You ever get a message right on time?  One Sunday, TD Jakes changed my life.
Looking back, I remember I had just come off of a few rough weeks and that particular morning, I woke up with a heavy heart.  I felt ‘defeated’ and I couldn’t shake the feeling. In between getting adjusted to moving back to the East Coast, a hectic Awards show weekend and some behind the scenes legal drama, I was mentally exhausted. Not to mention I felt as though I had fallen out of love with my career path. ‘God this can’t be it for me’, I remember thinking. ‘I’m not happy’.
It was a Sunday, and I remember going to TD Jakes website to see what type of books that he had written that may touch on some of the feelings I was experiencing. Coincidentally, Pastor Jakes was preaching live at that very moment. I’ve never watched any of his broadcasts so I had no idea what I was in for, but I clicked on the link and as soon as he was live on my computer screen, I saw that he was in the middle of building a huge nest on stage. He had these really big branches and the nest he was building was almost complete. I was amused…but what touched me, was the message he was trying to convey. I felt as though he was speaking directly to me.
In a nutshell, his message was, ‘Get Out Of Your Nest’…. as in your comfort zone. He said, ‘Evict yourself from the nest, it’s too small for what you are trying to do in your life. He went on to say, ‘This is the season of discomfort, the season of challenging limitations’. In that moment, I knew that my move back to New York was the best decision for me. In LA, I became comfortable, away from the hustle and bustle. I was tucked away in West Hollywood, living a quiet life away from the music industry and I had become content with that. There was no real progression in my business out there.  I was being sought out by agents and managers who wanted to know if I was going to transition into acting, TV and movies but I really wanted to take that opportunity of peace and quiet, to focus on self-improvement and my health. I sought out therapy to finally address personal issues, deal with the lost of my parents, broken relationships and so forth. Most of all I experienced life; my friends, beaches, amusement parks, things that I never had the chance to experience over the last four years because I was too tied up in work.  By the time 15 months had went by, I was at peace with myself, feeling a calm I’ve never felt before…. and then I got that nudge. That sign that it was time to get out of my nest, and face New York and the industry again head on. See, in my mind, I thought my purpose was done. I was already for someone to purchase my website and I was ready to throw in the towel and embark on a new journey, but I tell you…God has a way of sending you signs and he said, ‘you aren’t done yet’. I didn’t know what else HE believed was left for me to do, but I definitely listened. I got out of my nest.
I say all of that to say, Two months have passed and already I have seen things begin to manifest in my life and in my career that let’s me know that God was sending all the signs for me to, ‘Keep going’. Sometimes we feel so beat down, depressed and defeated that we don’t even pay attention when HE is trying to tell us something. It’s so very true when you hear people who meditate say, ‘sometimes you have to sit in a room and be quiet, quiet your mind and just listen’.
I don’t know what’s in his plan for me but I do know that I am now happy, I’ve fell in love with my career again and the exciting projects that I have been working on and I just have a whole new outlook on life. I remember tweeting out some gems throughout his broadcast, and I wanted to share a few. In your journey of leaving your comfort zone, you have to remember:
That you can not run with people who are CONTENT with being less than they were created to be. [If you have a friend who always has an excuse of why she can’t go for her dreams, this may apply]
You can not just hang with people who think like you, talk like you and do what you do. How are you going to grow?
[You should never want to be the smartest person in the room all of the time either. There should always be someone around that you can learn from.]
While pursuing your dreams, you may experience discomfort, that’s normal but you have to figure out how much your dreams are worth to you and how much you are willing to be inconvenienced temporarily to live the life you’ve always dreamed of living.
TD Jakes also said these few things that I will always remember:

Choose to live in your destiny, not die in your history
Change hurts…growth hurts. But it’s all worth it not to die in your nest.

It’s time to get out of your nest, spread your wings and fly…

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