Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl! And you are tuned in to Tweed Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Isn't it about time that you evaluated your life? Let's get started. Before we get into today's topic, I want to start with some announcements.
The first announcement is for my people in Georgia. Got a question. What are you doing? Have you gone and voted yet?
I realize that they just opened early voting, but hello? Go ahead and get it done. You know and I know that there's nothing that's going to happen between now and election day. There's going to be so earth shattering that it's going to cause you to change who you're voting for.
You've already figured that out. All of the shenanigans that have already taken place should be enough. You know who you're voting for. Go ahead and do it.
That way, on election day, what you can do is you can take that time and use it for yourself. You can go pamper yourself, go catch a movie, have a long lunch, go somewhere and sit down. It doesn't even matter what you do. Because your voting will have been done already.
You took care of the important stuff. So now, the self-important stuff, you can take care of that. Okay? So we're not going to well there.
I just wanted to say, go ahead, get out there, go vote. Period. End of story. Alright.
Now, the second announcement deals with the student loan aid. The website is up. If you think you qualify, go ahead and put your application in for your student loan debt relief. The website is studentaid.gov.
That's S-T-U-D-E-N-T-A-I-D.G-O-V. They say it only takes five minutes to complete. You don't need to have any documents with you when you complete this application, nor do you have to have a login to do this. Okay?
So they're making it super duper easy and they're giving you forever to actually put this application in. You have until December 31st of 2023. Hear that? 2023.
Not this coming December, but the following December. But don't wait. Don't sit on it. If you know that you qualify for some type of loan relief, then go ahead, put your application in, see if it gets approved for whatever dollar amount we know that it's up to $20,000 depending on what your situation was.
And, you know, it's done. So go ahead. The website again is studentaid.gov. S-T-U-D-E-N-T-A-I-D-O-V.
Now that we have all of the announcements out of the way, it's time to actually move into today's actual celebration. And today just happens to be evaluate your life day. Now, there's no real rhyme or reason as to why today, why this month, why this time of year. None of that.
It was created by a couple who's actually created a couple of, when I say a couple, I mean like 80 some odd days. And they're all kind of fun days, things that kind of lighten the mood and kind of get people laughing and talking type thing. And so this one is a little bit more on the serious side because really what their goal for evaluate your life day is time for you to assess where you've been, what you've been doing. And then kind of figure out, do I need to make some changes?
Do I need to do something different? Have I been doing things pretty good up to this point? You know, just kind of sit back and do a self-assessment, you know, on your own terms, whatever it means to you. And the goal is to become better.
And it's not intended for you to sit and judge yourself or criticize yourself overly. That's not the goal. So even in the idea that maybe as you evaluate your life, you see the unpleasant parts starting to come to the surface as you kind of look back over the past couple of years. And when that happens, the idea isn't to look at it and be down on yourself.
Like this isn't supposed to be a day of sadness. It's really supposed to be like, okay, so you see what you did. You see how it turned out. Maybe not so great.
But guess what? You're still here. So that's the good part. That's the silver lining of it all.
You're here to possibly do something different. And then that's what you do. You look at yourself and your situations and where you've been through a lens of kindness and grace and not from a standpoint of judgment. When I stop and evaluate where I've been and what I've been through, the types of decisions that I've made, I can't help but to think of that commercial.
And the crazy thing is, I can't even really remember what they're selling in this commercial. But the song is like right there in my head. It's the one where the guy sings. He's like, I've been everywhere, man.
I've been everywhere. That song? That's me. Okay.
I feel like I've been all over the place doing all of the things. And it's funny because even though I feel like I've done a lot, when I kind of laid out on paper, I was like, well, I did some stuff. But there's a lot of things that aren't lining up here. Like so I said, I was going to start this business and it was a dream for the longest.
But if you recall a couple months back, we were talking about entrepreneurs and I said that I was going to go ahead and talk about it. And I said that I was going to go ahead and make it happen. And you'll be happy to know that I have, and I'm not quite ready to unveil it just yet. I ran into a little snafu earlier today that's going to cause me to have to rethink a few things.
But it's actually a thing. Like I have put the money down. I have the domain name. I have the actual business license and everything I'm ready to go as some people might say.
And I'm really proud of myself because that's been one of those things where I've hesitated. I've stopped. I muted myself. I was like, I know people aren't ready.
When it's not so much that the people aren't ready, I wasn't ready. I don't know why I wasn't ready. But I've decided that I'm done with that. There's no reason for me to sit back and hide in the shadows while everybody else is dancing out in the sun.
I need to get a little vitamin D too. Okay. So five important self evaluation questions that you can use as you go and evaluate your life. The first one is to ask yourself, do I work as hard as I can?
It's a tough question and you have to be honest with yourself when you think about it. Because when I ask myself that question, am I working as hard as I can towards this goal of being a business owner? And I wasn't. And I had to come to grips with that idea and then to then ask myself, do you want to work that hard to get to this point?
If so, then go ahead and do it because you're not getting any younger. Next question is, do I set high enough standards for myself? That one I have to say yes I do. I dream big, but a lot of them just stay as dreams.
But I'm done with that. There's going to be a lot of other things coming out. And I hope there's going to be a lot of things coming out of you too when you realize either that you don't set your standard high enough. Or you had these high standards all this time and you've just been sitting on them.
Time to get up. Next question, do I allow procrastination and distractions to hinder me? Oh, stepping on my toes. That was me.
I can procrastinate with the best of them. And it's not so much an intentional procrastination, but if a squirrel runs through the rim, I just might go chase it. So yeah, easily distracted when it comes. But there's so many things that I wanted to do and that I see and it's like, oh, I want to try that.
I want to try this. I want to do that. Put it all on paper. Pick one thing.
Get through that thing and then move on to the next. It's simple. You just have to focus. Next question, do I properly utilize my resources?
That's an important one because if you have resources at your disposal, why not go ahead and tap into it? Don't be so stuck on yourself or in your head about things where you feel like, oh, I don't want to reach out to this person because they might think this. They might think that it's true. They might.
But they might not. Some people may see you coming to them for advice or help as you trying to use their position, their clout, whatever it is they have. They might think that. But then again, they might not.
Y'all might be good enough friends. So they're like, you know what? I want to help my friend out. Let me lift you up to where I am and help you go up the ladder as well.
Last question, do I spend enough time doing quality work? Notice the word quality before the work. It's not do I spend enough time doing work? Do I spend enough time doing quality work?
And I'd like to pat myself on the back for that one because I think I do quality work. I do. And whatever it is that I'm doing, I do it to the best of my ability because if I'm putting my name on this, then it's got to be dope because I don't want somebody coming back saying, oh, girl, she knows she could have left that thing back at home. I'm not about that.
I'm not feeling that type of energy. So yes, but do you? Those are the questions to ask yourself as you go through and celebrate and it doesn't have to be any particular day. If you want to wait and do all of this leading into the new year and let that be a part of your new year's resolutions, you know what?
Do you boo? You can do that. Evaluate your life day should be every day. Thanks so much for joining me for Evaluate Your Life Day.
I don't really have any nonprofits or anything to highlight today, but let me do one thing. I want to highlight you. Let's celebrate you. You have come a long way.
No matter what you're going through in life, you are stronger today. Today, the person that you are is stronger than what you were yesterday. So take some time out and celebrate the little wins. Okay?
Have a great day. We'll be back here again on Thursday.