It never ceases to amaze me how incredibly lucky we all are to live in a time where side hustles can become legitimate careers and dream lives can become daily realities. Having stumbled across a gap in the market and quite accidentally turned it into a drastic career change myself, I have been left with what I’ve dubbed a “seize the yay” philosophy – don’t just seize the day, hustle and get caught up in the glorified “busy-ness” of life, make sure you also find what makes you YAY and seize it with everything you’ve got. Life is just too short and too beautiful not to enjoy!
It’s been a rollercoaster journey from corporate lawyer to “funtrepreneur” and now podcaster, so I thought I’d share a few of my top tips from the transition in the hope that you might also go from A type to YAY type! Here’s a few of my favourites
Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.
- You are so much more capable than you could ever imagine, you just have to give yourself the chance to prove it. Self-doubt is such a natural and common human tendency – we ALL experience it – the trick is just to interpret it as a sign that you’re doing something out of your comfort zone and then push right on through it to the magic on the other side.
You’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with.
- Making any big change in life, especially new and scary ones, is so much harder if you’re not surrounding yourself with people who can help you get there. Always take stock of your network and make sure it’s aligned with where you want to end up. You need people who help you spark your joy not who crush it!
The flower doesn’t look at the other flowers, it just blooms.
- Comparison is the thief of joy, and usually you’re comparing your behind the scenes to someone else’s highlights. What makes YOU happy and what YOU consider success is going to be so different from everyone else, so why measure your journey by someone else’s ruler? Keep your blinkers on and focus on your own progress, the only person you need to be better than is the person you were yesterday.
You don’t have to know where you’ll end up.
- It’s okay to start without knowing what will happen at the end. In fact, that’s half the point! You learn most of it along the way. Your yay is something that changes and develops with every experience and every new step will help push you further in the right direction, so you don’t need to know exactly what that looks like when you start.
Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
- Part of living a joyful life MUST include a joy that’s separate from your work. We weren’t built to just work and sleep then work again and our creative minds cannot function without some down time and distance. So never forget to make time for the things that help you forget what time it is and what your to-do list looks like – they might not directly help you in your work or on your way to your goals, but indirectly the space they give your mind is invaluable!
You either win or you learn.
- There will be things that feel like failure (for me, that’s been burning myself into the ground and not managing my health) but nothing truly is a failure. Every experience is either great because it’s a win or great because it’s a lesson that helps equip you better for the next step. If you can see every single event as a success or an opportunity, you will be so much better off along the way. Every setback is an opportunity for improvement and refinement!
The biggest thing I hope to impress upon people is that we cannot change the past, but we can always start now and change the future. You have so much more control over your happiness than you think, so go out and seize the yay beautiful people!
Sarah xxx
Sarah and her partner started a creative side project in late 2014 capitalising on a gap they discovered in the health food market for matcha green tea powder. Four years on, this vibrant green superfood is one of the world’s premier health food trends and Matcha Maiden is leading the way with a growing community of over 1500 stockists including Anthropologie across the USA, Australian and US warehouses, and a very bright (green) future. In 2016, the matcha mission developed into a physical venue and cutting edge cafe, Matcha Mylkbar, which is taking the food world by storm. In 2018 Sarah launched her podcast ‘Seize the Yay’, interviewing some of the world’s most inspiring people and how they find their “yay”. Sarah now splits her time between the two businesses as well as her podcast and is thoroughly enjoying life as a full time funtrepreneur.
Thankyou for this article. I love it. Intuitively I know it but life can slip you back into old negative habits. This is a reminder of all that we have to be grateful for