A letter to my fellow stand-stills.

Hey there, stand-still. You, yes you!

The title probably has you thinking ‘huh?’ but I’ve always been one to give things away too quickly, therefore, that habit changes now. Along with many more. This letter is in particular targeted for the young generation of stand-stills. You’re probably again thinking what is a stand-still? Hold your horses, I’m about to spill the tea.

So, quick background; I graduated from the University of Liverpool with great grades, lots of experience under my belt and LOADS to talk about to employers. Yet, I’m still standing still. I’m not ashamed of it either. Let me tell you why. I’m sure lots of other young people like me, fresh out of GCSEs, A-levels or Level 3 studies, thought “oh wow, what a beautiful job market there’ll be when I go to university and then graduate”. Linda honey, have I got some news for you.. A little birdie told me that apparently, the job market isn’t so stable! Yes, all the immigrants have stolen the Brits’ jobs!!! No, but all jokes aside, there are thousands of jobs being posted daily on all these employer websites and forums, yet there are still thousands of young, fresh, excited graduates still unemployed. I mean there’s so many reasons as to why people think this may be; they must tell themselves that they need to do lots of free work before they land that beautiful salary. Or they think their grades weren’t good enough. Or their name sounded too foreign. I mean, the possibilities are honestly endless. Remember, there are people just as good as you applying for the same positions daily so yeah, now let me get to my point. Oh yeah, a stand-still. So here’s what it means:

Stand-still

compound noun

1. A work in progress

2. Someone worthy, completely undefined by monetary or material value.

3. Someone who over-worries, believes they are never good enough

4. Someone who gives everything their all yet still doesn’t see much progress.

Synonyms: hard-worker, creator, priceless, worthy, incredible, unique, effortless, stylish, classy, beautiful, innovative, important.

Does that sound familiar? Yeah I thought so. So, fresh out of University and here I am. 22, a stand-still. I’ve always been one to smile to the world even when I feel terrible, low, unworthy, tired, indifferent. I’m sure many other people are just like me. So, the past few months I’ve been feeling all those things and more, due to personal reasons but when I sat down and truly stripped apart all those emotions, I was left with one in particular: standing still. I felt as though because the graduate jobs weren’t rolling in, that I wasn’t worthy, that my degree was pointless, that I didn’t do well enough in my degree. In particular, I felt as though all those long, all day till late night, coffee-induced, stressful, traumatising nights in the library were pointless. I was wallowing in my own stand-stillness. However, I didn’t view standing still as a good thing, it wasn’t necessarily a positive for me. It was as if I put all this effort into a whole degree, for what? To have to continue tutoring (which I love, by the way)? To have to spend a lot of time sitting on the Internet, applying to jobs that meant nothing to me? All these shitty feelings was because I was longing for a salary, a check, money, $$. Just to be clear, I’ve made graduate job money before, and it kinda made me happy cause I splashed it all on god knows what, but…stand-still feels still came back. So, I decided to take control of my own life now, and here’s to a new outlook.

I have made so much progress since graduating University, I’ve started to show off more of what I love (make-up), I have a healthy, successful tuition business, and I’ve stopped eating meat (no shade to the meat-eaters, actually, shade). But most of all, I’ve finally realised that I’m important. Realising the value of self-importance is so necessary to one’s own well-being. Putting your happiness in the hands of an employer who could throw your importance in the bin is self-destructive. Now, to all my stand-stills, here’s some advice. I mean I didn’t study Psychology for no reason.

a) ‘Chase your dreams, but make sure they are grounded by reality’ — In other words, create a plan. Buy yourself a diary, write down what you want to achieve, this is SO important for you to transform your negative stand-stills into a positive. Be very smart with your goals, be realistic. Create weekly targets, monthly targets, monitor your spending, ask yourself ‘does this make sense?’ I always tell my students to ask themselves that when answering a question that requires reason. Why do something if it doesn’t make sense?

b) ‘Speak them into existence’ — I cannot stress this enough, I remember wanting to volunteer abroad, the year before I went I spoke that into reality but with no belief that I would find a placement perfect for me. Then I found SLV (Sri Lanka Volunteers), and spent five weeks doing everything I love in a beautiful country. Tell yourself everyday what you want to achieve, it will happen.

c) ‘Align your goals with your efforts’ — Again, stressing this! What is the point in writing down your goals and telling yourself it can happen, when you’re not willing to put in the work? Get out there, network, e-mail that brand you wanted to work with, speak to people who work in that industry, make your goals your reality, but this has to be aligned with your efforts. You cannot just expect your space to grow; you have to create your space, water it, shower it with energy.

d) ‘Bad energy chases the good outcomes away’ — What I mean here is that if you are surrounded by people who aren’t willing to improve themselves, then you will fall into a trap of standing still in a world of negative people. Often, we believe that people are in our lives for a reason. However, they’re only in our lives for the reasons we want them to be in them for. Remove the negative energy, replace it with good energy. DO NOT tell yourself that just because someone has been in your life for a long time, that you can’t let them go. Don’t associate time with love. Please don’t. The moment you do, is the moment you trap yourself with negative energy and you stop putting yourself first. So, stop doing that cause Linda honey, we’re tryna grow here.

e) ‘Love thy skin’ — stop trying to impress your Instagram and Twitter followers, seriously, nobody on the Internet actually cares, they just like it and move on. We all do. What I mean by loving your skin is that you need to love yourself to the point of no return, leave no space for the negative energy I was talking about earlier. Honestly, so many people message me about how much I love myself because I constantly post videos, pictures etc. of myself looking like I just crawled out of a cave, but that’s just me. Uneven skin, messy brows, dark circles, discolouration etc. I have owned my flaws. I stopped telling myself that I shouldn’t do something because it sounds stupid. I said yes to self-love, self-worth, self-value, and screamed piss off to self-doubt, self-harm, self-destruction. I do what I love, and I love what I do.

f) ‘Give yourself another chance, and another. And another. And another. And another’ — Stop telling yourself just because it didn’t work out that one time, that it won’t work out next time. Stop telling yourself that just because you got that one bad grade, you won’t get any good ones. Stop telling yourself that you’re not worthy of a second chance. Coming from a background of pressure (shout out to all my Africans), I have always been pushed and pushed myself to try and be the best and only the best, and I forgot that sometimes, the middle ground is OK. You can still climb if you’re in the middle. If you tell yourself that you don’t deserve something, that something won’t come to you. Remember, we’re speaking things into existence, Linda.

OK, I’ll stop now but the round up point is that no matter where you are, there is space for more — be a positive stand-still. Standing still isn’t a bad thing just because you’re not being spoon-fed, or you’re not being told what direction you’re going in. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do anything and expect things to fall into your life. In fact, I’m screaming the contrary at you.

Create the space and own it. Love yourself. Change your bad habits. Give yourself a break. Give yourself a second chance. Recharge your positive energy. Rid yourself of the negative energy. Ground your dreams. Turn them into reality. Stop looking at others for inspiration when you are your own.

N.B This is especially for those who choose not to play it safe; those who are pushing themselves to start up their own businesses, the creatives, the ones who don’t want to answer to a boss. Boss up, own your brand, own your work, own your skills, own your studies, own your skin, own you.

With love,

your fellow stand-still, Luts. Xo