I could tell you that I am so inspired and enchanted by the magic of life all the time that I can’t help but share my experiences and create beautiful things.  But that would be a gigantic big lie. There is some truth in it, on good days.  The bit I’ve left out is pretty crucial to the story though.

Sometimes I am so full of self doubt and negativity that it literally paralyses me.  If you ever suffer from this kind of lack of confidence then you’ll know that focussing on trying to improve whatever it is you’re unhappy with while in this fearful state can be counterproductive.  You just end up finding further problems and reasons why you can’t succeed.  There are lots of things you can do to change your mindset and appreciate your successes instead, but it may be that remembering what you’re passionate about is enough to make the shift from feeling stuck and hopeless to being inspired and empowered.

I’ll use my personal experience as an example to illustrate the power of this.  I had hit a bit of a brick wall with the marketing side of my handmade jewellery business.  My brain had given up doing its job and my thoughts were scattered and increasingly negative.  This has happened to me enough times to know not to continue down that road.  I tried to follow my own advice and made a conscious effort to remember what I was passionate about.

Sometimes you have to be really honest with yourself when your heart isn’t in what you’re doing.  The reason my brain wasn’t co-operating was because I was trying to deny a major part of the motivation behind my work.

Being self employed isn’t all rainbows… unless you happen to be at Iguacu falls.

Travel and freedom have played a central role in my life for a long time.  However, because I’d been so focussed on my business, I’d forgotten why I was doing all of this.  I was thinking about all of the different ways to market my online shop, but I had lost my spark.  I had put travel in a box that didn’t overlap with work, but when I remembered my passion it freed up my thinking again.

Poon Hill in the Himalayas, Nepal.  On top of the world, now that’s freedom!

My handmade jewellery and my creativity are inseparable from my love of exploring the world.  I have many passions that are intertwined, and to work efficiently I need to allow them to be expressed.  I need to live my passion for travel, my passion for freedom and my passion for peace, in order to fuel my passion for creating bohemian jewellery for free spirited dreamers.  I need that lust for life to design jewellery that resonates with the people I create it for.

So that’s now the basis of my marketing strategy.  To be myself, but louder.  To immerse myself in the things that inspire me, connect with like minded people who share my outlook on life, and to share my journey and inspirations with them.  With you.

Living my passion is actually pretty essential to both my productivity and my happiness.  That’s the thing with being a sensitive soul trying to make a living from your creative endeavours – if you stray too far from the things that inspire you then you soon get shut down by the first hint of failure!  You need that burning passion to sustain you through the many, many failures that are necessary for your growth.  If you’re truly following your heart and expressing your authentic self then failure just doesn’t feel like failure any more.  You just keep going.

Macrame gemstone earrings. You can browse my Etsy shop TessHeaven here.