The Stigma Of Being Unsuccessful

Part of me doesn’t want you to know this. The other part does. It’s the perception of what you think of me (versus who I really am) – because of the stigma people have of what “success” is and is not.

Lost in a cloud of wanting you to believe me and buy everything I worked very hard at for the past ten years… I feel like I should come clean.

But this isn’t just me.  We need to stop thinking we’re a failure just because we can’t make money doing what we love.  Yet can we deal with the possible embarrassment of that?  A deep seated embarrassment that underlies most of what we do?

Perhaps it’s because we get lost in who we want others to know and… maybe the truth isn’t too pretty. Maybe the truth of not earning enough money to do what we love and going back to getting a “real job” isn’t what most people want to know because… to a lot of people, including myself there is a stigma attached to this.  A stigma that most people think has everything to do with failing.

In a recent video here (that a friend shared with me – here is part two), I understand that it’s not failing if you need to get a job to finance your vision.  It’s more about being afraid of what people might think of us because they value who I am and what I do by where I work.  And if you don’t think where I work and what I do is valuable according to my job title or the amount of money I may or may not make, you think I’m not as valuable.

And I don’t think that’s true.

I think a lot of people are terrified of this – and what other people really think of us. Of course, this isn’t really on the surface, but when we dig deeper and show you our true self… it can be incredibly scary.  Other’s think that we aren’t living up to our full potential.

So here is what I want to tell you.  Just about everything you see on my site I’ve done while working a job to finance my vision or while on unemployment.  It’s honestly not what I want to tell a lot of you.  Some might even feel as if I’m a liar or if I was some wildly successful individual trying to look a lot better than I really am.

The thing is, I’ve always felt as if I wasn’t living up to my full potential in a job I worked because there is a stigma of being unsuccessful, that if you can’t pay the rent by what you do… you’re a failure.  And to many people out there, including myself, I used to think that getting a “job” is failing.

Originally, what I did was use credit cards to finance this vision.  I borrowed money to fund all projects I felt I needed to do to have you look at me as “successful.”  I realize now that most of this was done because I didn’t want others to look at me as being “unsuccessful.”

But that’s a lie.  I’m not unsuccessful because I have to look for a job I enjoy before moving to Seattle.  I’m a failure if I’m not true to who I am and do things against my own set of values.  I’m a failure if I change who I am at my core to sell you something I don’t believe in.  I’m a failure if I try to live up to other people’s perception of what they want for me.

As was said in this video “I can’t project to you that I’m a ‘success’ and have everything together even if I don’t.”  It’s a lot of pressure for anyone.

My hope is that you realize you aren’t unsuccessful just because you work a job to finance your vision.  The difference is in knowing who you are at your core and what you are willing to tell people.  Let the perception and the truth coincide as one.

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