What do you hope to achieve in this lifetime? An impenetrable love like your grandparents had? A book deal? An empire? A Hallmark family of five? Or perhaps a scratch map that has hardly any wax left on it?
What is it that will quench your spirit’s insatiable thirst? What is it your heart gravitates to in rapid beats?
Most people won’t ever know the satisfaction of crossing out their bucket list or experience the joy when a lifelong dream finally ruptures the windows of reality because unfortunately, most people are stuck in the waiting room. Most people believe they can only pursue their calling once the stars align perfectly and no other distractions can present themselves.
These are the perfect moments that never come but that people refer to in the near-future tense, as “tomorrow” that might as well be “not ever.”
If you’re not willing to do something today, then you’re most likely not going to do it at all.
“If you really want to do something you’ll find a way, if you don’t you’ll find an excuse.”
– Jim Rohn
We’ve heard it many times before and I’ll remind you of it again now, “life is short.” Every second we are aging. And that is time we can never get back. So why wait?
Why wait to remodel the kitchen? To go to India? To have a baby? To change careers? To start your business? Maybe we should just do it like all those Nike commercials tell us to. Otherwise waiting is all we’ll ever do.
Life is comprised of the sum of our decisions. Let your decisions be to take action. To fall on your face occasionally and then to learn from it. To fail miserably, but to grow internally. And then eventually, of course, to succeed with flying colors.
“Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.”
– Jack Canfield
When you’re 85 years old, sitting in your rocking chair and revisiting all your big life moments in hindsight, will your “what ifs” outweigh your accomplishments? I wish I could be that friendly ghost that takes your present self on a tour with your future self so that you could get a preview of your biggest regrets and then stop them from taking form.
If you’re reading this, that means it’s not too late. You still have time. You can still live out your wildest dreams. But that also means you’ll have to get out of your own way. You’ll have to stop putting things off and stop making excuses.
Because soon everything you see around you will be nothing but a distant memory, and for all you know, your perfect moment could be right now.
“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.”
– Mark Twain
There are two places we like to store our dreams, the backburner and a pedestal. The backburner is those dreams of ours we’ll get to “some other more convenient time” and the pedestal is where we keep our dreams that we think are too good for us. These are the aspirations that our youngest self was most likely to have on career day at school.
Never think your dreams are too good for you, or else they will be.
So many of us live as if time is infinite and we only realize how fleeting it is once our skin starts to sag and our grays start to show. To me, that’s a tragedy.
Try getting more specific with your goals as we are more likely to achieve them when they are both tangible and explicit. If your goal is to lose weight, you could lose 0.5 pound and technically you would have satisfied your goal. How much weight do you want to lose? 5 pounds? 15 pounds? 30 pounds? And in what time frame? A decade? A year? A month? Getting specific transfers our ambitions from our imagination to our reality.
Also, holding ourselves accountable is another way to ensure we follow through. So tell your neighbor, friend, brother or mailman. Tell someone. You’re going to be more likely to commit with an audience. And no one wants to be that person who’s all talk and no action.
“Accountability is the glue that bonds commitment to results.”
–Will Craig
Putting your goals in writing is another great way to bring them into reality. Or perhaps you could make a vision board, and cut and paste an eclectic mix of images that embody your greatest desires. Sometimes a powerful visual is all we need to make us take action.
After you finish reading this article, I challenge you to take one small step towards one of those backburner dreams. Move it a little closer to the forefront by taking some action towards it. If you’re miserable in your job, start editing your resume. If you’re unhappy in your relationship, initiate a healthy discussion about where you think things could improve.
Just do it. Because if you wait, you probably just won’t.
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Photo by Matthew Bennett on Unsplash
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