Knowing your WHY can make the difference between being a super successful person in your scope of business or falling on your big ol’ butt. We aren’t born knowing our purpose. We don’t come out of the womb with a name tag and title attached to us. We don’t always know what we want to do from the day we start kindergarten. For the majority of us, we have to think about this. What in the world do I want to do for the rest of my life? It’s so hard to figure out what you’re destined for when you don’t know your why. You could wake up one day and say “I want to own my own business”. You figure out what you’re good at or you make yourself good at something. So far, you’re set up for success. However, waking up every day after that might not be as easy. You’ll have down days. You’ll have very hard days. You’ll have financially trying days. If you don’t know your why, your purpose, you aren’t going to make it through. I’m not here to tell you that you’re a failure or that you’re going to be one, I’m here to tell you that finding your why is so so SO SO important! It gives you that drive, that edge. You’ll have a leg up on the person standing next to you in your field if you have found your calling. Your why is going to be different than someone else’s and that’s perfectly acceptable! Actually, it’s quite preferred! We all experience different situations and they influence us in different ways. Here is how I knew I wanted to be a photographer:
People find joy in photographs. Time is one of those unavoidable things and so many moments are here and then gone. Photographs freeze a moment. Taking a photo of a couple in love and knowing that some day they may be battling a storm in their marriage and see that photo and say “this is why we fell in love” is my why. I know that I can capture a fleeting emotion and later remind someone over and over what that emotion felt like just by showing them a photo. I didn’t just wake up one day and realize this is who I was meant to be. It was a lot of little moments in between that validate it. Have you ever seen a mother hold her child in her wedding dress? Watching a mom care for her child and love on them is so beautiful to me. Seeing the way a bride or groom looks at their soul mate as they walk down the aisle… crying because they love that person so much and they’ve never seen anything so beautiful. Capturing that moment is why I do this. People look at photos of themselves and feel beautiful, confident, amazing, loved, and safe. For me it’s all about people. I just really really love people. It makes me giddy knowing that my ‘job’ is to capture the beauty of them in all of their forms.
Finding your why isn’t some quest you set out on. Well, it IS, but it’s not something that you “go on”. You’re not going to set your email auto-reply to “BRB, playing hide-and-seek with my why”. It’s a life journey. It comes to you as much as you go to it. It’s almost natural! If you’re doing something with your life that you aren’t passionate about, chances are that you haven’t found your why yet, your purpose. Go out into that big ol’ world and try new things! You never know what will come flying your way! I hope for everyone to experience the passion that I feel inside of me when I am doing what I love. It is amazing and life altering! Don’t sell yourself short! Shoot for the stars and know why you’re doing so!
Cheers to the journey –
xoxo
