Photo by Yves Remedios (Flickr)
It’s 6:30 am. You just woke up from a nice sleep that wasn’t nearly long enough. You hit the snooze button three times and enjoyed every second of lying in bed and drifting in and out of peaceful sleep. But now you have to get up. You have to shower and get ready for work. You’re about to enter another day in life as a responsible adult. Wake up, go to work, come home and relax for a bit then go to bed. Ah, the weekday cycle. Can’t wait! Or can you? Really, you just feel like lying in bed all day. Getting started is going to be a real struggle.
Coffee time!
It’s 10 am. You’ve been at work for an hour or so. After a long, slow commute you got to your desk and saw a mountain of paperwork. How exciting! Yeah, not really. You struggle to get started but it just doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to end. You feel like throwing it all out the window and putting your head down for a quick nap. But you gotta do what you gotta do.
Coffee time!
It’s 2:30 pm. You’re just getting out of a meeting and you feel tired as hell. You had to fight like crazy just to keep from nodding off in the meeting. You have no idea how you’re going to make it through the rest of the day. You have a lot of work to do, but you don’t feel like doing it. These next few hours are going to be a struggle.
Coffee time!
It’s 7:30 pm. You’re home relaxing after dinner. Your kids just finished their homework and now they want to play. You just don’t have the energy. All you want to do is relax and read a book or listen to some music. It’s been a rough day and you know tomorrow is just going to be more of the same.
So what do you do?
You come to a realization that your daily habits are causing you to miss out on the important things in life. Your job is making you miserable. Your lifestyle is making you tired. You’re getting nothing out of your day that means anything to you. Sure, you provide for your family. But is it really a family?
The life you set up is the life you have to live. You cannot escape this. No amount of coffee can make your life better. All it does is give you boosts and crashes, giving you peaks and valleys in productivity and livelihood. When all is said and done, however, it’s all the same.
But you have to ask yourself the following question: “Is the life that I have set up for myself really the life I want to live?”
If the answer is “no” then it may be time to reevaluate what you are doing. It boggles my mind how many people in this world “work to live”. In reality, what they are doing is living to work. For most people, a typical workday is eight hours. A typical work week is five days. If you sleep eight hours per night, this means you are awake 16 hours per day.
If you were to do the math, you would find that this typical person would spend 36% of his/her waking week at work. Then, of course, you have to factor in commute time. Also, a lot of people take some work home with them. Then, there is overtime. Plus there’s the after-hours meetings and functions and business trips, etc.
Then, you get home and have to clean the house, make dinner, do the dishes, do some yardwork, check your e-mail, etc.
When does it end?
The real question is where does it begin?
When do you stop working and start living?
You were put on this earth to live. Sure, everyone has to earn their way through life. But do you really have to make yourself miserable for two-thirds of your week, just to have a little time to enjoy life?
If you think you do, then I think you are a fool.
I’m a big believer in hard work, but I’m a bigger believer in passion for life. I truly believe that everyone on this planet can find a way to turn a passion into a living. And I also believe that you do not have to spend your entire life getting to that point.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that less than 1% of the population of the entire world utilizes enough creativity to turn their passions into a living when they have the opportunity. We have it so entrenched in our society that we must follow this “natural progression” up the workplace ladder to earn a decent income. If we want to make money, we have to go to the best colleges and then work our way up the corporate ladder by doing job after job that we really don’t like.
“You gotta make sacrifices to make your way to the top.”
Bullsh*t!
You want the truth? OK, here it is:
You’ve been lied to!
We all have. You have a passion inside of you. It is up to you to find it and bring it out. You also have creativity inside you, enough to turn your passion into your living.
Does this mean you will enjoy every minute that you work in life?
No, but it does mean that you won’t have to make yourself miserable in order to get just a few minutes of enjoyment out of your day.
Tomorrow, I’m going to continue with this topic by giving my two cents on how you can jump-start your passion.
I recently read a book that completely changed the way I view life and wanted to share my recommendation with My Life Motivation blog readers.