There are areas of my life that I have neglected for the past few years
just because I was so career-focused.
Hey guys!
Welcome back to Lavendaire.
It's Aileen.
Today I want to share a dream life update on my life, kind of like where I am now.
It's going to be a super casual chatty video, just because I haven't really updated you guys.
And I feel like, lately, I had a mini-revelation.
I'm shifting in my life.
Just reflecting on my life in the past few years,
I've really been career-focused and – let me just go back year-to-year.
So I graduated from college in 2012.
From 2012 to 2014, those were my years of trying out all these different creative paths,
figuring out what to do with my life.
A lot of why I started Lavendaire came from that struggle,
the struggle of being lost and figuring out how to carve my own path,
how to create my dream life, which is an ongoing life journey,
but for me, I felt like it was very career-focused.
It was like, "How am I going to make money doing something that I love,
doing something that I feel is meaningful, that I can do for the rest of my life?"
Those years were for exploring different paths and taking on random jobs, things like that.
And then April 2014 was the year I started Lavendaire.
I think Lavendaire was pretty slow to start.
In the first couple years, I was still doing other stuff,
like working on short films, working part-time.
But I guess, around the end of 2015-2016 was when I was focused on Lavendaire full-time.
And I just feel like whenever you start a blog or YouTube,
something online where you're creating content, you really have to put your all into it.
And I feel like, for the past four years, I've been really hustling,
hustling trying to get Lavendaire off the ground,
trying to just make it work because I really wanted to make it work.
It was honestly my dream job.
And I'm so happy that, now, I can say that this is a fulfilling career.
I have everything that I wanted back then knocked out.
I think, back then, my biggest struggle was
"How am I going to be creative and also make a living doing what I love?"
And I feel like I'm so lucky that I've finally worked to the point where I have that.
I have this career where I feel like I'm doing something meaningful,
I'm giving value to you guys, and I get to have my freedom.
My time freedom, I can wake up and sleep whenever I want.
Location freedom, I can work from wherever I want and really on my own schedule.
I'm my own boss, which is amazing.
And I think I've gotten used to the hustle.
I feel like now, at a certain point, I am happy with the amount of money that I'm making,
and any more work, any more stress that I do
to grow my career faster or make more money, is kind of extra.
It's not necessary.
I think I was spending so many years getting it off the ground
where you have to give it your 100%.
And this year, guys, this is my update:
I'm finally at a place where I don't have to be grinding so hard.
And I know this will have opposing opinions
because some people believe in working hard forever.
Yes, I do believe you should work hard, especially to get your career off the ground.
But I'm a huge advocate of balance and self care, obviously.
So this year, it was reminding myself, "Hey, why are you stressing out?"
The things I stress out about are getting my videos out on time.
Sometimes it just takes a long time to edit a video or shoot a video.
Or sometimes I'm doing a branded video where the brand has a due date
and those deadlines give me a lot of pressure.
I know these are all normal parts of a daily work life.
You're going to have projects, deadlines.
There's going to be stress.
But it's almost as if I forgot that I am in control of everything in my life.
I forgot that I am the boss, I get to choose whether to do something or not.
Basically, I finally allowed myself to just go easier on myself.
Like, I don't have to post on Wednesday when I usually post.
I can skip a day.
I can take a week off if I really want to.
It's not the end of the world.
I don't have to stress myself out over these little things that don't really matter in the end.
It really doesn't matter in the bigger picture.
I'm finally at a place where I can start building my small team to help me create content
and get everything working behind the scenes.
And I'm very, very lucky that I have the resources for that.
And because I have help now, I realize that I can really carve out time for myself again.
And there are areas of my life that I have neglected for the past few years,
just because I was so career-focused.
I've neglected my health, I've neglected my musical side,
the part of me that wants to create music or to dance, just for fun.
And also some relationships.
I could be better at relationships with my family.
Things like that, the things that really matter.
I've just been so focused on hustling and getting things off the ground.
Now things are going great, and I shouldn't have to stress about anything.
So it's more of that realization like, "Hey, you can balance things out now."
And I know not everybody is there yet,
and I'm grateful to have the opportunity to have the extra time
and the extra resources to balance things out.
Basically, it really is my journey to building out my dream life.
A big part of my dream life was having that career
that kind of funded and fueled everything else that I want.
So moving forward, I'm actually advocating not working harder, but just working smart.
Working enough to still grow and focus on the career,
but have the balance and build out those other areas that are important to me:
my health, my creativity, my adventure, my relationships.
Ultimately, it's up to the individual to define their version of success.
And I feel like, in my career, I feel successful.
I may not be the best, but I am happy and very satisfied with where I'm at
and I'm willing to grow slower and focus on other areas of life.
