“The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.”  – Ayn Rand

No One Wants to Be Mediocre

Do you want to master your life and realize your dreams? No one wants to wake up one day and realize they hate their life.  No one wants to wake up one day and realize life is not what they dreamed it would be. No one wants to live a life unfulfilled.  Unfortunately, it happens to a lot of us.  It happened to me.

Although you don’t realize it at the time, every little choice you make from the time you leave high school (or even before then) impacts your life and changes your direction.

The problem for most of us arises when we don’t know which direction to go and no one has given us any tools for steering the course.

Ending up Where you Least Expect It

I took two years off after high school to go to clubs and have fun.  It was an awesome two years, but, nightclub goer is not a wonderful vocational goal.  At 19 I figured I should probably do something with myself and.  I decided college was the way to go.  I ended up getting a philosophy degree from U.C. Berkeley.  From my perspective, it is a useless piece of paper.

So, what does someone do with a useless degree, but get yet another one.  My next choice was law school, because what the hell else do you do with a philosophy degree if you don’t want to teach. After three year of torturous boredom I graduated and passed the Bar.

Lo and behold with yet another shiny piece of paper declaring I had arrived I realized that I really had not in fact arrived and that I had no desire to be a lawyer.

Where do you go when you end up somewhere you never wanted to be?

Getting Where you Want to Go

I’m sure you can relate.  Are you doing something that you don’t really want to do but you just ended up there somehow?  Did the course of life steer you in some untoward direction and now you dread getting out of bed every day and if it weren’t for those stupid bills you would just stay under the covers?

At some point we all ask ourselves, “How did I get here”?  It seems we may obsess over this question for weeks or months or even years.  But, the better question to ask is “How do I get myself out of here?”

I believe we can all change if we want to.  Often the pain of staying the same has to be worse than the pain of changing and at that point something magical happens.  If you want to stay where you are then by all means you are free to do so.  If you want to change it won’t be easy, but what do you have to lose?

For the past twenty years I have been doing jobs that that did not fulfill me or give any personal satisfaction.  Recently, it came to the point where the pain of staying on the same course was more dreadful than the idea of trying something new so I decided to start blogging.  I wanted to start writing again, to go back to being more creative and to be able to help people.

For the first time in a long time, actually for the first time in my life I felt that I had a purpose and that I had a direction and that no one was going to stop me from moving forward.

What do you really want to do?  What motivates you every day?

The Path

Sit down in a quiet place and ask yourself the following:

  • If I could do anything and money was no object what would I do?
    • This doesn’t include something superficial like being famous.
  • What are my beliefs about money and success?
    • Are they negative or positive? Do I limit myself to a certain way of thinking?
  • What feeds my soul?
    • Do you love arts and crafts? Baking? Writing? Drawing? Sewing? Nature?
  • Do I value money over security or vice versa? Do I value flexibility or routine?
  • What are my core strengths?

Once you answer all these questions you will have a better understanding of what motivates you as a human being and what drives you.  We all need and want different things.  The challenge is to figure out what YOU want and need, not what your mom or dad or husband or wife or anyone else thinks you want and need.

This is your life. You only get one. Don’t just exist. Live.