It’s easy to take the easier path. It’s easy to conform when everyone is doing it. What makes me me, is knowing that I have the courage to become who I truly am, and who I truly aspire to be. I am the way I am because I chose this path.

Of course I had my doubts and shitty moments. Some days when things are too tough, I fantasise about what life could have been, should I have taken the easy path. The 9-5 job, the settling down and pop babies during the prime age, the mediocre happiness where life is really not too bad (Exhibit A from 2013). Those fantasy lasts for a good 15min before I am back to reality and beyond grateful that that is not my life.

I love my life. It’s my very own life goals! I’m beyond blessed to be supported by the most amazing people and to have the time and resource to become who I truly am.

Being Truly Me

I will never apologise for being truly me.

Being different is not easy. I’ll put that straight. But thankfully, I am reminded by these guiding principles. In moments of doubts, I refer to them and find strength in being me again!

• Well behaved women seldom make history.
• People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds, people who possess strong feelings, even people with great minds and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls. — Lev S. Vygotsky
• The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed. — Ernest Hemingway
• Some women are lost in the fire. Some women are built from it. — Michelle K.
• I didn’t always know what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be. — Diane von Furstenberg
• Well, it’s not enough to be talented. There’s a lot of talent out there, but it’s owned by lazy, stupid, or essentially boring people. You can’t just be talented: You have to be terribly smart and energetic and ruthless. You also have to become necessary to people, by working hard and well and bringing more than your bones and your skin to the project. Don’t just show up. Transform the work, yourself, and everybody around you. Be needed. Be interesting. And something no one else can be. And consistently. — Katharine Hepburn
• You have to be odd to be number one.
• I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being. —Maya Angelou
• Here’s to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. And we raise them.
• Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts.

1. The Way I Am

• I demand unconditional love and complete freedom. That is why I am terrible. — Tomaz Salamun
• Yes I am harsh. I’m also demanding, stubborn, self-sufficient, and always right. — Samantha Jones
• The mind is everything. What you think, you become.
• When you are your own best friend, you don’t endlessly seek out relationships, friendships, and validation from the wrong sources because you realize that the only approval and validation you need is your own. — Mandy Hale, The Single Woman
• To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are. — Kurt Cobain
• The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you. — Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss
• In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different. — Coco Chanel (1883–1971)
• I would rather die of passion than of boredom. — Vincent Van Gogh
• A man is what he reads.
• Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you. — Tyrion Lannister
• Buy less. Choose well.
• The quieter you become, the more you can hear. — Ram Dass
• The most dangerous phrase in the language is, “we’ve always done it this way.”
• Do you realize how important it is to be independent? To be able to take care of yourself? To not rely on someone else for your most basic needs? And to not get so damn attached to stuff that you’d rather demean yourself than live without it? — Alyson Noel
• You know who’s gonna give you everything? Yourself. — Diane Von Furstenberg

2. Lisa’s Horcruxes

I left my heart all over the world, in places I’ve been and people I’ve met. There’s a strange feeling about that. It’s like I’m never fully me at a single moment. But it’s more of a blessing than a curse, to have my heart everywhere.

• “You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” Miriam Adeney
• You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again. — Azar Nafisi
• You go away for a long time and return a different person – you never come all the way back. — Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

3. Never Settle

• Many things interested her, and nothing satisfied her entirely. — Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
• Don’t settle. It’s better to face a little loneliness now than a lifetime of loneliness with the wrong person. — Mandy Hale
• Be stubborn about your goals but flexible about your methods
• You’re not the kind of girl who settles. Keep not settling. — Joy Wilson
• “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs

Have courage to be who you truly are.

Love,
L