Moving On Can Be The Damnedest Thing To Do

 

 

Work with me on this one. Let’s say you love summer, and spend your time counting the days until the pool opens, the khaki shorts can be brought out from storage, and the good old A/C unit can get cranked up again. The trips to the beach with friends and family, the late setting sun, it all just gets your heart pumping with passion. The memories of great times seem to follow you around like your shadow at dusk. Is there anything wrong with your passion for summer? Of course not, she’s a beautiful season worthy of your undying love. But, if you are all too often caught up in missing summer, are you really able to truly appreciate winter? If you spend your time in the now frustrated about what you don’t have, how possible is it to honestly, and sincerely be appreciative for what you do have? Few dispute gratitude has its way of making us all feel better. So then why is it so hard to let go sometimes?

I try to live in the moment. Ask close family of mine, and I’m sure they’d tell you I live in the moment a little too much for comfort. Retirement account? That’ll be the day. Annual doctor visits when I’m not sick? Forget it. I pretty much take each day as if it could be my last, and try my hardest to accomplish something. God forbid my last day on earth I’m found passed out in a Snuggie on my couch watching Oprah. That’s not cool. I hope to die as I lived, to leave it on the field as they say.

Living in the moment is great, but, from time to time, I find myself drifting back to the past. Oh the past, don’t we all have a way of romanticizing the deliciously good times, and forgetting the sour times all together? I know I do it, if you ask me about someone I couldn’t stand ten years ago, I’d probably call them a great human being. Ask me about a mediocre business venture in 2005, and I’d tell you it was the best choice I’d ever made to be involved in it. Maybe, just maybe, that’s why I get so caught up in the past from time to time. I’m always thinking ahead, yet sometimes I just can’t let go of things in the past.

Moving on with life is most difficult when dependency is involved. Emotional, physical, monetary, it all seems to ply us together to moments that are anything but here forever. In the past seven months I’ve made a lot of changes in my life, and I’m betting you have too. Looking back on this time, many things were very easy to let go of, while a few have been much harder. Through prayer, and a few friendly consultations over imported pints of stout, I’ve learned the best really is yet to come, if I can just open my eyes and see it in front of me.

Choosing The Right Path

Our lives are defined by the choices we make. This message was made clear to me sometime ago, as part of a Sunday morning message from the pastor of my church. The idea behind the sermon, and the crux of this blog post is this; never let your choices put you in places of danger, because life itself offers enough danger without us having to put ourselves in precarious situations.

There is so much in life we can’t control, such as encounters with hateful people, traffic tickets, or even something as simple as getting rained on. We can’t control when our neighbor has finally had enough, and decides to unload 18 rounds into the bodies of people in her workplace. We can’t control when the person we sit next to on the airplane sneezes too close to us, offering us a virus when all we wanted was to get to Minnesota safely. We can’t control these things, but what we can control, and should, is our decision making.

There are two types of decisions you make each day, those with substantial consequences, and those without. Where to go to lunch? This is a choice where the consequences, are probably at worst, a stomachache and money wasted. Where to go to college? This would fall under the substantial consequence realm. Where to work, what church to attend, whom to marry, these choices all come with real consequences, good or bad, making choices like these will have a significant change in the way you live your life. This post is about these high level choices we make.

I see so many people that are deftly understanding of others, yet when it comes to making choices for themselves they take a left when so obviously the better choice is to go right. Complicating this phenomenon is the fact that more times than not, the better choice is the harder one to make. Human nature kicks in. We default to choosing easy, when true rewards await us only if we went with hard.

Regardless of your religious beliefs, to sincerely believe a greater power is monitoring your decision-making, and to start making choices under such an assumption is unquestionably beneficial to making better choices for your wellbeing, and ultimately living a happy life.

Postscript

In the pursuit of happiness is a very powerful statement, not just because of its age, and transcendence of time, but because of what it ultimately sums up by the greatest philosophers of our time. It is a single sentence that defines the lives of nearly all that inhabit this earth. By being deliberate, and utilizing fore thinking about the big choices we are about to make, our chances for obtaining true peace, and happiness on this earth are greatly enhanced.

