Have you found your authentic path yet? Here's how I found mine... by Violeta Nedkova.

For most of my life, I followed the rules.

I was a good student.

I never missed an appointment.

When I needed to learn something, I started from the books.

Basically, I was a good little girl who had faith in society, traditional education, and the people enforcing both. I had faith they would bring me somewhere. However, they brought me to a miserable place. A place where everything was predictable and boring. Where people were like robots with certifications who never stood out and who always did as they were told.

It's why for most of my life I have done creative projects on the side.

A part of me just always KNEW I would never be happy if all I was was a good little girl who followed the rules. That is why I was a rebel in my free time. I started collaborations, projects, and blogs that reflected who I really was.

But I never, not once, thought this would ever be anything more than pleasure.

And pleasure, by definition, is something you do in your free time. Something you extract from things that are called hobbies. Something that never pays.

The first time I realized my creative hobbies could pay and become a lifestyle was when I found the entrepreneurial world, more specifically the world of startups.

That's when I put my superpowers to work and became a digital marketer, which eventually led me to hustling to grow startups.

(Can you think of anything more challenging? I can't.)

That was the first time I realized the rules didn't cut it because the people who simply followed the rules just eventually burned out. I had to invent my own rules and FAST. That's when I heard about growth hacking for the first time - the idea that you use tricks to grow something fast. That's when I read Ryan Holiday's Trust Me, I'm Lying and became disillusioned with the whole thing.

That's also when I swore I would never do marketing again.

If marketing was so sleazy and meaningless, I wanted no part in it. Which is why I took a few months break from it and turned my life upside down.

In 2015, I redefined what marketing meant.

I basically looked at what I'd done my whole life - starting from the books, following the rules, listening to the experts, and just believing everything everyone told me instead of looking to the original ones like I do now.

And I realized...

I would never be happy if I lived my life in a way they wanted me to.

So I started doing things MY WAY.

I started from ME this time, not from everybody else.

I looked at what marketing could be instead of what the majority of it was.

I invented my own kind of marketing and I called it Authentic Marketing before I settled on Creative Marketing. Whatever you call it, though, it's just marketing that fits your personality, strengths, and values. (I have to admit that Beth Grant's Archetype Alignment Grid helped me start on that path.)

It's a marketing you would be happy to do, not the sleazy kind.

Don't think that's marketing? That's because it's creative marketing.

The only thing in your marketing strategy that will always pay off long-term.

People don't buy products, people buy people.

Don't suffer in marketing, find your own marketing formula.

Then I decided that marketing wasn't what I did, not really, it was a mindset shift for my people - the knowledge that you can take anything and turn it upside down to fit you instead of fitting yourself to everything outside you.

It is a way of seeing and doing things - by starting from the Core ( what really matters), not the Surface (the details). You can read about it HERE.

So today, I embrace that shift and call it Creative Rebellion.

If you're reading this and nodding, you're a creative rebel.

You're a creative person who is tired of trying to fit in to the world so you belong. You would much rather stand out with the natural gifts you have. I know it's scary at first and not at all easy, but it's life-transforming and beautiful.

All I can say is this...

If you want to live your life following their rules, be my guest.

But if you want to follow me into a land where anything is possible for you, where you follow your own rules, and where you thrive on your own terms, then just allow me to introduce you to the world of Creative Rebellion.

One way I do that is on this blog. Start from this article.
Another thing you can do is subscribe to my weekly newsletter, where I show you behind the scenes, link you to the best rebel resources, and share my rebel journey with you, so you feel a little bit less alone on yours.
I also talk about it on Soundcloud - I used to have a podcast called The Creative Rebels and now I have a new one called The Rebel Reset where we look at what other people do and we reset it back to what we do.
Finally, I have a bunch of ebooks, mini-guides, and videos you can find in The Secret Library where creative rebels go to work and play.

So yeah.. that's my story.

And that's what I do and why I do it...

Maybe you're at a crossroads, too. Maybe you feel disillusioned with their rules like I was. And maybe that means you're ready to let your rebel self out and finally embrace the life you were meant to live.

You're not alone.

All of us creative rebels, we see you and we're right beside you.

I only ask that you keep on and...