There’s a rare slice of people out there that are doing exactly what they were born to do, and making money doing it. For those people, they’re working because that’s what they want to do. If they won a million bucks, they’d continue to do what they do.
If you’re like most people though, you work for some other reason. It’s a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. If you won a million bucks, you’d be gone. You’d quit your job to do… what, exactly? We’ve all got goals and dreams; what’s yours?
If you can’t answer that question, maybe it’s worth doing some reflecting over. If you’re not doing what you love for work, and don’t know what you love outside of work, maybe it’s time to start experimenting. Try things you think you might like and see how it actually pans out. Even if it doesn’t, you’ll learn something about yourself in the process!
If you have an answer to that question, awesome. You know what you want out of life. So the question then is, are you getting there? Do you feel like you’re making progress toward that goal, or does it feel like you’re stuck on a treadmill, running in one place but never going anywhere?
I’m not trying to depress you with this thought. I’m trying to get you to think. Every now and then, I take stock of my life, weighing where I am against where I was last year, and where I’m trying to go. It’s only by this process of reflection that I can see whether I’m following the path I wanted to follow, or whether I’ve drifted. And if I’ve drifted, that same process can help me see if this new path I find myself on is better or worse than the old one.
Let me give you an example, the one I know best: my own life. Here’s why I work. I work to enable my passions: travel, photography, karate, golf. I work to provide for my wife and give her a good life. And yeah, I work to enjoy some creature comforts here and there. If I won the lottery, I’d travel full-time with my wife and fine-tune my photography while I’m at it. We’d see things, eat great food, and meet great people. Share stories, customs, experiences. That’s my dream, my vision for a life well-lived. What’s yours?
Guys, life’s too short to just wake up, go to work, come home, eat, and go to bed, like we’re on autopilot day-in and day-out. You get one kick at the can. One. How are you spending it? Are you doing what you want? If not, what can you do to change that?
The answer is never “nothing.” Never. The difference between those who move to change and those who don’t is motivation. How bad do you want whatever it is you don’t have in your life? If you want it bad enough, you’ll go after it. If you don’t, you won’t, end of story.
Me, I want it bad enough. Every decision I make is now measured against the yardstick of whether it gets me closer to or further away from my dreams. And every time I make a call that gets me closer, I feel good. Every time I don’t, I can fix it. But the only way you can fix it is by recognizing it first, and the only way you can do that is by knowing yourself and what you want.
It wasn’t always that way for me. Sometimes you need a kick in the pants to remember or discover what it is you’re chasing. I was on autopilot for a while, a robot stuck in a rut. It wasn’t until I took a trip to Indonesia with my wife that everything changed. While I was there, it felt like I was coming alive for the very first time. When I came back, I reorganized everything around my goals and dreams.
As Andy said in one of my favourite movies, the Shawshank Redemption, “You either get busy living, or you get busy dying.” The question is, which one do you choose?
