Walk in Your Purpose With Patrice C. Washington
In our latest Instagram Live series Tuesday Talk we spoke to Patrice C. Washington about chasing our purpose, not money. After leaving college with $18,000 dollars in debt to becoming a successful businesswoman to then losing it all in the recession and now owning a seven figure business. Patrice shared with us her wisdom in the area of personal finance to teach us how we can be empowered in our finances and our purpose.
Photography By Ahmad Barber
Styling By Fatiyah Johnson
Hair and Makeup by Corinne Cowan
Personal finance and budgeting is not a one size fits all journey, we will all have to try different methods of budgeting and tweak them to best fit us. It's not a quick journey, but we will need to keep going until we find the rhythm that works for us. In each season of our lives, the things we need and want will change so we need to be flexible with how we approach our personal finance to best fit that. We shouldn't be ashamed to figure out what works for us.
It is when we are in the good financial seasons of our lives, that we should be taking advantage of the programs, seminars and books as if we don’t educate ourselves then, it will take longer and be harder to come back from the financial hardships we face. It's by knowing what is available, that we can learn to ask for support during challenging times as well as knowing where the support is. Don’t suffer in silence. We shouldn't be shaming people for taking advantage of the resources available to them. The playing field can be levelled at any time so don’t have premature pride.
‘Find what works for you in order to manage your needs with grace and still have your wants.’
We should be chasing after our purpose, not money. If all we are doing is striving for the next biggest thing that we have been told we want and not actually asking ourselves - ‘Is this what I want to do?’. ‘Is this making us happy?’. We will just be creating a huge void in our lives. It’s about making choices rooted in faith not fear. If the thing we are doing only serves us, that is passion, if what we are doing serves other people, then that is our purpose. Wealth is about wellbeing which is connected to fulfilment. We shouldn’t be living our lives in a continuous cycle of doing something for the money but because we want to not because we have to. There will be seasons in our lives where we do have to do something that we feel is not in our calling but it's our mindset towards it that will change our outlook and perspective of that season.
‘Mindset is everything, skillset is secondary.’
As we walk in our purpose, it will shift how we view our priorities for the better. Our gifts won’t go away because our bank account doesn’t look like how we would like it to look. We may not all be able to be fulltime in our purpose but we can still find a way to figure out how we can be in those spaces. That may mean we need to volunteer in companies that work in that space, talk to people about it, find out what is already happening in that area and work out how we can be part of those discussions. We need to give ourselves permission to fully embrace our purpose.
WORDS BY
Priya Raheja
Read Patrice’s Full Story In Issue 5
