I wrote an article recently titled Why being confident matters, the main idea of the article is that being confident matters a great deal because it acts as a protective shield. Bullies and predators’ favorite types of victims are those who are weak, easy to conquer, and less likely to put up a fight. If you are walking in the street with your eyes on your feet and hunched around, you broadcast to the world your vulnerability; but on the other hand, if you stand up straight with your shoulders back, if you walk tall and stare forthrightly ahead you broadcast to the world that you are solid, ready to face whatever life is throwing at you, and you know where you are going.
The question is do you know where you are going? Do you know what you want in life? Do you have your future all figured out? Most of us would no doubt visualize our future as being bright and happy, with success attached to our name, living comfortably with people we love around us. This is what most people want, right? But how do we get to that picture-perfect-happy place?
Everybody is as lost as you are
Social media is full of people looking their best and leading a ‘perfect’ life, but nobody really knows what’s really going on behind the scenes. Things may look pristine on the surface, but pretty messy underneath. Moreover, you never know what it took for people to get to where they are, all the hard work, all the rejections, the sweat, the tears, the setbacks, the doubt, the number of years it took them to become an ‘overnight’ success.
Nobody has it all figured out because life rarely works out as planned. Having a plan and doing everything you can to implement it is always a good idea; except that things happen, unexpected events, delays, setbacks are bound to show up when you least expect it and mess-up your plan. All those things could take you down a path that you did not envisage and certainly didn’t plan for. This said, being rigid about the plan is not going to help.
Remember the points I made in this other article I wrote titled Rules to break: Make a PLan and Stick To It . On one hand, making plans and sticking to them is a good idea because it encourages discipline and demonstrates one’s ability to persevere despite difficulties and setbacks. As a general rule being disciplined and persistent is a good thing. Whatever you do, give it your best shot and try it long enough to figure out whether it is a goer or not. If you quit too early and too often, you may never see your efforts pay off.
On the other hand, you have to have enough foresight to see that sometimes your ideas and vision don’t match reality, and being stubborn about it can cost you more than just pride. There is no virtue in sticking to the plan merely because it’s the plan. Sometimes you have to adapt, pivot, and rectify the plan if and when necessary.
“Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck”
Dalai Lama
Being lost and not knowing where you are going in life may fill you with a sense of dread, but instead of panicking, pause for a minute or two to have a conversation with yourself to try to figure things out.
Nobody has it all figured out, but you can start with your why to make sense of it all
In 2009, Simon Sinek gave a TED talk called How Great Leaders Inspire Action; in this talk, he invited business leaders to start with why. The talk went viral which gave Simon the perfect excuse to turn the 19 minutes talk into a whole book titled Start with Why. The core of the book centers around the Golden Circle Concept. There are three parts of the Golden Circle: Why, How and What. Why do you get out of bed in the morning? Why does your company exist? Very few people can clearly articulate why they do what they do. How is your process and it describes the specific actions you have to take to realize your why. It is your unique selling proposition. What is the result of the why, it is the products or services that you sell.
Knowing your why gives you the highest level of confidence you can get: I know it is right. If you want to find out why you are lost and try to figure out where you want to go, you should start with your why, which will become apparent to you as soon as you trust your gut feeling and stay true to your cause or belief, your passion.
It is right for people to want to live their lives with passion. The problem is that people believe that their passion is hiding somewhere, maybe behind a tree or underneath a rock. We should be first and foremost passionate about life itself. The truth is that our passion comes from doing things right. Get into the habit of injecting passion into all the things that you do. If you do this consistently, a time will come when something stands out above all the other things, that is the thing to devote more time to doing passionately.
For those who have found their passion but feel discouraged by the lack of validation and recognition, my advice would be to stop focusing on the outcome and start focusing on the work itself. Pursue the things you love doing and devote yourself on a daily basis to practice and hone your art until people cannot take their eyes off you.
Everybody is as lost as you are. Nobody has it all figured out but you can start with your why to make sense of it all.
And, this my dear Friend, is your Quest.
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