The Dreamer’s Fears: Doing What I Want With My Life.

Good Life Project

“Don’t confuse genuine peace of mind with the passing lack of angst that follows the demise of a dream but precedes a mounting wave of regret.”

A job is so appealing because there is very little risk involved. You turn up, fulfil a simple set of predetermined criteria and you definitely have money in your account at the end of the month. No-one belittles you or tells you “you can’t get a job.” It’s also much harder to fail when there is a strict set of guidelines telling you what you can and can not do and a boss who takes responsibility anything outside your defined role and will tell you what to do when unsure.

You are told when to go to work, when to leave, what to do whilst you are there and how to do it. Everything is secure and defined and there is little room for judgement, failure or loss. If you play by the rules well, maybe you’ll be the lucky one and someone can tell you that you can now follow a new set of more esteemed criteria with more money and responsibility as a reward. This may or may not be fine for most people, I’m not going to discuss or judge people’s life choices, we are only responsible for our own and should be free to make them as we please, but the idea of being told what to do, when to do it, how to do it and having to wait for someone else to tell me when I can move a step up a ladder and can earn X amount of money doesn’t appeal to me. I’m in control of my life, the good and the bad and would not swap the freedom of choice in exchange for a steady, limited but reliable amount of money into my account each month. Life really is too short to give someone else control over 40 hours+ of your week in which you must do, in many cases, not all, work you don’t enjoy. Not to mention being told when and when you can or can not go on holiday, how to dress and how you must act. But this is the industrial way. It’s necessary to have a well oiled machine of compliant workers to maximise productivity and minimise costs. The problem for me is that it seems in an unfair exchange:

Humanity, Freedom and the Bulk of your Time for Compliance and steady pay.

Cog In The Machine

I understand the desire for security and to have money coming in now and to have the responsibility of finding what to do and how to do it taken off your shoulders. Someone else tells you what to do, easy.

It is becoming more and more evident that the key to becoming a successful entrepreneur is to develop your mindset. To see things clearly, the whole picture, to make a decision and run with it, not fearlessly, not in the absence of anxiety, instead learning to live with the fear and anxiety and understanding where it comes from and why. When you attempt anything great you will come up against resistance. Resistance from others, resistance from a lack of resources and resistance from people you need to help you create what you’re trying to create but the only fatal resistance, the only resistance that really ever stops you from doing what you want with your life? That’d be your mind and what you allow it to think.

I shouldn’t do this because I feel guilty that it might make my friends and family feel bad that I want to make different life choices than them, they may resent me for wanting to do something outside of the norm, for wanting more.

I shouldn’t do this because It’s selfish, who am I to want, hope and expect more from life?

I shouldn’t do this because I’m not good enough, I don’t know all the people I need to know, I’m too young.

If your family and friends want the best for you, they won’t stop you, if they don’t want the best for you, you shouldn’t waste your time caring for them.

It’s not selfish to want to live a good life. That’s a stick people use to beat you with to keep you in line. It’s not selfish nor greedy. It’s not ‘normal’ to get a job, it’s an industrialised idea that’s around 200 years old. In turbulence you always put on your air supply before you’re children’s. This way you both survive, you can’t help anyone else in your life if you can’t look after your own life properly.

Richard Branson didn’t know everything when he started and still doesn’t now. You don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great.

These fears, this resistance I personally have seen and conquered. So what are my fears now?

• That our products don’t sell.
• That our story, our USP, doesn’t resonate.
• That we fear being ourselves and instead create something average, safer, that no-one will neither love nor hate.
• That Arya eats the cat shit from the cat litter tray and licks me on the mouth. Seriously, she does eat that nasty shit.

That’s it. No-one likes us so our (great) products don’t sell and I’ve lost all my money, I’m in debt and have to get a job to pay that back before I can ever dream of starting another business again. To be accountable to myself for wanting more and falling flat on my face.

I believe in today’s world, more and more people want to be human again. They want products they care about by companies with a message and story they can relate to. This is far less likely to lead to mass, industrialised, billion pound profits, but will connect with people, will be enjoyable to create and will still, with any luck, make me rich and allow me to live the life I choose, on my own terms.

My dream job isn’t a job at all. I want to create, connect, control and have the freedom to live as I please, enjoy what I do and make enough money to allow me to do that. I want a life of projects, many projects.

