|
You have the right to do something with your life. You have the right to think what you want to think.
At what point do you stop and give up the whole thing called life, what reason would you have to give up?
Actually I know a lot of reasons. There was a time when I myself was going to stop. And for a while I did stop. People get tired, worn out, and some of us never revive ourselves. We bend under the strain of life as we know it. What is it that gives us this “stress” thing that we have? Fear that something is not going right, that we may be fired from our job, that our children are going to go astray, or that we won’t have security in our future. We create stress for ourselves, sometimes imagined and sometimes not. But all of this stress comes from fears that we have.
How many of us have talked ourselves out of life? And if we have, then how do we talk ourselves back into life?
All of us at some time experience failure. And how we handle that failure is how we attack life in the future.
It is easy for us to give up and give in. When do we start to learn how to give up in life?
When we are young.
We give up learning something because it is too hard for us. We move on to something else. When we have failure do we learn to give up, or do we find something else in life that we can achieve more in? For example, not everyone is a great baseball player or basketball player. Michael Jordan gave up basketball to pursue his dream in baseball, and we all know how that turned out- not very well. But Michael wanted to play baseball and so he did with a minor league team called the Barons. He could have stayed with the Chicago Bulls or another professional basketball team and made millions in front of thousand of fans, instead of playing minor league baseball in front of small crowds and having to pay to play. What makes us do things like that?
How many of us even get the chance to do something like that, to leave a great job and go live out a fantasy. How do we get more of what we want in life and not risk anything?
Well, to get more you have to risk more. You have to set your goals, set a plan and move forward. I wonder if Michael Jordan said “I want to be a baseball player, I see myself as a baseball player and I want to do this at any cost.” He obviously did, because he could have stayed in basketball and made a lot of cash. But instead he had a dream.
And we say to ourselves, “Well if I had Michael Jordan’s money, I would be off chasing my dreams also.” Though this often is not the case. Take the point of corporate executives that have all of this money and then steal from the company, misrepresent the company’s financials, and do other things that end up destroying not only the company but also themselves. They have plenty of money, but greed or other motives cause them to sacrifice everything that they worked for. As a result they don’t go out and do the things that they would like to because they get caught up in the money and power. Nothing is wrong with money and power as long as you can control your urges to take it to the dark side.
I believe we have free will to do, say, think, and be anything that we want.
With that free will comes responsibility, judgment on our part and the desire to live life to its potential. Do we even think about the potential that we have for our lives?
We have incredible opportunity to think and rethink our lives and our strategy to live life.
If you have been around for any length of time, then you have quit something. And then what have you done? Started something else? Or found that special loser mentality that catapults you right into crossroads mode and then you don’t or can’t figure out what to do next. You don’t quit; you are paralyzed to determine your next move. So when you have quit or failed what do you do? What path do you take next, or instead of taking a path do you float around in circles like a boat that has its rudder stuck- circling around and around going nowhere.
We all have stopping points in our lives that give us cause to wonder if we are going in the right direction, or if we should instead abandon our endeavors to do something else or nothing at all.
I had an experience where I thought I was lucky to have a little job, be making little money, living in my little apartment with no dreams and no high hopes in ever doing anything significant in life, just living the best I could day to day. Then one day I would die and that would it.
I don’t know if you have ever felt that hopelessness of life. “This is the way it is for me and whatever I do won’t make any difference in my life because here I am destined to be a small cog in the wheel of life. Nothing important for me to do but get by in life, knowing I will never amount to anything other than someone struggling to get by from day to day. I have fear that can be conquered by being small, invisible to everyone but myself.”
I got this email from a person that has slogged in the muck of being stuck in the mire of life:
“I heard you on XTRA a couple weeks ago and checked out the website. You talk about using one’s imagination, but I can’t even access mine. I’m 40 years old and have never had a career. I slogged through law school for the past six years (two stints), finally graduated but still haven’t passed the bar exam after three tries. I just don’t care about this stuff anymore. I’m stuck in a research position that is meant for a college student. The last job I had that I liked was 19 years ago when I was writing feature stories for a college magazine. Otherwise I’ve hated every job (mostly retail) I’ve ever been in. I have no ‘network’, no savings, and have never made more than $40,000 in a year. I have student loans so how do I start over with huge debt and at what?”
Is this the only person that feels this way? No, because I know that I have felt this way at times in the past and that a lot of people feel this way. They can’t get any traction in life, and they are having no fun. They might as well be the living dead in a fantasy movie, because the only fantasy they seem to get is at the movies. They are paralyzed in life and what can they do? How can they be made well?
