An Ode To Mental Health
Celebrating 3 years of Full Time Entrepreneurship
After my event with Experian I decided to create a resource on financial boundaries to share. If you’re interested in the resource click here.
This month marks my 3rd year of full-time entrepreneurship.
It’s a bittersweet accomplishment in all honesty.
Although much of the insights I share here are geared towards helping others identify and overcome their financial traumas, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share that much of this journey has me walking side by side with you in identifying and overcoming my own.
Some people who have heard my story of “Firing my boss” think about it through the lens of their own experiences: How it would feel to walk off a job where they don’t feel valued, appreciated, or feel bullied by their management.
An immediate afterthought may follow around what they would do if they did and how they would be able to maintain their lifestyle —or any lifestyle — without the security of a regular paycheck.
Trust me, it was a before thought, during thought, and afterthought for me too.
The secret (if there were one) to my overcoming the fear of the unknown was survival in a different capacity — the survival of my mental health.
“I just quit my job yall and honestly I needed that for my mental health” was my tweet minutes after I submitted my resignation.
The tweet would go viral across Twitter with 2MM impressions.
Although I remember the events leading up to my eventual departure from the company I worked for, what I remember most was that I was trying to hold on to this small slice of freedom and control I carved out for myself in building a personal brand.
That’s why I was being bullied.
That’s what was being attacked.
Instead of falling in line and simply taking what was dished out to me on the chin from middle management, I dug my heels in and declared to myself that I was going to figure out what it meant to build a brand and be free.
Since then I’d maintained fluctuating levels of stress and anxiety mentally, but never what I was experiencing before I left.
I wouldn’t have a boss to complain about at the ends of my workdays.
No coworkers to throw me under the bus.
No performance reviews to disagree with.
Instead, I would have to figure out :
How to pay my bills on time
Which projects to dedicate my time and energy to
How to recover when a project or initiative I put energy into falls flat with no paying customers
How to keep showing up consistently despite little to no engagement
and more.
Yes, the stress looked and felt different but it was still there and in many ways, I’ve inflicted a sort of financial trauma onto myself by holding on to this dream of full-time entrepreneurship for so long.
I’ve burned through savings, I’ve accumulated debt, and I’ve tried and failed in various approaches to business models.
However I’ve also made money, found ways to survive, accomplish, and grow in my thought leadership and impact in the field of financial therapy.
Entreprenuership is not easy and it’s not for everyone. In it’s own way it can create some financial trauma —it certainly has for me—.
But one thing I can say despite the little “t” trauma of this experience is that my mental health has never been better and to that, we celebrate!