Tag: Success

Success Doesn’t Come Early for Everyone…And Sometimes That’s a Good Thing

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Success late in life 2

I know I’m not the only person who, growing up, didn’t look at some of these child TV and music stars and think to themselves “that could or should be me” or “I’m just as good as them if not better”. Most children will say it to themselves and ten minutes later not even give it a second thought. However, if you were an artistic child, a creative type, someone who always aimed to color outside the lines simply because the lines limited the creation that you dreamt up in your mind, then you probably really meant it when you thought it. I know that I did.

I had visions of being a singer by the time I was in my early twenties (and that was at the latest) and a New York Times Best Selling Author at least by the time I turned twenty-five. With each passing year that my dream slipped by me I grew more and more doubtful of the talents that not only I thought I had but that mostly everyone around me had seen. I would look at the lives of these child stars being played out in the media for all the world to see and think I should be traveling from this place to that place and singing on this stage and that one, doing countless television appearances for my latest novel on the NY Times list and having my pick of any place I wanted to live without any worries.

Now don’t get me wrong, I was never jealous. I am always happy when I see someone succeeding (well someone deserving anyway—hey I’m not a saint and yes I do think that some do not deserve the success they have), I just happen to have always thought I should be one of them. And even when I saw child stars blowing it, royally, getting arrested, getting hooked on drugs, having issues with alcoholism, going bankrupt and just throwing away all of their money on such frivolous things, I would think they just don’t know how to appreciate what they have.

But of course you cannot be envious of everyone’s life because you don’t know what it’s like to walk in their shoes and be under the pressure that they are and to literally be under a microscope for everyone to see your mistakes. A lot of them don’t make it, they wash out, and they give up before they even hit thirty and then the public is left to wonder “where are they now”. When I think about it in those terms, I have to wonder if maybe God knew that that life was not meant for me to have at such that young of an age.

Obviously I can’t say with an absolute certainty that I wouldn’t have been humble enough to appreciate that kind of life at that early of an age but looking back, with my childhood, I definitely think that I would have had more access to some coping mechanisms that I would have more than gladly (at that time anyway) taken advantage of. I can’t say that I would have known how to handle the life I say I wanted at that time. I was very starved for things around that young age and into my twenties because at that time I hadn’t learned how to love myself yet and I thought things were going to heal what was wrong on the inside so that is probably where my money would have went. And honestly, as suicidal as I was during that time period I can’t say that I would even still be here anymore if I had gotten the lifestyle that I thought I wanted at that time.

I wasn’t humble enough to appreciate those things at that stage of my life. I think God knew exactly what he was doing and he knew that I had to heal the inside of me first before I could truly appreciate a lifestyle that was on the next level. I think that when you get to live that kind of life at such a young age and that is all that you know, then you don’t know or appreciate what it is to be without it. Success doesn’t last for everyone and when I think of all of those that have succeeded in the ways that I plan to succeed (Russell Simmons, Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, Bill Gates, etc.) then I think about the fact that none of them attained success early on. They all had a humbling life before they achieved all of the success that they have now. That humble life allows them to appreciate the things and abilities that they have even more because they know what it’s like not to have them.

I think those who attained success without any effort, without any failures are actually at a disadvantage because they don’t know how to handle having nothing. They don’t know what failure feels like to appreciate the feeling of succeeding. Oftentimes we tend to want to rush into things because we see what we want to see. The outcome that we perceive may be one that is unrealistic and possibly not even going to be what is in our best interest but our perception can be clouded. I think that we sometimes need the experience of many failures to appreciate the reward that is coming down the line. Our mistakes are what breeds the foundation for our successes and when we learn to not just embrace them but to be proud of them and celebrate them then we will be even more prepared for the successes in life that we say we want.

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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I Sometimes Struggle to Believe in the Potential God Sees in Me

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Seeing the Potential that God Sees 3

For the most part I am typically an optimistic person. I have plenty of setbacks that make me doubtful sometimes but I try to remain dedicated and stick to this path because I feel deep down that it is the right one that God wants me on to reach my destined purpose. However, that is not to say that I don’t have moments (a lot more of them than I care to admit) where I question whether I am letting God down.

