and tap into just how strong you really are. You can’t have a testimony to share with the world without first being tested. I am tired of letting the fear of these obstacles put me in a state of perpetual stillness and I am ready to get moving towards my destiny. I hope that none of you are stuck standing still but if you are, let’s get moving together.

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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What Determines Your Success?

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Definition of success

I read an article the other day about signs that you are in fact succeeding in life even if you feel as though you are not. Before I even began to read it I was already guessing that more than half of the signs on their list were going to be things that I have not accomplished yet. I have this idea set up in my mind of what determines if someone is successful and in my eyes I am nowhere near the level of success that I had hoped I would be by now or that I think I should be by now. I have a long way to go before I get half of the things on my list accomplished. However, after reading this article I can see that maybe my evaluation of what is successful was a little off.

This article described being a success as being someone who has had growth in themselves, in their personal and professional life, in how they deal with things. It described success as having family and people that cared about them and people to lean on for support. It described being able to feel like home in whatever place you reside and raising the standards you have for yourself. It described a great deal of things that I never even thought would be someone’s idea of successful, it certainly wasn’t what I had in my mind under that label.

I’ve never been all about making money but let’s be honest, when most people think of their level of success, money is certainly a factor. It was never my absolute desire to be rich with massive amounts of money (not that I would turn it down if the opportunity presented itself) but to live a life that’s comfortable where I don’t have to worry about having enough for me and my child, yes that would be nice. When I ran down the list in the article I realized that 20 out of the 25 things on it I could say were true for myself. It made me sit back and think that maybe I’m not failing at things as badly as I often times feel that I am and maybe what I see as not having it all together, someone else sees as having it together enough for the moment I am in.

I think that sometimes we get these ideas in our heads of what the standard of success and fulfillment are and we don’t realize sometimes that the little things that we are taking for granted could be so many other people’s ideas of what success is. We think that simple is not the answer but sometimes in this life, in the moment that we are in, simple is more than enough. I think that I am going to start viewing my ideas of what having it all really means and whether or not having it all is truly someone having it all. All of what would be the important question.

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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There Are No Other Options

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There are no other options

It’s a sad thing that there are some people in this world who only want to see you fail. They want to see you as someone you’re not so that they can justify wanting you to have nothing and no one. They will see you with a glimpse of something good, whether it be an innocent friendship or a direction for your life that they may not have, and they want to rip it away from you so that they can have the satisfaction of seeing you knocked down. I don’t understand these people. I don’t operate that way and I don’t understand the people that do.

I am not a person who is very open or trusting and it is true that I don’t have a lot of friends but that is because I’ve had a lot in the past and have been burned by so many that I would just rather not go through the trouble. I think that it is a better thing to have one or two really good friends rather than a whole lot of false ones. I am guarded, extremely guarded, but when I do let people in, then I am a very all in type of person no matter what the nature of the relationship, whether it is business, romantic, or just a friendship.

I also don’t share my dreams with just anyone either, because too many people won’t understand it and they will find ways to trivialize it, or to try and rationalize it and there just simply aren’t any. I am getting used to being the target for people, to people always taking my weaknesses and using them against me, to people taking the things I value the most and treasure deeply and basically demolishing them the best way that they can.

I think the more that people try to knock me down and the more times I have to keep pulling myself back up (and I admittedly stay down way longer than I should) the more I realize that I don’t have any other choice than to succeed at what it is that I am striving to do with my business and with my life in general. I am not only motivated by passion for what I want to do in my business but also by the people that desire to see that I never have it.

I refuse to give the people who want to see me down to nothing the satisfaction of seeing me fail. I just can’t let that be an option. So the only other option I have is to succeed. If that means that I have to be a hardened person who everyone abandons then so be it because when I get to where it is that I am going everyone who ever doubted me, who ever ridiculed me, who ever purposely tried to destroy me, and whoever abandoned me when I needed them the most, well they are going to be the ones who wished that they had held on for the ride. I will not give them the satisfaction. Failure is not an option.

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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The Circle Surrounding You

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The circle around you

Last week was a very blatant reminder of why I keep my walls up and am not so quick to let just anybody in my little bubble. I get hassled all the time about the need to trust people and allow people to get close to me. However, some things transpired last week with the few people that I have recently let get close to me which quickly knocked me over the head with a reminder that I just can’t trust a whole lot of people.

I hear all the time that maybe people are so spiteful towards me because there’s something that they see in me that they are jealous or envious of and I could never wrap my mind around that concept because I always feel that there are so many things that I lack. I mean yes I have a lot going for me, and while my confidence does waiver from day to day sometimes from the ultimate low to other days being at the ultimate high, I still have a stronghold on what my dreams and my purpose here are and I’m not giving up until I get there. But I never think of those things as something that anyone would have to be envious of.

