Last week was another one of those “learning” weeks.
It all started on Wednesday when my BFF Carolyn posted the video for Nickleback’s song “If Today Was Your Last Day” on Facebook. I’m not a huge Nickleback fan, but I love the message of this song. My favorite line: “Against the grain should be a way of life. What’s worth the prize is always worth the fight.” After all of the discoveries from the past few weeks, you’d think I’d be used to this by now, but hearing this song stopped me in my tracks and reminded me just how fragile life is and how I shouldn’t be wasting any time doing things I don’t really care about.
Then came the hard lesson: on Friday morning, I learned that a kid I had known out in Calaveras County, and who I’d spent some time mentoring when I lived there, had died in a car accident the day before.
Holy. Shit.
He was only 20…newly married…his whole life ahead of him. And gone. Just like that. His Facebook page is still up…his friends have been leaving messages and tagging pictures. Welcome to mourning in the digital age. I keep going back and reading the new posts and thinking over and over about the delicate thread we hang on by.
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One of the realizations I’ve come to over the past few weeks of breakdowns and breakthroughs is that I have to, at all costs, stop pretending to be someone else. You’d think that would be pretty easy; on the surface, consciously, we don’t like to think of ourselves as posers.
And yet, every day, we do and say things that are out of line with what we really want to do and say. I’ll wager lunch at your favorite drive-thru restaurant that you did it at least once today; I know I did. Why do we do it? Because we’re afraid. Afraid of what other people will think, afraid that we might be wrong, afraid that nobody will like us if we let them know who we really are.
Meanwhile, we’re slowly dying inside. Keep turning off those aspects of your personality that you fear, one by one, and eventually you’ll wake up one day wondering who you are and what you’ve done with your life. Trust me when I tell you that it’s not fun. Fruitful and necessary, yes, but not fun. Because it’s at that point that you have to start untangling yourself from the story and sorting out which bits are the real you and which bits were the version of you that was engineered to please others.
The problem for some of us is that we’ve spent so long pleasing others that we’ve completely forgotten what, exactly, it is that’s important to us. We get so caught up in school and work and kids and activities that we never take the time to reflect on the direction we’re headed.
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A friend reminded me the other day of the parable (variously attributed to Alexander the Great, Cortes and others) of the adventurer who, on landing on the shores of his destination, burned his ships to send a message to his men that there was no turning back. She had recently had a “ship-burning” moment of her own and was at the same time ecstatic and nervous.
I had mine last Wednesday, and I know exactly what she’s talking about.
You see, setting the ships on fire is fun: you get to play with matches and lighter fluid, which is always a good time. It’s only when you’re standing on the shore, watching the flames engulf every last scrap of wood, that you get the sinking, “Oh shit!” feeling in your stomach and begin to wonder if you did the right thing and whether you remembered to pay the insurance premium this month.
Don’t get me wrong; I know that burning the ships was the right thing to do. If I hadn’t, I don’t think I’d ever have broken away from some of the things that have been holding me back. I’m simply acknowledging the fear, owning it, staring it in its ugly face, getting ready to let it go.
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The days are blurring together. Literally. I sometimes forget whether it’s Monday and I should be writing a proposal for a new computer network, or Saturday and I’m supposed to be recording a podcast and setting up someone’s blog, or Thursday and I should be at a networking mixer, or Tuesday and I should be on a conference call about an upcoming Intel Hybrid Cloud event.
Sometimes, I just want to stop. It would feel really good, I think, to take a week off, sit in a chair on the beach, and catch up on some reading. But then I remember: I love what I do, and I love my life. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
My friends and family (especially my family) keep telling me that I need to slow down. I love the fact that they’re concerned about me; I really do. The funny thing is that they come across like they think my life sucks. I promise you though: it doesn’t. I’m tired, I don’t really have much of a social life (unless you count the networking, which pretty much rocks if you live in Sacramento), I have two day jobs and a part-time business, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
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“For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough.” – Zig Ziglar
The last two posts on this blog discussed steps you can take to accelerate your motivation in tough economic times. The first suggested that you get clarity and focus on your goals by asking “Why?” The second mentioned the need to stay focused, primarily by avoiding the distraction of the “Bad News Blues”.
What else, though, can you do to get motivated and moving in the direction of your dreams? The quote above from Zig Ziglar nails it: you must get passionate about what you do in order to stay motivated and moving forward. Why?
To answer that question, I’d like you to think about an activity you really enjoy. Let’s say, for example, that you love to golf. Here’s the question: what does a golf lover do in order to play the game? The answer: whatever it takes to get on the course! In fact, people who are passionate about golf have been motivated to call in sick to work, cancel all other activities and golf in the rain in order to play at a favorite course. Now that’s passion!
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