I know that there are things that I should be doing that I don’t always manage to get done, things that would go a long way in the efforts to get to where I’m trying to go. I am guilty of wasting time that I don’t really have to waste. I am guilty of getting frustrated to the point of just wanting to give up and be just plain lazy. I am guilty of feeling so overwhelmed with all of the things that I want to do that I convince myself that it’s just too much and it can’t be done so why even bother trying. I tell myself a lot of things that eventually lead me to talking myself out of trying. I let the fear of not succeeding at what I want cause me to do the very thing that I don’t want to do which is give up.

I’m not in that mindset of giving up right now but I am starting to feel that sense of being overwhelmed with all of the things that it is that I want to do and all of the plans that I have to get accomplished and the fear that I may not achieve it. I have this list, this very long list, of life goals, of things that I want my company to achieve. I have a purpose for my Write 2 Be brand and in my mind I see it so clearly. I can even map out on paper (although not quite as concise as it forms in my brain) exactly the direction I want everything to go. I have even listed everything, all the steps, I need to go through to get it at least going in the direction I want it to go. Then the reality sets in.

The reality that my dreams may be just a little too big and that with all that needs to be done, I may be out of my depth here. The reality that I might have somehow set the bar for myself just a bit too high, and then the fear that I can’t reach my own bar that I set. The reality that with every second that I am sleep there is something that could be getting done. The reality that I cannot physically go on absolutely no sleep which is probably what it would take for me to achieve ALL that it is I am setting out to do. Then I start to feel that overwhelming sense of failure.

I start to feel like I am not only letting God down, but my daughter, and of course myself. I place a lot of stock in my potential but what happens if I don’t live up to that. What happens if I can’t live up to what God’s purpose for my life is? What if I am simply not good enough? These are the kinds of things that run through my mind, daily, and almost every minute of the day, and I am sure (at least I hope) that I am not the only one who has felt this way. I feel like I have to acknowledge those fears within myself or else they will never go away.

While I know that they will never go away completely, I have to believe that the sense or the urge to give up will fade away from the forefront of my mind. I have to believe that I will one of these days just wake up and look in the mirror and say “I get it God, I get what you see in me and I can do this because you said I could”. While I am not quite all the way there yet, I must say, I am miles away from how I used to feel about all of this. It’s a start and we all have to start somewhere. I hope that this week is as productive for you as I plan on it being for me and I hope that you will try to remember, as I will, that God’s purpose for you is nothing to be afraid of!

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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What All Can Go Right

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What if everything goes right

I live in the land of worst case scenarios where I prepare for whatever there is that can possibly go wrong and for what I would need to do to fix things if they should go wrong. I don’t think that I am alone in doing this. I think that the world has grown so cynical that in planning for our futures in which we want to soar and fly, we brace ourselves for that harsh landing that quite frankly, often times never actually comes.

I mean sure we fall and we have bad breaks where things don’t quite go the way that we wanted them to. But in reality those are not actually the harsh landings that we are bracing ourselves for. I forget sometimes to prepare for the successes, to purposely plan for things to go right. I spend so much time being completely over prepared for the other shoe that’s definitely (in my mind anyway) going to drop, and for the rock bottom that I’m going to hit (and thankfully never truly have) someday soon if things don’t improve, and for everything that I have ever dreamed of achieving to float right by me as I watch someone else reach out and grab ahold of what was supposed to be my success. None of these things have ever happened. That’s not saying of course that they couldn’t still, but they haven’t.

I’ve been waiting all of this time for everything to go wrong instead of preparing and actually believing that everything could go right. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I haven’t had my share of the bad breaks and the things that come crashing down around me but what I neglect to realize oftentimes is that about eight times out of ten everything that seemingly went wrong turned out to work out in a better way than I had imagined and planned for them to. I spent so much time thinking of all the negatives and forgot that even in a negative outcome, something positive can come from that. I need to stop always thinking about the walls that may crumble and start thinking that even if they do, what beautiful new direction can come from the wreckage.

There are beautiful things that can come out of even the most painful and disheartening situations. We just have to be open to them and prepare for what is good instead of bracing ourselves for what is bad. When we brace ourselves we are closing ourselves off and tightening up. We don’t have our arms and hands open and free to receive all the good that is coming our way. So start realizing what it is to truly let go. Open up and surrender to ALL that life has in store for you, the good, the bad, and yes, especially the unplanned. Sometimes the best moments in life cannot be planned out beforehand. Let go and let God!

 

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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Is Practicality Really Just a Sugarcoated Way of Disguising Our Fears?

