Don't Let Fear Of Failure Stop You From Achieving Your Dreams. How The Chic Style Edit Pop-Up Shop Almost Didn't Happen

Hey curvy girls all over the world,

As we are literally hours away from a new year, I wanted to share with you one of the most important and biggest lessons that I learned in 2014, and that is to not let fear stop you from achieving your dreams. In the beginning of 2014, I created a vision board of all the things I wanted to accomplish for the year. In the midst of planning and taking steps to achieving some of my 2014 goals, I realized that every time I was getting closer to reaching the goal, I would pull back. I would over analyze and hesitate on taking the next step. There were times when I would completely shut down and stop working towards my goals altogether. Crazy, right?! For a while I couldn’t figure out why would lose focus on my goals until I decided to plan one of the biggest events I’ve ever done in my life. The Chic Style Edit Pop Up Shop. Planning the Chic Style Edit Pop Up Shop taught me a lot about myself. It taught me that I can do anything I put my mind to. It taught me about confidence and it taught me a valuable lesson about fear that I’ve never experienced before.

What some of you may not know is that the SC Pop Up shop almost didn’t happen. I wanted to do the pop up shop in May of 2014 but I chickened out because I thought I couldn’t pull it off. Basically, I got scared. It wasn’t until I got a phone call from my sister in September asking, what’s up with the pop up shop. Let me just tell you guys that her just saying that sparked a fire in me. It was like God spoke through her and said, let’s do this Alissa (yes, I’m dramatic like that). From that day on, I swear to you, I put the pop up shop plans in motion. I used all my connections from blogging and all the brands I had a relationship with and told them about what I wanted to do. It literally brought tears to my eyes when brands were so happy and excited to jump on board. It got to a point where we had to turn down some brands for spacing issues (Isn’t God good!). So, mid way through planning the event, I started thinking to myself, this event is going to fail. People are not going to come. Every negative thought you could imagine, went through my head. There were times when I thought I was going to have a panic attack. However, every time a negative thought appeared in my mind, something good happened.

Once, we finished planning the event, it was time to promote it and sell tickets. I thought I was going to have a heart attack the day I posted the event. I could just hear all the naysayers beefing about paying $10 for the event. I will admit, that almost stopped me too. I wanted to throw in the towel. There were a few people on Facebook and on the blog who left comments mad about having to pay to shop. I had to keep reminding myself and them it’s not about that. Out of the 9 brands we had there, 7 of them were only available online. You couldn’t shop them anywhere else. I knew I was doing the right thing.

Once I got over the naysayers, I took a moment to stop and think. My passion for plus size fashion and its advancement is honest and pure. I wanted plus size women to be able to have a real shopping experience beyond shopping online. In my moment of reflection, I realized I was allowing my what if’s, doubts, and fears stop me from doing something I had always dreamed of doing . I knew my heart was pure and I knew that throwing this event was not about making money but about my contribution to the betterment of the plus size fashion industry.

To make a long, long, story short, the Chic Style Edit Pop-Up Shop was a success beyond my wildest dreams. We sold out of our tickets and the feedback we received was phenomenal. The line was down the block for people to get in. I learned that you have to push through your fear of failure and follow your hearts desires and your passions. You will never know what success will be like if you don’t try.