10 Reminders About Creating Your Best Life
Since I haven’t written in a while, I thought I’d summarize some themes that came up repeatedly in the chats I’ve had in recent months with people at various points on the path to a more fulfilling life. They apply to careers, relationships, hobbies, and, well, life. I sure could use these reminders sometimes.
It’s not selfish to want to live a life you love. We are lucky enough to live at an age where we have alternatives to an eternal grind (even if certain forces in society benefit from having us continue to think we don’t).
Living a life you hate doesn’t make you a better parent; it makes you a parent who models to their kids that it’s okay to live a life they hate.
You likely already know what a more fulfilling life would look like for you. Your conscious mind may not allow you to see it because it’s “unrealistic”: You’ll never be good enough to make it work, others will disapprove, you can never make enough money in that life, etc.
You’ll “never” be good enough when you think in unrealistic timelines. We rarely become good at something in a few months, but it’s entirely possible to become good at something in a few years. I hope you agree that being happy in a few years is preferable to being miserable forever.
If you’ve been thinking, talking, or dreaming about doing something about your less-than-fulfilling life last year, you’ll keep thinking, talking, and dreaming about the same thing next year, unless you DO something about it. Small, continuous actions compound.
You don’t need social approval. You don’t have to tell anyone anything. Only share your dreams or actions with people who see you as bigger than you see yourself. People still look at me funny when I tell them what I do. Now it doesn’t bother me at all, but it used to, so I kept my mouth shut while I worked on not caring.
You can negotiate objections from loved ones on a long enough timeframe. Lack of support may slow you down when issues like childcare and finances are involved, but they don’t have to stop you.
The skills and knowledge you have can be unexpected advantages on a new path. For example, I was surprised to discover that many artists feel intimidated when speaking to collectors because collectors are of “a different class” (not my words). In tech, penniless, unemployed wannabe entrepreneurs speak to successful multi-millionaires all the time—an unexpected leg up in the art world, apparently.
Someone’s idea of how things work in a certain space isn’t the only way to make them work. It’s useful to listen to experts to understand the status quo—and then create your own path. The most successful people are rarely those who followed the “correct” or the “only” path.
If you see a certain path and convince yourself that it’s not for you, yet keep coming back to it in different ways, there’s something there for you that is blocked by a fear you haven’t unearthed yet (look for it in all the above).
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