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Practicality disguised as fear 2

I listened to a commencement speech that actor Jim Carey gave at Maharishi University of Management that was very inspiring. He said something that really resonated with me. He said that “So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality—what we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never dare to ask the universe for it.” When I heard that I thought of how true that statement was.

I think that there are a lot of people out there who stay in a position where they don’t really want to be, with claims of simultaneously working on going for their dreams, when all they are truly displaying is their fear of moving forward. I know that I sometimes wonder if I should have continued doing a regular 9 to 5 type of job and focus on my writing career at night until I got a stable footing to do the writing full time. I have various people, friends and associates, some who understand first-hand about the vision that I have because their vision is not far off from mine for their own lives, tell me that I need to go back to the regular 9 to 5 thing to get myself on even better footing. I won’t say that I didn’t think about it (heavily) but I truly feel that I would be doing myself, my art, and my daughter a great disservice if I did that.

Now of course this means that you have to know who you are and know exactly what will and will not work for you because there are some people who can do both simultaneously and make it work extremely well. Their focus is split but yet somehow still all there. I know that for myself that was never going to work out well for long. In actuality it didn’t work which is why I didn’t continue on that way.

Another thing Jim Carey said in his speech was that “You can fail at what you don’t want so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.” I suppose that in that way I have never been fearful. I knew that I would never be able to be happy staying in a position, doing a job that I loathed simply to make an attempt at doing what I love, all the while not being able to dedicate my entire focus to that dream. For me, it was more important to be happy and struggle to make my dreams happen than to live comfortably and be miserable and neglect my dream.

I know that it seems crazy to some, hell most days it seems crazy to me, but I can’t explain how freeing it is to be able to devote my full attention to that of making my dreams a reality and how much pride I take in teaching my daughter that the sacrifices she will eventually make for her dreams will be worth it in the long run. I want her to know that it is okay to dive head first into the life that she wants and that she shouldn’t spend one moment of it (unless she wants to of course) doing something that she can’t put her whole heart into.

I think I will remind myself of Jim Carey’s words the next time I start to question the decisions that I have made to move towards my career in writing. If I am in fact going to fail (which is only really a stepping stone to success anyway) then I might as well be failing at something that I love to do, that I am driven to do, that I can put my whole heart into. I would much rather spend my life working on achieving what matters most to me than spend it helping someone else achieve what matters most to them. I can’t build my own dream up if I am spending the majority of my time building up someone else’s.

 

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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Motivation is the Key, But By Who?

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Got motivation

I think that in some way, shape, or form, for the better part of my life I have always sought out the encouragement of others. I was always the one wanting those accolades and that reinforcement that I was on the right path and that someone else thought I was talented. I was always looking for someone to show me, or tell me, that I was good enough because for so long I was told that I wasn’t.

As I have gotten older and learned a lot more about myself and my own capabilities I have sought out other’s motivations a lot less and started to learn to begin how to motivate myself that much more. However, there are times when I get too much inside my own head and those doubts and those negative words come back to the forefront of my mind and I start to wonder am I really good enough. I hold myself back from doing a lot of things and I’m not sure if it’s that I truly don’t have all of the resources that I need to really go after these things I want or if it’s that I am afraid that those voices of people who said I wasn’t good enough will be proven right.

I will say that I am getting better with not questioning my own talent and ability so much but I know that I have a long way to go before I have absolutely no doubts in my mind at all. I keep thinking that I am finally past that point where I need someone else to make me feel like I am as good as I think I am most of the time but then it creeps up on me. I need to learn, really learn how to keep myself motivated and not looking to others to reinforce what I already know, deep down inside, to be true.

It is true what they say about motivation being the key to success and the key to leading a life without fears but motivation but who is the question. I think that we writers especially feel like we need to hear those accolades and those words of adoration in order to consider ourselves good which makes sense because writing is in fact a career in which you depend on your readers liking your work to gauge your success.

I find that with the writers who have had that level of success that they sometimes didn’t realize they were looking for, it was often said that they wrote the book that they wanted to read, they wrote for themselves more so than anyone else and that is why their work was such a success. When we do things to please ourselves and not the general public we get more results and we are a lot more satisfied. Maybe there is a lesson in that. You have to give yourself the accolades before you can expect anyone else to give them to you. So have you given yourself the accolades that you deserve lately? If not then start today!

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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What’s On the Other Side of Quitting?

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Other side of quitting 2

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

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

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Glass half full

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

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