I am envious of the people that have it already together and are where they always wanted to be. However, I have to remind myself that people’s perception of things, my perception of things, are not always evenly linked. What I see as them having it together might be them trying not to let people see that they are falling apart and what I see in myself as falling apart might be, in their eyes, me getting it together slowly but with a solid foundation. A solid foundation is everything and can often times be the difference between you having everything you wanted for only a moment’s time and you having everything you wanted for a lifetime.

People say that you should only really depend on yourself and I never really wanted to let myself get so cynical where I truly felt that way but I am starting to understand what is meant by that. It’s not saying that you don’t need someone around you, someone in your life to lean on from time to time, but rather that you have to be able to lean on yourself, to believe in yourself, and to build your own confidence up for yourself and that you can’t expect validation from others and for them to believe in you for you. Essentially, your circle can’t be filled with people who aren’t for you and who don’t push you to be for yourself. Also with that, you can’t rely on the circle that surrounds you for something that you have to find within yourself.

When you can’t find it in yourself first then you start to let people in your circle who are not really for you and who don’t want to see you move forward and they will cause you to second guess yourself and to rethink what your purpose really is. Don’t get so caught up in having a circle of people around you that you can’t see who in that circle is truly for you and who is against you. Don’t try and make your circle fill the void of what you are looking for within yourself because then you end up trying to please them instead of fulfilling your purpose.

Watch closely the people who are around you. Are they like-minded people? Are they rooting for you? Are they challenging you to move forward? Or are they making you question everything that you already know in your heart is meant for you? Think about who you are allowing yourself to trust and decide have they earned it or are they just trying to distract you from your purpose?

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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Where There is Victory There Are Always Battle Scars

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Battle Scars

I stay in my own head a lot. I talk myself out of a lot of things, out of opportunities. I tell myself that it won’t happen before even knowing whether it will or not. I convince myself that I’m not good enough or deserving enough. It’s an extremely terrible habit and one that developed from the negative words cast on me in my childhood, but it’s one that I am trying to break. I think that I do that so that if things don’t happen the way I wanted or expected them to I will be less devastated or disappointed by it. However, I have discovered that rejection is not any less painful or devastating just because you prepped your mind for it.

In all actuality, I have realized that that is just a defense mechanism that I need to get away from. It is my subconscious way of sabotaging myself that I didn’t even know I was doing until I started to really try and work on myself and building up that confidence that I seem to lack. I struggle to live up to the potential that I know I have because I so desperately need not to fail. When you feel like you have been failing most of your life (even if that’s not the reality) the last thing you want to continue to do is fail. However, when I put into perspective that not reaching a particular goal is not failure but rather a stepping stone on the way to succeeding then it almost makes failing seem like more of an accomplishment.

When I think of all of the success stories that inspire me, people who have gotten to the place where I am journeying to, I am reminded of all of their failures that were made on their way to finally succeeding. Without those failures they may have never actually achieved the things they set out to do and they most certainly would not appreciate all that it took to get to the point they are at now. I guess it is humbling to get to the top of a jagged road with a lot of bumps, bruises, potholes, and other obstacles thrown in your way rather than the straight road with no detours that you had in your head when you dreamt up those dreams.

I guess I have to stop asking myself do I really have what it takes to make this dream happen and give myself permission to let go of that idea of a straight road, permission to embrace all of the bruises and bumps and potholes as battle scars to be proud of for when I do reach the destination on my journey. I guess I have to give myself credit for how quickly I bounce back and recover from those moments of so-called failures and view them as accomplishing the goal of not staying down when I get knocked on my butt. It’s not the fall that will cripple a person’s drive to succeed, but rather it is how long it takes them to get back up and get back at the grind of making that dream happen.

The most important thing is that you get up and don’t just lay there waiting for someone else to help you back to your feet. Waiting on anyone else to help you with your dreams could result in you never getting back up to move towards them. Take those battle scars that you are accumulating and wear them proudly because when you look back on your journey those scars are going to be there to remind you of just how badly you want to succeed and of everything you went through to make it happen. Those reflections will ensure that you never take for granted the journey you took and that you appreciate even more the victory that has taken place.

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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What Does the Term “Being A Real Writer” Mean Anyway?

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Are you a real writer

Some days I wonder, if I don’t write that day does it make me any less of a writer?  There are those that will tell you that you must write every single day, whether it be one page, one paragraph, or even just one sentence.  For years I felt that the periods of time when I was blocked and when I wasn’t able to write anything (not anything of any merit at least) that I was no longer able to consider myself a real writer.  There was even a period of time, after having my first novel published, that I felt that because it didn’t do well that I wasn’t really a writer.

I often forget about the poetry book that I self-published and don’t even count that, although I should, just because at the time I didn’t really possess the tools that I needed to really be able to promote myself and my work.  So throughout the years I have discounted my work (some of it anyway), and I have considered the times where I slacked off a bit as days when I wasn’t to be considered as a real writer.  But who is to determine what a real writer is except for the writer themselves.

