"People wait all week for Friday, all year for summer, all life for happiness." - Unknown
Every January 1st, millions of paper sheets are being filled with empowering and life-changing new year's resolutions, cabinets are taped over with goals and vision boards, screensavers and wallpapers changed. Gym parking lots are packed full, cigarettes thrown in the trash, savings accounts opened and rooms and desks organized.
But what happens as December comes to an end? People look at the year that could have been lived fully and fearlessly, but ended up full of regrets.
Maybe it's time to turn it around and live this year on our terms.
Be the leader of your own journey
Two many capable people seek approval and guidance from others to pursue their dreams.
We tend to think that our emotions are outside of our influence, we let them be controlled by situations and people we interact with.
Things won't get better until you start aligning yourself with your core, until you start pursuing things that YOU want to do because you're passionate and you love it. Like that Gandhi's quote says, you won't see the desired change until you take things in your own hands. Don't expect something or someone to come and save you.
Have the courage to live a life true to yourself, don't let expectations of others create your reality. Take control, don't wait for the life to happen.
Take more risks
Humans are risk aversive and we refrain from anything that can cause us pain, discomfort or loss of any kind.
There's two types of regrets - regret of taking action and regret of inaction. Let's say you like video games and you're thinking of starting gaming youtube channel. Many doubts may happen, like, "am I gonna be good enough", "what if the audience does not like my narrative voice", "what if I have no audience", etc.
If you decide and take action when the inevitable moment of hesitation and second guessing arrives, you will have no regrets, only an incredible happy feeling of action taking and seeing benefits of it. Once you start facing fear every day a little bit it starts dying. If you fail, regret might visit you shortly, but it will soon disappear. If you fail to take action, regret of not taking it will only get worse and worse with time.
"It's in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped" - Tony Robins
So let go of the illusion of safety and take baby steps every day to expand your comfort zone. Maybe you want to climb Mont Everest. If you stand at the foothill and look at the peak, you'll think - "fuck, that's a pretty high hike". But once you break it down into small peaks, it becomes easier.
You climb to base camp one, accommodate to air density, take some time to adjust and move on to another peak.
Start a fuck-it list
Every activity we do on a daily basis will either push us closer to our goal or distract us from it. And sometimes there's so many of these small choirs and habits we do, that we can't see clear picture and we lose track of what's really important.
Ask yourself are you doing things that will put you in a position to succeed? If not, get rid of everything that does not work for you anymore. Throw away old stuff, cross old goals that you're not excited about anymore from your lists, notice daily routines you do that are not aligned with your goals, that you're doing just out of habit.
Take an honest look at what's not working in your life and what's causing you anger and anxiety. If you are hanging out with toxic people out of habit, stop and distance yourself from them. Stop refreshing Facebook every 10 minutes. If you watch TV five hours a day, think about cutting it down.
Our lives are packed full, there is no space for anything. We waste so much energy on things that don't matter in the end.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, was the youngest vice-president in this investment banking company, earning six figures a year. But he planned to throw it all away and participate in this new thing called internet that was emerging. While everyone called him crazy for wanting to abandon secured life to invest in something new and risky, he projected himself forward to age eighty. He knew he won't regret trying this, but not taking action would haunt him for the rest of his life. He is now among the wealthiest people in the world.
Of all the words in the dictionary, "it might have been" are one of the saddest.
Hopefully, we'll see each other at the end of this year and celebrate amazing breakthroughs that took place.
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