If We Can Do It Somewhere…

14 years, friends.

That’s how long I’ve worked for myself in some capacity. From persistently freelancing in college… to my first little design business at 20 years old… to starting Creative Spark in Hawaii during a recession… to the little StartupCorner venture that was… to launching Stephenie Zamora Media almost nine years ago.

14 years.

My business and I have been through hundreds of iterations, successes, and failures. Hundreds, if not thousands. Some of those failures were itty bitty, “huh, I guess that won’t work” moments. Others were quite spectacular if I do say so myself. Some successes were highly notable, others subtle and incremental. I’ve stripped it down and reworked it all more times than I can count, and one time I even pulled seven whole years of content off the internet just to figure out what came next. I’ve grown my list by thousands and deleted it by thousands at a time too.

14 years.

I’m saying this for me as much as I’m saying it for you… because devoting myself to building my business and my body of work is just what I do. I can’t stop, even when I think I’m going to. It’s in my blood. My drive to create and contribute reverberates through my bones. It’s so second nature to me that sometimes I forget how far I’ve come, and how much I’ve gone through to get to this point.

But I don’t have this in other areas of my life… areas that desperately need some tending and care. It doesn’t come as easily to me, and I find myself frustrated after the tiniest bit of effort with no results or growth.

Anything worth having requires work. It takes a level of devotion and consistency that not a lot of people are willing to commit to. It forces you to face your fears, stories, and beliefs, and to dismantle absolutely everything that holds you back from calling in what you desire.

It’s truly challenging work.

I think we all have areas where we just naturally excel. Even if we fail or struggle or fall flat on our faces, we just get back up. It’s so second nature that we don’t even notice we’re doing it… we just do, as many times as it takes.

Those areas give us a reference point… a framework for what it takes to create what we want with more ease. Because even if there’s struggle, where there’s devotion and commitment, there’s a level of ease. There’s no tension coming from, “am I doing this or not?” It’s like breathing… of course you will, you already are.

14 years and many more to come.
14 years and 1,000+ examples of how to be devoted.
14 years and total understanding of what it takes to create what I desire.
14 years and endless lessons in how to keep on keeping on.
14 years and proof that I am capable of never giving up.

If we can do it somewhere in our lives…. even if that somewhere seems small and insignificant… we can do it everywhere. Really, truly.