The actual point of this post comes from the past week or so of moving the product forward, meeting people in London. Older, experienced people who know a lot more than us and work with famous, huge, established brands. We’re just 2 young dreamers, but it didn’t feel like that at all. For the first time possibly ever, I felt that my actions were in accordance with my views and beliefs. It wasn’t an ecstatic, jumping for joy occasion, it just felt right, peaceful. I no longer internalised everything, I wasn’t inside my head. I was genuinely in a 5 day daze, just doing and being, taking everything in. It’s how I felt during my first trip to Madrid. I felt I was on my the way to becoming the man I wish to be and that felt peaceful, I felt fearless. I had a purpose, my purpose was truly in-line with who I am and what I believe, and it was no longer intimidating to meet experienced people nor did it concern me in the slightest what they thought of the 2 young upstarts. I was doing what I wanted with my life. And that is priceless.

P.S. The Living Creed at the top is from Jonathon Fields Good Life Project which has a lot of great, 45 minutes, deep, beyond the surface, living, learning, loving, fearing, video conversations with people doing great things with their lives. It’s really worth checking out. One can learn and relate a lot.

What is a life without passion?

Passionately Curious

Passion is one of those buzzwords. A word whose use is so ubiquitous that we become desensitised to it and it loses it’s power and meaning. It’s ironic then, when you consider what passion really means: “A strong, barely controllable emotion.”

Why does this really matter? It’s often said that successful people follow their passion. To be happy we should follow our passions and the rest will fall into place. In the rush to fill our lives with passion. With feeling and emotion, it seems  to me that we haven’t become any more passionate about anything. Instead, what we have done is lowered what it means to be passionate. We’ve confused hobbies for passions. “Well, I like to watch movies, so I guess you could say I’m passionate about cinema.”

There’s no guessing when it comes to passion. You are either passionate or you’re not. If you have to think about it for more than a second, chances are you’re not.

We are at our most alive when we are passionate. What truly matters to us comes to the fore and we become a part of something bigger than ourselves. We lose ourselves and our inhibitions in the best way possible. We feel a true purpose that transcends rational thought and logic. We believe in something with all that we are.

From the outside, the passionate few can often seem crazy. “Why the hell do you care so much about the amazonian two-willied toad?”

The answer doesn’t need justification. It can be justified. But those who don’t understand don’t care. They will only hear what they want to hear and judge you anyway. Find your passion. It might not be easy. Many might think you a fool. Do it anyway. It’ll be worth it. Because that’s the thing about passion. When you have it, you don’t care what others think about it. it transcends personal thoughts and inhibitions. You have a purpose, and it’s bigger than yourself. Those who don’t have a passion won’t understand it. But somewhere inside them they’ll respect and envy you. For being a part of something. For feeling something and fighting. For being alive.

Passion is the only real antidote to apathy. And apathy is the biggest waste of time. You don’t regret passion. You sure do regret the times you felt nothing. It’s a horrible state to be in. Yet I think far too many of us build up walls to protect our modern comforts and in doing so, all we really gain from it is exactly that: apathy. The bored housewife syndrome.

How do you find your passion?

Well it doesn’t come and hit you on the head. Curiosity. Experimentation. It may start with an idea. A spark you feel when you see, hear or read something. Can you be passionate about something without ever doing it? Can you be passionate about film without being a film maker? or having some type of role in the film making process? I don’t think so.

We all probably have a number of ideas about things we’d like to do, or that might be fun to do. If you never do them, you’ll never be passionate about them. To get by, you’ll take a job you don’t even enjoy in the slightest and leave your ideas and hopes and dreams of being a passionate person for ‘one day.’ And wake up at 40 wondering where the time went and why you feel so empty and alone.

I don’t believe in one true soul mate. In the same way, I don’t believe any of us are truly born for one purpose, nor are we limited to one passion. We are capable of numerous great things. Which one should we choose? How do you find out? Without giving it a go, I don’t think you ever can find out. It’s why most passionate people find their passion as a child. When you do what you do for the love of doing it and it grows into a passion. The problem with adults is that we forget to be children. We forget to do things just for the fun of it. We always look first for the empirical reward. A hobby might not be a passion. But then again, it just may well be.

With passion you’ll have the ultimate highs and the ultimate lows. And that sure as hell beats the crap out of apathy.

So be curious and try new things. You just don’t know where they might lead you. And isn’t that a little exciting?