Supposing you could take the next 2 years off from your normal life? You didn’t have to worry about where you live, earning a living, paying the bills, what family, friends and colleagues would think of what you do in those next 24 months.
What are you going to do in this time?
Do you want to write a book, start a band, study, renovate your house, leave your partner, your job, the town you live in and travel far and wide?
Get a pen and paper and write it down. Now. Write down the things you’d do and the people and places it would involve. Find an image from a magazine (or download one from online and print off), something that depicts what it is you really want to do.
If you’ve got something you want to do, now is a good time to start. Now more than ever we live in a world of opportunity.
Life is shorter than we expect and it races by while we’re working out what’s really important and what actually isn’t. So let’s walk the walk.
Here are 4 good reasons why you should stop talking, start doing:
- You can
Our connected world makes it possible for people to actualize dreams, ideas and initiative in ways our forebears could not even dream of. Whatever you want to know, it’s all at your fingertips.
Whether you want to start a business, a work of art or a social project, the soaring development of the social web have demolished barriers between you and the expertise you need. It empowers you to ask friends of friends (and friends of friends of friends) if they can offer advice, make introductions, share experiences.
Who do you know who’s already doing or has done what you want to do? Get in touch with them. Ask to meet them, talk on the phone or email them and find out how they did it. What are their top tips?
- Unconventional is Conventional
Sixty years ago a gentleman wouldn’t go to work without a hat on; ten years ago they stopped wearing ties. Now you don’t have go into work to go to work… so who knows what people are wearing. But the point is: who cares?!
Society cares less about conformity than it used to. The concept of a job for life is long gone. Self-employment is soaring.
If you want to give up your job and travel round the world, learn to juggle, join a commune – your neighbours might cough and shake their heads but you can cope with that…Or they might just tell you how they always wanted to do the same thing.
- The Feeling of Emptiness
For an awful lot of people, the fruits of their labour was the ability to maximize their debt and buy the biggest house they could afford in the area they wanted to live. And then the market crashed. Which was when you began to think to yourself: Is that all there is? Where’s my job satisfaction if it isn’t in the mortgage? What would I rather be doing with my free time? With my money? How am I going to change things?
In response to the feeling of emptiness and a search for meaning we are witnessing the emergence of business entities created for reasons other than solely monetary profit.
It’s not that seeking profit is necessarily bad. Far from it. But this trend shows a growing appreciation of how people can be powerfully motivated and compensated by the intrinsic meaning of what they DO and not just by a financial bonus scheme.
Waiting for an urban plot of land to work on before you start waiting to leave the city and grow your own vegetables in your own garden? Don’t confine your dream to waiting. Get your hands dirty. Start.
- That Ticking Sound
One thing technology hasn’t changed. You won’t live forever.
You might live a bit longer but that’s all the more reason to start pursuing the life you want, not just the one you’ve ended up with.
You don’t want to be an anonymous face in the crowd of your own life story. That’s a life of regret. You gotta face your fears and climb inside the ropes. Let’s get moving.
This article is based on Stop Talking, Start Doing Action Book: Practical tools and exercises to give you a kick in the pants by Shaa Wasmund (published by Capstone)
