BTS: My Life's Manifesto

Personal Manifesto

To be quite honest, I REALLY struggled while writing my personal manifesto. I would consider myself to be a fairly introspective and grounded person, so I was surprised when this was the case. Every time I sat down to give it my full attention, I would grow extremely frustrated because for once, the words I wanted to write were not coming to me in cohesive sentences. I know now that I was rushing the process. I was simply trying too hard to get it right the first time.

It wasn’t until I heard these wise words, “Give yourself the grace to not do it perfectly. Have a shitty first few drafts,” I was freed from this illusion. The reality was that all along I was forcing my creativity and was in turn sacrificing the quality of my work. I needed to give myself the grace to not get it right the first time, but to keep trying anyway. So I wrote and the first couple hundred words were horrendous, BUT what started to happen was that I saw consistent themes. And every once in a while a rare golden sentence would appear. I began to see bits of a diamond in the rough that I just had to polish off and piece together.

---

Below you will see a button that links to the document that I brainstormed, ideated, and wrote my manifesto in. I started with a blank piece of paper where I wrote down my values and things that made me, me. Next, I tried to pick apart the things that gave the best representation of the person I strive to be. Then, I started compiling all of my ideas and words into a document. I added to this document every other day for a solid three weeks, until I finally created the most recent version of my manifesto.

I started with a blank piece of paper where I wrote down my values and things that made me, me.

Click here to see my manifesto Google document. (I apologize in advance for pure scatterbrained-ness and the lack of organization of this document. That's just how my brain works.)