As a child I remember saying to my parents “If I don’t believe and go for my dreams, who will”. I remember my dad agreeing but saying life isn’t always that easy.
Although I believe what I said is still true it was a very naive statement coming from a young child who had yet to learn the reality of life’s setbacks, hardship and navigating other people agenda’s. I believe this is partially what my dad referred to.
When I was younger I would go full steam ahead when faced with challenges but as an adult, I am learning where to put my energy both privately and professionally. Focusing my time and efforts on where I can see I’ll become most successful, i.e. bare fruit, and increase the positive experience in work and life is crucial not just for my career and relationships but also my inner peace.
Professionally speaking we can sometimes have great ideas, but however great they are, most of us will at some point meet opposition in form of people and other external challenges. Apart from external factors that we are simply unable to do anything about good or bad, how we choose deal with that which we can change will determine how successful we are or not.
Learning how to adapt, navigate what we can change and accept when we are unable to change something is hugely important to save time and energy.
Why, because letting go of what you cannot change will save you time and energy and learning to adapt and navigate that which we is in our power to change can help accelerate us in areas that can give us increased success and joy.
Of course, hardship can teach us great lessons too, however, when faced with too many, it can break us and then it is important to step back. So, it is truly important we learn to take a step back, discern one from the other, either let go or choose to work on that which has potential so we can overcome or focus on the good things in life because ultimately we all deserve to be happy.
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My number 1 lesson is to not compare myself to other people. It's basic but true. I think the world is so often set up to pit people against each other "if someones doing this at a certain age then I should be doing this". It forces us to make bad decisions. At school, at university, on grad schemes we're graded and compared to our peers but I've forced myself to let go of that mentality.
There's always someone who will be younger, prettier, smarter, more successful than me, so why allow that negative energy into my life?
I make decisions based on what I want to do, live life to the beat of my own little (weird) drum and fundamentally am happier for it. When you're pushing yourself to try new things you're opening yourself up to a lot of rejection, criticism, people knocking you back. You can listen of course, but fundamentally there's nothing wrong with living life on your own terms. If we start to think about the world as winners, losers, better or worse, we start to feel unsatisfied with what we have and lose our sense of community. Life's tough enough, why add more things to worry about to it?
Sofie Annikki Dralle
Sofie Dralle is the founder and the CEO of StopMyCraving, a food tech platform that helps people find healthy alternatives to cravings from natural producers, and delivers to door internationally. Her role as founder earned her an award of 30under30 from Natural & Organic Products in Europe. Sofie spoke for the European Commission Startups, discussing female entrepreneurship and is currently a Chairman for the Food & Nutrition Tech at Giant 2018 Health Conference in London, a Google Startup Ambassador and a Contributing writer for Virgin Startup