Well first of all, this gentleman is 40 so no one really cares but himself. People who love him wish him the best, but they have probably given up on him themselves. He is staring at life with all of the negativity of his previous years. He is in debt, doesn’t care about his work in the past, and no passion: He has quit. Since he got into and through law school, he obviously has some education and smarts; he just hates what he has been doing and has no passion.
If he enjoyed writing, then I would tell him to start writing again. And I know this may be hard to hear, but he needs to just get a job that he can do and have some success at. Then if he will change his mental picture of himself, he can start doing what his passion is in his spare time. If he can just find a way to write and find other things that he will have a passion for. We stop and declare defeat because we lack the character, values and goals that will bring meaning to our life.
Find something that you are passionate about, or can get passionate about and start doing that. What do you have to lose?
You have quit a long time ago, because you were doing something that you didn’t like to do.
The average life expectancy of a man is in his seventies and here is a man that is 40, has lived half of his life and has found no satisfaction, hates where he is in life and wants to make a change. Yet he is so depressed he can’t make any bold decisions as to what he would like in the world.
STOP, take a time out and realize that half of your life is gone. Seek professional help if that is what you need, and realize the wants and needs that you have.
You have a short time left in this life and that is part of your frustration- you have lived all this time without having accomplished what you want to.
I would bet that going to law school was not really your idea, and if it was your idea you surely did not fully embrace the idea that this was what you had a passion for.
Many of us are in the same position at one time or another, and we don’t know how to get out. You need to be brave and move yourself out of the condition that you are in now. You have become comfortable with your negative condition and will seek to remain there in your muck because it is comfortable for you, even though you want to make a change. You have quit.
You have quit, and stopped living life, and that is not an unusual condition.
And then when you start doing something that you want to do and it doesn’t pay off, when do you quit?
What do you want your life to be, and then if you arrive at a decision, do you ever stop trying to do what it is that you love?
Remember that life is an adventure, and there isn’t going to be just one thing that you love. Instead, you have to be willing to experiment with life and take chances on doing something different, and realize that more failure may come your way and that the things you have tried you don’t like to do. You need to keep trying to unlock the secret of what you want in life.
I have been like you - stuck in the mud of life - and have tried to do other things to get out of that mud. But if you don’t feel the passion, then it is going to be the wrong thing no matter what.
Whether you are making a ton of money like Michael and are not happy, or are caught in the quagmire of life and feel like you can’t get out like our writer, you are in the same place.
When you are young, 70 years can look like a long time- but it goes by quickly, so if you are doing something that is going to help you propel yourself forward to something that is fun and constructive for you, why not continue to do it.
Why slog along in life? Did someone make it your duty to do so? Are you not going to heaven if you don’t stay in the mud of your life? What is going to happen to you if you reach for the stars and don’t make it? At least you will have tried.
I was on the showroom floor, selling cars, broke, failed in business, failed in relationships, and failed in everything that I did. People came up to me and told me I was a failure. Talk about pouring salt into the wound. I was minding my own business trying to find a place to live and walking to work since I had no car. I had hit the bottom in debt up to my eyebrows, and people were talking about me behind my back (sometimes actually in front of me, like I didn’t exist) and sharing the sad tale about how I was a loser. Nice.
Of course throughout life I had heard many stories about losers, and I am sure you have too. Stories about those people who tried and didn’t make it. I just never knew I was going to be one of those people. And you could be one of these people too. I was one of the fortunate ones, because I created the necessary changes to climb back up and have a great life.
Our friend with the sad tale has an education, can develop characteristics so that he can save some money, examine his options in today’s world and is better equipped than most to find the new adventure that he wants to do in life now.
Can I tell him what to do? No one can- he is going to have to find what sparks him in life, and I know there is something out there that will spark his interest, and that he can get excited about. What that is I don’t know; he will have to come out of the comfort zone and find his passion for himself, because he is the only one that can.
Or he can stay in the crossroads of life forever and never move on from where he is today. He has the time to do something for himself, but that time is not eternal and one should move ahead and not be afraid of the adventure.
Our friend actually seems like he is in a great place to make a change- he knows what he doesn’t want and that is a beginning. He has education, and he has the desire to move forward in his life- he just doesn’t know what that moving forward is, nor do I, nor does anyone else. But if he will explore life, he will find his future or he can have a heck of time trying to find what the future should be, and by doing that have just as much fun.
You can have more if you want it in life, but you have to reach out and discover it.
Is it easy? Maybe yes, maybe no. It depends on where you look and what you find, but I am here rooting you on, like many others. Even though there are some that will tell you that are you wasting your time, and to give it up - life that is. You can’t listen to them. You must forge your own path.
When is it time to quit? When you say so, and not one moment sooner. You can have more, and searching is the only way to get it.
|
