To literally die doing something you love—inspired by the great Amelia Earhart.

To many of us, to let go of life’s pressures and what we are “supposed” to be doing in life, to actually take a step and walk toward what sets our souls on fire and what we are passionate about, we must get to a huge bridge where a giant leap of faith and a step into uncertainty must be made to actually get to where our hearts, souls, and minds can find a home, a refuge, and a happy place.

By talking about a major inspiration and someone I aspire to resemble, I want to show you how much I think taking a chance on ourselves really matters.

Amelia Earhart, one of my idols, to say the least, was an exceptional human being who left her mark on this Earth. She was a free-spirited, fierce, independent, not-bound-to-traditions, strong woman.

She was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and a distinguished author. She wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences and contributed significantly to the education and formation of young female pilots. She was also a career counselor and advisor for many young female students, and she was an early advocate for equal rights. Talk about a feminist warrior!

During the Spanish flu, she was a frontliner (now you know why I relate to her so damn much; guilty as charged)—a nurse who was helping as much as she could, and she became a patient herself and suffered extensively with a long recovery path, where she invested her time reading poetry and about aviation. That illness left her with many chronic problems and scars, but they never stopped her from flying and following her dream.

That woman—who came from a broken home—defied society and social norms in a rigid time frame for a woman during the 1920s and 1930s. She turned her pain into power. She unapologetically became who she wanted and who she aspired to be, and history still knows her name and her accomplishments to this day. Her death is still being investigated because that is how much she left her mark and did not go unnoticed.

What was her secret? Simple—she followed her passion, she persisted, she challenged society and herself, and she refused to fit the mold those past times had implied on her. She took huge risks, and she overcame so much to get to where she wanted to be.

I admire her consistency, and this is how I find my strength when I want to give up on my dreams and shift into a profile that fits the mold of my society—a profile that does not describe me in any way and that’s less troublesome and more people-approved.

From her, I learn to stay weird, to embrace all my aspects, to invest in myself, to want more, to help more, to give back more, to get better, to change, and most importantly, to trust and believe in myself.

I am motivated to keep moving forward, to not give up, to not listen to bad influences, and to always follow that gut feeling that never fails to put me on the right path.

I am learning to utilize my failures, to learn from them, to use them as fuel to power my next move, and to turn my pain into strength and persistence.

I am also learning not to be afraid of challenges, not to take the easy road, not to stare the tough path from afar and say, “I can’t do it”—but to have the confidence and strength to carry on with what I want and to do whatever it takes to get there.

Sometimes, we have to go into the fire to get to the other side. Let’s not be afraid of some heat and remember that: a giant leap of faith could be the only obstacle between the life we want to let go of and the life we never even imagined in our dreams.

Sometimes, we must defy that earth-shattering fear, take a risk, and take off. Amelia Earhart did that until she took her last breath. She might have died trying to fly the entire globe in 1937, but she literally died doing what she loved.

She might have been lost during a flight, but I do believe that those who are lost find themselves the most.

So dream big, aim high, don’t be afraid, don’t rest, don’t stop, and fly fly away.

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