I think the hard part is when you're watching other creators,
you tend to see how hard everyone else is working and then you feel like,
"Oh my god, I should be doing more.
I should be working harder."
But I don't know.
I don't know if you guys see it, but behind the scenes I talk to other creators,
I meet other YouTubers, and everybody's working really hard.
Some people don't get enough sleep, their health is poor.
They just work a lot, long hours.
And I don't think it's exactly healthy,
and I don't think we should commend people for overworking themselves.
I really believe in the balance, because at a certain point,
more is not going to give you exponential happiness.
Yes, you have to be able to sustain yourself to get to a certain level,
and you should work hard to get to that level.
But once you're at a certain level,
any additional growth is not correlated to happiness and fulfillment.
If I have more subscribers or more money at this point,
it's not going to make me that much happier.
That's what I've kind of realized, so it was a big relief for me to tell myself,
kind of let myself off the hook like,
"You don't have to stress out about these little things that don't matter.
There are bigger issues in the world, more problems.
Just be grateful and recognize that you have the power to choose
where you put your energy and your focus on.
And whatever you put your focus on grows."
So for me, now moving forward, it really is about growing out those other areas
to make my life a fulfilling, happy, and healthy life.
So I already love where I am now, but definitely can be better.
I'm looking forward to writing music again.
I've reached out to a couple producers in LA to collab and work together.
So it will just be an entirely different things that I'm working on,
and hopefully I'll be able to share it on this channel in a way that appeals to you guys
because I know that it doesn't always align with what you guys want to see.
I love dance and I'm trying to get back into it.
I think I uploaded a dance video recently but it didn't do so well
because it's just so different from the Lavendaire brand and what I've shared in the past.
But hopefully the ones who care will follow my growth
because I'm just going to be honest and share whatever I'm going through at the moment.
I'm going to try to be as authentic as possible,
because I will admit that sometimes it gets boring
talking about the same self help topics again and again.
Yes, there's always new ways to grow,
and there's always new tips and hacks and stuff like that.
But I just have to share what excites me
and what excites me right now is just creative, random things that aren't necessarily self help-related,
but are just things that I'm curious about, like astrology or plants or making music again or dancing.
It's all under the realm of creativity.
Ultimately, I have an artist's soul and I love creating and creations, so it's going to be still in that realm.
I think the best part of this entire experience in the six or seven years I had,
finding myself, building out my career, getting to where I am now,
is that now I'm in a place that I know that I will be okay no matter what.
I'm confident in myself, I'm confident in my abilities.
I know that even if tomorrow, my entire YouTube channel shuts down,
every follower/subscriber goes back to zero, I can still be okay.
I can still create content and still build myself back up from scratch.
I am confident in that because I have the knowledge, the resources, and the talent.
And even if I don't create content, worst come to worst, I can always start another kind of business.
I just feel like I have options and I know that I will always be okay no matter what.
I think I had to go through a period of realizing that
because I used to be so stressed out because, being a content creator,
your paycheck is fluctuating and it can never last forever.
You don't know, maybe one day you will become irrelevant.
That was my biggest fear, to become irrelevant, people to stop watching my videos.
And then I'm like, "Oh my god, how am I gonna keep my career up?
How am I gonna make money?"
You can definitely let that uncertainty and that risk stress you out.
And it can drive you crazy because it's a never-ending thing.
It's something that's outside of your control.
All you have control over is your value that you bring, your effort, everything that you can do.
And I think the power is all in your actions.
I feel like, you know, I don't have to stress about what I used to stress over
because if worst comes to worst, everything is gone,
I know as long as I'm breathing, I'm alive, I'll still be okay.
Even if I die, I will be okay.
I believe in my soul, it's invincible.
There's a kind of peace and power in that.
Yeah, if I die tomorrow, I will be happy with the live that I've created today.
I've said that before and I still say it again.
I'm happy.
And I think everyone should aspire to live a life where they can say that,
where they can say, "If it all ends now, if I lose everything,
I can say that I'm proud of what I've done with my life."
And if you're still alive and you lose everything,
the fact that you're confident that you'll still be okay
and you'll still be able to build it back up from scratch no matter what.
So, I'm good.
I'm just working on making those tiny improvements,
but I feel like the main struggle is in the past, and I'm grateful for that.
Obviously there's going to be more struggles in the future.
We'll see.
We'll get there when we get there.
But that's my life update for you guys.
I hope you enjoyed this little chat.
Let me know if you had any revelations of your own in the comments below,
or if anything that I said today really touched you or if you related to anything.
Or if it's completely unrelatable, in that case, I understand.
My situation is different from most people's situations.
But anyway, I love you guys.
Sending you lots of love and light.
And I hope you stay for this journey.
But if you don't, that's cool too.
Love you too.
Bye!