What if we stopped following the rules and other people’s advice?

I’m not speaking about basic things such as; driving a car, obeying the law, or operating machinery and electronics. I’m talking about taking advice on how to live our lives.

What if we just did what felt right?

Not in a feel good kind of way, but in a follow your gut kind of way. What if we went after our dreams, not with the fear of failing, but as if we couldn’t fail?

I’ve heard a lot of things about what I should and shouldn’t be doing these past few weeks since I’ve decided to chase my dreams. I was literally told, “You can’t just follow your bliss.” Like that would be something terrible. I’m watching as people throw lines at me like, “The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.” Along with other common quotes of life, that keep us all in the boiling pot. People will hold the fear of failure over our heads like a guillotine and then smile as if they have our best interest at hand.

There is a lot of information out there on what we should and shouldn’t do in life. All aspects of it. There is an expert on everything in this life, just go to google. From the foods we eat, what we should wear, how to talk, how to appear intelligent, and how to get “likes” in life.

What if they are wrong?

What if all these so-called experts are giving out the wrong information to us? Not the as a whole but as individuals. Each one of us is a unique individual capable of things we ourselves haven’t even tapped into yet. What if we are not someone who colors in the lines, but someone who draws the lines? Someone who creates new images to color on blank sheets of paper. What if we are the first to set the bar, to reach new heights, to do what is said to be impossible?

What if we were not afraid of failing?

Let us fail! Let us color outside the lines of life! Why are we so afraid to fail? What does that even mean? Fail by definition means: to be unsuccessful in achieving one’s goal.

Yet, what if something beautiful happened while we were “failing?” What if we didn’t achieve our goal? Maybe in failing to achieve our goal we achieved something greater in its place.

Some of the greatest achievers have failed more than anyone else in their field. In the end they were not remembered for their failures, but their achievements. What if we lived our lives that way? Actually allowed ourselves to be brave enough to fail.

It is time for us to truly dig deep and see what we are made of.

To do that one thing we’ve been dying to do. Whether it moving to that place that tugs at our hearts. Quitting that job that no longer servers us. Getting ourselves back to school so we can learn the things we’ve always thought we were not smart enough to learn, or simply chasing after that dream that’s been begging us to follow.

You think those things are just made up of fantasy?

Have you forgotten we live on a floating planet, in the middle of nothing, circling around a huge burning ball of fire!? We need to get out of the ant farm mentality of being a little “worker ants” with our heads down. We need to turn our eyes to the sky and realize that there is a whole world out there, that we do not know about and it does not come with an instruction book or a how to manual.

Let’s follow our hearts for once.

We need to follow our internal instruction book that we were born with. We’ve just become so distracted by the noise we can’t hear it anymore. It’s still there, we just need to blow off the dust and turn the volume back up. No tv, no wifi, and no cell phone. Just us, alone, taking some time to sit and listen.

I am going to be brave enough to fail.

I’m going to write, blog and follow my heart. I’m going to post when I feel it is best to post, I am going to write about what inspires me and not what I think people want to hear. I’m going to be “crazy” and release my posts more often and on nights they don’t recommend, not because I’m fighting the experts but because on that day, I feel inspired to.

Listen to me. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m not an expert. I’m following my heart. My gut. Yes, I’m afraid to fail too! I want to be okay with that. I want to believe in me, even when my head doesn’t. I want to believe in me when the world says I can’t.

When all the advice and all the experts say no, but my heart says yes, I want to follow.

I want no more regrets in this life.

Let us be a disaster of failure, that blossoms into something beautiful and rare. Let’s see what we are truly capable of in this life, not by chance but because we went out there and grabbed it.

Lets go out and break ground on unchartered mountains, so others can have a safer path to follow. We may be afraid, but we are going to do it anyway and I hope we inspire others to follow. For the first time in our lives, let’s be our own experts. We know what is best for us, and we know what makes our hearts sing. With eyes closed and chests pressed forward, we will now lead our own way.

Write back soon, Love Annie

Photo by Simon Migaj from Pexels