Many times I have found myself daydreaming about the near future when I have all of the things I've ever wanted such as my complete freedom and financial independence. It's not necessarily a bad thing to take a walk in the clouds of your mind and project your future but too often it gets treated like a cinema and once you leave there is no follow up action to make the dream into a reality. Taking control of your life and working your way to those dreams are the only path to a fulfilling existence. I touched on seizing control in this post,Reinventing Yourself: 5 Steps to Bring Change in Your Life, and I wanted to try and expand more on the subject.
Making yourself the one that is responsible and being able to direct where your life is heading can be a difficult thing to do. During the start of our lives we lived very much within a constructed bubble under the care of people such as our parents and institutions such as school. While there became increasingly some modicum of freedom of choice as we advanced in age, most of us never really had to take control because our lives were scheduled by others. If you work or have ever worked in your adult life you still undergo something similar to this today with your employer through the dictated hours that you must work and the projects that you must complete. Sometimes it isn't all that bad, you make decent money and you have a sense of security (whether your security is real or not is another question)but are you living for relative comfort or for actual happiness? Judging by the total garbage economy most of us are living just to get by and any control over what we do can seem distant and almost unattainable.
You can't let current circumstances overwhelm your future plans just think about all of the large companies that were started with a single person who turned very little into a fortune. Things don't totally change overnight but the mark of success can be found with those who are the most consistent, who chip away at smaller goals until the ultimate goal is held in their hands. It is carrying a positive mental attitude and not letting the fear or detractors hold you back. Using myself as an example, I still haven't come close to reaching my goals for this blog and if you looked at my previous post you would see in the first month here I've averaged around 8 views per day. But because I am so enamored with my work here I have set my goals both short term (1 month) and long term and have laid out my plans on how to reach each mark in the road.
Is it frustrating at times? It can be when I think about all of the hours I have poured into it for just one month and have yet to reap any benefits. Hell, at least with school I get a grade for my papers. But I know the power that positive thinking can have on a person and their willingness to do anything necessary. It takes years for most businesses to become successful so why would it be any different for online writing?
Going after what you want is really that scary and in all honesty your mortal life most likely won't be in danger doing it but how you live your life will be. Not everybody likes change and play it safe because they are more afraid of losing the little they have rather embracing everything that they truly want. You cannot focus on the fear you must overcome what you are scared of and reach for the joy because it will keep you focused and motivated on the positive rather than the negative.
What makes you happy? What do you want out of life? What are your values? You can do what you want and you can figure out what exactly 'that thing' is by examining who your are. I knew that the daily grind of a bad job wasn't what I wanted at all and even though I went back to school nothing I see really interests me as a career (probably because I like so many different things). It actually took a couple of years of thinking about different options for my life before I arrived at the path that I'm on now. What I want isn't to be a blogger but it is part of the path that I have set for myself to take in order to enter the next phase of my life. In fact my process just to arrive at this point went something like this:
1.Depressed and bored at work and school.
2. Think school is the problem. Decide to drop out and work full time save up money and live as a wanderer. Yeah, I actually wanted to give up my life and walk the earth haha.
3. Never set any goals on how to accomplish my wanderer status and got bogged down with bills. My confidence is at an all time low.
4. I began to read about philosophy, business, and biographies of people who 'made it'.
5. Back to school.
6. Still working and testing various ways of making a living.
7. Start writing at Associated Content but not very much, I see very few dollars.
8. Finally made a plan and started to put it into action. I quit my job and now do this as the first part of getting what I want out of my life.
If you want to take control of your life you have to overcome all of your fear and doubt about what is possible. Take things slowly at first until you come to that point where you have things down pat (i.e. learning and planning). Then when it is time to execute your full plan don't hesitate and be bold. You're going to fail at times and things will seem hopeless but that's when you reevaluate and keep pushing on, just stay positive.
