With our move to Nelson just a few short weeks away I’ve been feeling a supreme amount of self-doubt lately. Mostly doubting that I’m making the right choice. Which sounds crazy to me considering I’ve been wanting to move to BC for years at this point. Now that it’s finally happening I suppose I’m just having a hard time believing it. Which really means that I’m just having a hard time believing in myself, doesn’t it?!

I think a lot of the self-doubt I feel around my business and my choices goes back to the time that my ex-wife told me gave me some real shit advice. Her advice was to “quit photography, go back to school, and get a real career”. It wasn’t too long after I’d graduated from SIAST with an Applied Photography diploma. I was trying so hard to make it as a photographer. I’d started out shooting weddings because at the time it felt like the fastest path into doing a career that I loved. I ended up not being completely in love with shooting weddings like I am with my Empowerment Sessions. However, that’s a story for another time!

I was struggling to make any bookings – it can be competitive in the photography industry when you’re starting out. Not only that, but I basically was self-sabotaging my own success because my main concern was always having enough free time to visit my wife. She lived in Virginia and for our entire relationship we were long distance. You know what makes it hard to travel to see your loved ones? Having every weekend booked up with weddings every summer.

I’ve talked about this story a little more over in The Babes Club before but in the end I obviously didn’t take her advice. It wasn’t until meeting my partner Shawn that I actually saw what it looked like to have your dreams supported. Shawn is the one that nudged me along the path to where I am today. He supported me when I quit my job too soon. I had to find another part-time job while I built my business during any spare moment that I had. When I was finally ready to go full time with my studio in 2019 he looked me in the eyes and said “you can do this, babe”.

And you know what I did?

I fucking did it. 😉

I’m coming up close to my three year anniversary of being fully self-employed and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s been a hard and gruelling path to take. However, the freedom it allows me to accomodate my needs has been 110% worth it.

So, not all advice that you’ll be given in your life will be good advice. If you know that you’re on the right path, choose to trust your intuition instead. It’s there for a reason and doesn’t tend to steer us wrong. Don’t let self-doubt get in the way. If I’d listened to the bad advice my ex-wife gave to me so many years ago, I would have gone back to school to get a real career. I’d be real fucking miserable in a job I hated. If there’s one thing in this life that I’m grateful for, it’s that I listened to what I wanted in that moment and did it anyway.