On a personal note, my impulses often lead me down crazy paths, exciting at first, but often terrifying as the paths turn into long winding trails of consequences. This post aims to illustrate that when we think about the potentially hazardous results BEFORE a choice is made, we are apt to make better decisions when the time comes to firmly make a serious life choice. You might laugh, and think this is obvious, but easier said than done, just look at so many people’s poor choices over the last year alone. Hopefully this post serves as a healthy reminder for us all, that being patient, and having foresight will take us to fruitful places, full of the things we truly seek, rather than the drifting dreams we so often chase.

Over the past eight years I’ve launched a few dozen internet businesses, opened 3 retail stores, wrote four books, and spent way too much time online. Am I burnt out? I don’t know if I can accurately answer that question, sometimes the hardest place to see a game unfold is when you’re a player on the field it’s being played on. I know it’s been a fun, hard-nosed eight years, where I’ve worked more than I’ve done anything else.

The one common thing people ask when they visit my house, to fix something broken, deliver a package, or just say hi, is, in one form or another, a question as to if I just moved in. There are boxes everywhere, nothing is really unpacked, and while I live in my house, it’s far from a home. My answer to them is always the same, I’m so busy with work…

I used to wear such things as fourteen-hour workdays, and unpacked living as a badge of honor; I was totally immersed in work. Then June happened.

For whatever reason, like Forest Gump stopping his marathon run in the middle of a desert road, I no longer was interested in the 24/7 grind I had created for myself. Maybe the successes were becoming less frequent, and the failures more, and all of it was just too much to handle.

After spending the next four months trying to “figure things out” I eventually realized the only cure for my disease was to try something different. A new routine, a new lifestyle. With that notion firmly embedded in my heart, I took to getting going on this new journey. I’ve closed down many of our internet assets, and all but one retail operation. I’ve canceled any commitments I had lined up for the rest of the year, and am committing myself to finding love in my work again, and making my house a home.

What’s next? I’m not sure. I know for work it will be something less tethered to the online existence I’ve had the past eight years. I’ve got a few ideas, anyone that knows me well, knows I’ve always got a few ideas ready to be tested. For my home I’m going to put the level of effort I have into my retail projects into making my house a home.

I hope my story inspires you, to not only do what you want to do for a living, but know that changing course is alright too, and often it’s fighting those big undercurrents of stability that undermine our efforts to change status quo the most. Yet we always hear that reinvention is what makes life so fruitful for those that choose the road less traveled of being their own boss. Maybe my story will get you thinking about changes you want to make, and give you the feeling that you are not alone in changing for the better. If you are going through something similar, feel free to reach out, I could use the company on this new journey.

Postscript-

So far my best kept tools for transitioning to a new lifestyle have been prayer, humility, studying up on quotes dealing with courage, long jogs down empty roads, music made with passion, and of course, being around wise fun-loving people.

Waving Goodbye to Fear

Fear can be paralyzing if you let it. Fear binds you to a set of rules that are not your own, fear makes its presence felt, and converts you into something less than you are meant to be. Fear numbs ambition.

Some people call fear the devil, others refer to it as life itself, however, fear is nothing more than a fleeting emotion. Fear is no greater than any other emotion that you might feel on a given day.

Pushing past your fears is no easy task, but with identification, and deliberate action one can, and will, surpass their fears. Unlike so many situations in life, I believe that those that push past their fears the furthest are directly rewarded for their courage. In other words, while most instances in life are not directly correlated as an equal proportion give and take relationship, the surpassing of fear is. The more you let go of your fears, and move forward in spite of them, the greater your life will be.

Fear manifests into many forms each day including, but surely not limited to, self-pity, circumstantial disasters, physical illness, pessimism, doctrines, societal norms, peer influence, and familial pressures to name a few. Fear preys on the insecure, and confident alike, hanging on with a firm grip to those things that, for whatever reason, create anxious feelings of unease within us. I’ve seen fear destroy a life, and put people I’ve cared dearly for in precarious situations that they simply cannot seem to come out of. If only they could identify that fear is perception, and not reality.

By default fear wins, and only by deliberate, well thought out action does fear fail to impend us from moving forward in life. May we all proceed through the emotional obstacles that fear dispenses within us with vigor and passion, knowing that on the other side of this dark blockade of inner turmoil is a truly amazing place of confidence and success.