HAPPY MONDAY! Welcome to the new weekly series: Monday Mantras here on TCM! Some quick background on why this series is starting and how it ties into this week's mantra, “choose your own adventure!” Basically, I was talking to a long time reader turned friend the other week about how things have changed around The Confused Millennial. When I first launched this was just a blog which has since grown into a podcast and a new Youtube channel! I launched the blog during an emotional rage in the middle of my quarter life crisis. Newly fired, twice in under a month at that, I decided to start my own business. A year into that, I realized it wasn't scalable. From there I hired a coach, and once again, quickly realized I was building someone else's dream (a realization I had a couple years earlier halfway through grad school).
The lightbulb moment of choosing my own adventure:
I remember crying one morning to my husband on our couch saying, “I'm just another confused millennial who has no idea what she's doing with her life!” And just like that, a lightning bolt hit me. I grabbed my laptop, bought the domain, and 48 hours later had a fully functioning blog with four posts live. The blog became my passion project. A place for me to work through all the things I was confused about at each stage of my life. In the beginning, it was all about career and entrepreneurship – after all those areas were my greatest struggles at the time.
Then it slowly moved to relationships and wedding planning as I was getting married, and now it's onto home and motherhood as those are my big struggle at the moment. Over the last three and a half year, the blog has evolved with each stage of life as I have. But something became glaringly obvious during my conversation with my friend: where had my mental health and #realtalk content gone on the blog?
Falling back into the sheep mentality
Since launching the podcast a last year, I realized that I stopped writing about those #realtalk, kick in the butt moments on the blog and reserved them to the podcast convo's or in my weekly newsletter. Which is great, but I also feel like writing is my first passion and quickly realized that's the hole I'd been feeling in my current content. I no longer felt like I had any gut pouring, motivational, heart to hearts with you guys.
If I'm honest: that was both due to poor planning on my end, but also fear. I received some backlash in my personal life for being SO open with you all about some of my struggles that I built up a bit of wall that I finally feel ready to tear down again. SO that leads me to the new weekly series: monday mantras. Each week, I'll be hopping on to give you a mantra, a perception shift, a kick in the butt and sharing the lesson that I learned or re-learned recently. I'll also include my favorite self care products of the week in the posts!
Let's jump into this week's mantra: Choose Your Own Adventure.
Remember those story books growing up? The choose your own adventure ones? You'd have to choose the red pill or the blue pill (okay, that example is from the Matrix, but you get it), and depending on which one you chose, you'd flip to a specific page in the book to see how things turned out. Yeah, I loved those… and truthfully I still play those types of games on my phone sometimes when I need to disconnect… because the reality is we are choosing our own adventures at every single moment in our days. We are choosing a feeling, a thought, and our actions.
Just like the story I shared above about starting this brand. I was playing a passive role in my life at the time. I was building a business I thought people wanted to see from me. One, I thought I could monetize and would be the easy route. Not one that lit me up. I chose to be a sheep at the time, only to end up feeling even more lost and confused. But when I switched from choosing a “path” that seemed so clearly laid our for me by society, to an adventure with an unknown ending, that's when I regained life. That's when I felt totally lit up again and stumbled into the most profitable years of my career; both monetarily and emotionally/spiritually rewarding.
My challenge for you this week:
How can you stop being afraid of the unknown? How can you step into the adventure you've been too afraid to jump into with both feet?
Choose you my dear, because everyone else is already taken (I know that's a line from something, but can't remember what, and it seemed fitting here!)
Goodies to help you Choose Your Own Adventure:
Okay so one thing you NEED to know about me: I'm always going to tell you to PLAY! Like seriously, let your inner child out, build a fort, wear a cap, and have some unfiltered fun! That's where joy lives. That's where your healing lives. So some of these may seem unconventional, but I can't recommend them enough! It IS you adventure after all!
Wand: Pick yourself up one of the wands from the Harry Potter series here. Target also has an option that lights up and is a little cheaper here.
Choose Your Own Adventure Card game: Shop it here.
Daily prompt journals: These are a great way to expand your mind if you're feeling stuck. I love the prompts in this one for soul exploration and this one is a little more geared towards happiness/positivty (both are super pretty too!) and this is a little more. This one is a little more gender neutral and goes pretty deep in the exercises too!
RELATED READS:
The Greatest Gifts You Can Give Yourself Before Turning 30
How to Get In The Right Mindset Before You Start Manifesting
