“It’s never too late or too early to be whoever you want to be.” –The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Let’s start over. Let’s do something different. Let’s be someone real. Recently, I’ve noticed that there’s something far too many of us have in common – our inability to pursue our deepest, most cherished dreams and find career happiness. We allow ourselves to be held back by endless inhibitions, faulty logic and un-supportive acquaintances. Yet if we actually took the time to not only listen to our hearts but actually follow our whimsies down some vague rabbit holes, we just might find that our lives, and the world, are better.
Perhaps you think that money is the issue.
How could you ever make enough to live as an artist, a logger or a paleontologist? Well, consider this: (1) nothing worth having is easy and (2) maybe happiness is more rewarding than all that money you’re going to make in your current career. What’s more, an endless number of successful people will argue that if you do what you love, the money will naturally follow. And, if you’re not interested in listening to any of them, at least consider some wisdom from acclaimed speaker Tony Robbins: “Focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear.”
Or maybe the issue is that you don’t have the time to devote to following your passion.
But let me tell you, you do have the time. Sleep less, multitask or cut back on any of the many activities you’re doing that aren’t following your dream. It’s also a fallacy that following your dream needs to be a full-time endeavor. Trust me, you don’t need to quit your day job tomorrow in order to start pursuing happiness. Start off small. Spend 30 minutes or an hour a day doing what you love and build from there. When the time is right for you to devote a majority of your existence to what you love, you’ll know.
Could it be that you think your friends will think you’re nuts?
The truth is that people who truly matter will be the ones to float you a loan, while the people who don’t will very likely start whispering about how you belong in a mental institution. But what better time than the present to figure out who in your life is really important?
Maybe you don’t even know what you really want.
Who does? Life isn’t linear. The lightbulb moment is as fictitious as Cinderella’s fairy godmother. Your dreams needn’t be concrete, and in fact they won’t be. Life is a progression of events that continuously and organically build off of one another. You have to follow something you like to find out what you love, and as long as what you’re pursuing is providing you satisfaction in life, there’s little problem.
If you do nothing else today, consider taking five minutes to think about what you would do with your life if there were no inhibitions. Be honest. Be bold. And tomorrow, start figuring out how you can make that happen.