There’s this line in the movie Sister Act 2 where she told the young lady if you wake up every day and all you can think about doing is singing, then you are supposed to be singer.  The same holds true for any chosen profession including writing.  That is all that I think about.  My craft, how I can make my writing better, how I can promote my writing and myself better, what I want my writing and my media company to be able to do for people throughout the world, what I want my words to be able to change, what story comes next, what project comes next, what I want in the bookstore/lounge that I will one day open.

Writing, many different capacities of writing, is what I eat, sleep, and breathe on a daily basis.  Even if I’m not writing I am writing because I am thinking up a story in my head, a new idea for a stage play that I want to write and produce, lyrics to a song that I want to record, articles for my magazine that I might write or want to publish within my magazine, novels that I want to be turned into screenplays someday.  I write in my head a lot so even when it appears that I am not writing, I am in fact writing.

So should someone say to me that because I don’t put words to paper, or type words on a computer, on a daily basis, that I am not a real writer.  Because I get to do what I love to do from the comfort of my own home and make a living at it (as unsteady as it may be right now), does that make me any less of a writer?  I think you are what you say you are, and even more importantly, what you prove you are and what lives in your heart.

So if there are some of you who may be experiencing writer’s block of some sort, or even if you are feeling guilty because you don’t write every single day, stop feeling guilty.  There are no set rules for the profession of writing.  No proven way that it works for every single writer.  What works for you is what works for you and you should never let anyone else tell you that your way is wrong.  It may very well be wrong for that person, but your career path is not theirs.  So write in whatever fashion that you write in, in whatever time frame that you write in, without guilt and without pause.  It’s your journey to travel however you see fit.  Be blessed and carve out your own writer’s path!

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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Taking Baby Steps to a Broader Horizon

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Baby steps broader horizon 2

I was working on a pitch for a guest post yesterday (cross your finger for me that it gets accepted) and within that post one of the things that I advised readers to do was to think of all of the things that they are afraid to do, or things that they said at one point in time that they would never do and still haven’t done yet, and make it a goal this year to go out and start doing those things.

It dawned on me this morning in talking with a friend about needing to broaden my horizons and experience different places that I needed to do the same thing.  There are quite a few things that I always said that I would never do, or that I thought that I couldn’t do for one reason or another, and I think that I am going to take my own advice and start doing them.  Now they may not be big things (at least not yet, have to work my way up to those) but there is nothing wrong with starting small because even baby steps allow you to move forward.

There are a lot of you out there who have those little things that you always said you wouldn’t do (ex. go on a boat, go hiking, learn how to swim, etc.) but what if you going out and doing those things, even if it was just one time, is the experience you’ve been missing from your life.  I mean if it’s something that you discover you don’t like then you never have to do it again but at least you can say you’ve done it.  However, if it happens to be something that you find out that you love to do then it can open up a whole new world of experiences for you.

When I joined a gym (one thing I said I was never going to feel comfortable doing) a few years ago I said I was not a runner and I would never use the treadmill because I didn’t like to run (mind you I also said I didn’t like to exercise either but I love it) but when I got on it I first discovered that I could run and then, surprise of all surprises, I actually liked to run.  Now how would I have ever known that if I had never just gone ahead and done it.  Now I love to run (still working on the running outside part—maybe that’s something I’ll do this year) and I miss it if I don’t get to.

So take some time and make a list of all of the things that you have been ruling out thus far.  Make some plans to maybe not rule them out just yet.  Allow yourself to be open to the new experiences, especially the ones that scare you.  Those are the ones that you will learn from the most.  Have a blessed and exploratory weekend!

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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The Best Things Can Sometimes Come Out of a Bad Situation

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When you're down to nothing

I seem to find myself having to make the best out of a bad situation more often than I care to.  It always feels like just when I think I can cruise on down my path for a little while without any bumps and bruises, there goes another obstacle in my way and often times it feels like it’s a mountain just sitting there, knowing that I cannot move mountains out of my way.  I’m simply not that strong.  At least that’s what I convince myself at the time when I am staring down the very thing that is causing me to stop dead in my tracks.

I guess the truth is that I sometimes don’t know my own strength and that the strength that I need is not necessarily physical but rather spiritual and it comes from God.  I have realized throughout the years (and have been reminded whenever I forget by Ms. L.) that I am so much stronger than I think I am and that each time I make it through a struggle I am always, somehow, better off for it.  I suppose those that have never struggled through anything cannot fully appreciate the things that they are fortunate enough to ascertain in this life.

Nothing that you want, that is worth having, is ever going to come to you easily and if it does you better believe that there is some kind of string attached to it, visible or not.  I’m in a bad spot right not, it’s certainly not a spot I want to be in, but I can already see the lesson brewing out of it.  I guess the real failure in failing at anything is not learning from that failure and not fully capturing the lessons that there are to be built upon and shared.  Times are hard right now, but they could be so much worse, and when they get better I know how to avoid a repeat.  Trouble doesn’t last always and this too shall pass.  Stay blessed and be grateful!

Jimmetta Carpenter

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