How to Make the Other 97% of Your Life Count
“Life is a daring adventure towards an unknown future. Its beauty depends on how much you enjoy the journey.” ― Debashish Mridha
ll those years spent drooling over the pages of a Lamborghini magazine, picturing your life as a series of cut scenes from a top 40 music video. You know, the ones where everyone is beautiful and having the greatest time one can have for three minutes and thirty-four seconds. That’s you now. You made it. You’re running a $427 million company that has sucked every second out of the last three years of your life. This should feel great and it does, but it doesn’t feel like you thought it would. Not only that, but Wal-Mart is gearing up a massive campaign against your company. Better get ready.
Eight years. Eight years of hitting the gym at five in the morning just to shave 0.4 seconds off your all time record. You’ve ran that same track so many times you can identify a specc of dirt on it out of a police line up. Today, it all paid off. The crowds erupt in a roar, which you feed with every inch you raise that gold medal higher and higher above your head. Today you are a goddess. Tomorrow, it’s back to the gym.
We spend 97% of our lives on the journey and only 3% in the moments of glory.
Even if you have never won a gold medal or took a company to millions, you probably reached at least a few significant milestones in your life. Some felt great while others may have felt like nothing at all. Yet all opened entirely new fields of opportunity to go after; doorways to countless new journeys.
This is why going after your life’s passions is so important. There are a million ways to make a million dollars, yet far fewer that will bring you fulfillment. If you are going to live a life worth living, why don’t you deserve to have both? Today, there are as many voices preaching the “follow your dreams” mantra as those shouting the doctrine of arid practicality of doing the “responsible” thing. Who is right?
In a way, both are.
True success lies somewhere in the middle. Pursuing your dreams is something you should never give up on, yet common sense should not be left at the door. If you love music, but don’t have the voice of the next Adele or Usher, it does not mean you cannot work in music. It does mean you have nothing to give to the industry, to the fans, to the artists. It may be a niche no one is really looking at, or if they are, certainly you can do better. You may not have the voice of an angel, but you do have 3 years of somewhat relevant experience and a few long shot connections that could make this work.
No, this isn’t the time to quit your day job. This is the time to test. To experiment. To play.
You call your contacts and ask a thousands questions as you marry yourself to Google for those two weeks of researching all the gaps in your knowledge. Now it’s a month later and your motivation has given birth to confidence, to the belief that you can. It’s starting to look like the start of yet another chapter of that 97%. This one will work, you just know it, yet you are completely open and aware to the possibility that it might not — and that’s ok. You are not defined by any idea. You are only as good as your next one.
Unlock Your Potential
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