Aileen Xu

Everyone has a purpose. You may not exactly know what fuels the fire within you, but it’s in deep beneath the surface. Whether it’s to follow your dream in becoming the next New York Times best-selling author or to finally overcome a personal bout you’ve been trying to fight, a fragment of your life is missing and you’re willing to go beyond depths to explore what it is.

Aileen Xu is a content creator, author, singer, and actress who has seen it all, but it wasn’t easy to establish her ground in the beginning. She’s interned at various companies and tried to find ways to strengthen her ability in order to showcase her talents, yet none of them were able to visibly make a change in her life and craft. After finishing college, she decided to pursue whatever opportunities she felt passionate about rather than pursuing those that she felt wouldn’t benefit her. And so she did.

Since then, she’s released an album and performed all over NYC and LA, acted on the big screen, became a spokesperson, and traveled all around the world. Xu approaches life with an interestingly fresh perspective. Having already found her purpose, she uses her past experiences as a way to teach others what to do when the feelings of uncertainty start to pave through. She came upon the phrase “artist of life” when the struggles of ending college without a clue in the world of what to do next came crashing down. An artist of life is a person who uses their power to create a life they’ve always wanted.

My personal purpose is to be kind, have fun, and create beautiful and meaningful things.”

“Honestly I think people tend to overcomplicate “finding their purpose” — I don’t blame them because I totally did when I first started out. Now, I see purpose like this: “Use what you have. Do what you can.” In other words, how can I use my talents and strengths to add value to the world? The first step is to understand who you are, what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing. The second step is to ask: what kind of impact do you want to have on others? It can be so simple and broad—it doesn’t have to be detailed at all. “I’m here to use my creativity to spread joy to others. The simpler it is, the better, because it will be able to apply to different experiences throughout your life. My personal purpose is to be kind, have fun, and create beautiful and meaningful things.”

Xu has since created a platform called Lavendaire to help inform the world of the internet. Lavendaire is a personal growth and lifestyle design website that includes everything from helpful tips and resources to YouTube GRWM videos and podcasts with artists, writers, CEOs, and much more. When asked about sharing Lavendaire with the world, she replied “I struggled a lot in my early twenties over not knowing what to do with my life. I had always been ambitious and wanted to do “big things” with my life — I followed all the steps that society teaches us in order to be “successful”: do well in school, get involved in extracurricular activities and community service, get into a good college, get a high paying job. All the steps were pretty much laid out for me and I was just trekking along this path. But after doing a handful of internships that introduced me to the corporate world, I knew deep down that this was not the life I wanted. My world came crashing down when I didn’t know what my “next step” would be after college—I felt like I had all the options in the world yet I had no idea which was the right one. This is when I decided to not take any traditional job after graduation and set off to explore all the creative paths that interested me. I set off to explore who I was, what I loved and what life I wanted to live. Through this experience, I realized that life is so malleable. We can really shape our lives in any way that we want, and that was so exciting. I created a life for myself full of creativity, travel and discovery—because I didn’t have a 9-5 job, I had the flexibility to say yes to all of these odd jobs and opportunities that made my life so much more interesting than it would have been otherwise. In those years, I learned how to be an artist of life. I started Lavendaire to share this discovery and all the insights and lessons that came from my experience so far. I had gained so much knowledge in personal growth from reading books and studying people I admired online. I was totally a sponge during those years. Lavendaire was my outlet to share all that I was learning. At the time, it was hard to find people my age talking about self help on YouTube—I was like, “Why isn’t anyone talking about this?” I knew that there must have been others my age going through the same struggles, so I decided to start sharing.”

Of course it’s not easy figuring out who we are and understanding the very parts of us that make us different at first glance. We often use our mistakes as a threshold to remind ourselves what we’ve done and what we’re capable of doing in the future. Failure is an intimidating word because it has the power to do many things. It can break you, heal you, hurt you, and inform you. Life is about making mistakes. In order to better your craft, you have to fail in order to improve.

Xu has a mantra for failure and includes many ways to combat the stigma that surrounds failure on Lavendaire. She says, “I tell myself “Everything is going to be okay, because everything is always going to be okay.” Regardless of what happens, as long as I’m living and breathing, I’m okay. I’ve learned that humans are so resilient; we can bounce back from anything. I also make sure to ask myself “What did I learn from this?” and “What good can come from this?” It’s important to see failure as part of the process. Failure isn’t something we should be afraid of. Failure is a stepping stone to success—when you fail, you learn from it, so you can do better next time. A key part of this is to avoid attaching failure with your self-worth. Just because you fail doesn’t mean you’re any less of a person. It doesn’t mean you’re not smart or talented.”

Failure happens to everyone who tries. The only way to avoid failure is to not try. And when you’re not trying, you’re already failing.”

On Xu’s website, Lavendaire, you can find tips on understanding yourself and improving your life. It’s almost like a huge online guide book to read when you need a little push and shove in the right direction. When I asked Xu about a tip she could give to creatives that they may not already know, she replied, “It’s not about how good your work is, it’s about how consistently you show up and work on your craft. Creatives often get down when their art doesn’t meet their high expectations, but what they should be doing is focusing not on how good their work is (or whether people will like it) but on how consistently they show up to work. Consistency and perseverance always win in the long term, because after constantly showing up, your art inevitably improves. It’s not about who’s the most talented, but who can stay in the game the longest and outlast all the others—think of all the creatives who get disappointed in their work or lack of progress and give up too soon.”

You can fail a million times, but the one time you succeed will change your outlook on life. Many people don’t know how to fail because they’re so caught up on doing it right the first time. In the process of failing you might find a version of your failure to be a work of art. Giving up is never the answer because you’ll never know until you try. Don’t let procrastination get the best of you nor let it affect the work you create. Be confident, be strong, and fulfill your dreams to make them a reality.

As Henry David Thoreau once said, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.” Maybe then you’ll find out exactly who you’re meant to be.

Written by Michelle Ledesma | Photography by Karen Hernandez