STEP 3
UNDERSTAND WHO YOU MUST BECOME
Once you have researched what you would love to do, you must understand the person you will have to become in order to achieve your goals. Understanding who you will have to become can only be accomplished through regularly sitting in silence, as mentioned in step one. The silence will provide you with the mental clarity to know your strengths and weaknesses. You will probably have to become more disciplined, and you may have to become more outgoing or less outgoing. You must search inside yourself to know who you must become, as you are ultimately a unique individual. The process is difficult because it forces us to sacrifice some of our daily comforts.
GREAT SACRIFICES
At times, we feel that life is like a treadmill, but do we ever ask ourselves why or whether life has to be that way? Think about what you do daily. Ask yourself how much of what you do is oriented toward your happiness. Ask yourself how much of your time you spend working to create your happiness. Ask yourself whether you are getting closer to your goals or exhausting yourself with everyday tasks. Are you using things like television to unwind at the end of the day? We must ask ourselves these questions to understand how our time is spent on a daily basis.
The average person sleeps 8 hours a day, and if you have a full time job, that’s another roughly 40 hours a week that is allocated. That leaves very little time to pursue your dreams. But this is the amount time that people who reach their dreams begin with. Do you nap? cook? care for your children? exercise? watch TV? hang out with friends? party? You can’t completely avoid all of these activities, and you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t even go overboard denying yourself fun. But any of these activities can consume your time and make you unproductive. Before long, you will find that time has passed but you are not any closer to achieving your goals. You will start believing that you are too busy ever to achieve them. Or worse, you’ll deceive yourself into thinking you’ll have more time for your goals in the future. Newsflash: there will never be a better time than now. The tomorrow that you wish for will never come—if you wait for it.
The good news is that you can start with just a few minutes at a time and build. Just as you shouldn’t deceive yourself about the future, don’t deceive yourself about the past. You can always look back and think you see obscene amounts of time that you’ve wasted. That’s a good reason to give up your dreams, isn’t it? You’re a bad person. You don’t deserve the good things in life. If you deserved them, you’d have them. Right? Wrong. Tragically wrong. Start now, and you will discover that even those wasted years were not wasted after all. It’s a case of use them now or lose them forever.
We must identify the person we will have to become in order to get our time back. Can you record that television show and watch it on Saturday morning? Can you limit your time on the phone with friends? Can you get your children involved in a program that will help them develop but also free up time for you? That’s a win-win. Can you stop and think about your routine and look for ways to carve out time for yourself? Before you know it, you will control your time. You’ll feel better about yourself and excited about doing what you love.
This is what it means to align ourselves with the goals that will bring us long-term happiness.
ACCEPTANCE OF WHO YOU WILL BECOME
As you embark on your journey to discover your inner greatness, you may find that friends and family members get upset with you for changing your routine. People naturally prefer consistency in others. Your friends and family want to be able to call you at the times they’re accustomed to in order to talk about things that do not pertain to what you love. Some friends and family may resent both what you love and your aspirations. This negativity can stem from their not believing in themselves, their not wanting you to change, or their desire for you to be accessible at their convenience. It’s not worth the time to speculate about why others throw up obstacles to your success. It’s difficult not to get upset when it happens. You will wonder why people you love do not seem to want you to succeed. Do not try to force logic on the illogical. Usually the problem has more to do more with them than with you.
The big upside is how you’re going to feel transforming into a new person. You will begin to feel as if you know why you were born into this world. Your life will become fun, since you’ll be involved with what you love. You will wake up energetic and happy to get your day going. Your attitude will shift, and your health will improve. All these things will begin to fall into place because you are happy. Although your days may be challenging, the challenges will stimulate you because you’ll be doing what you love.
CONCLUSION
We must understand who we have to become in order to do what we love and achieve our goals. We have to make sacrifices and evaluate what’s necessary for our lives, even if it means upsetting close friends and family. Ultimately, if someone won’t accept what makes us happy, we have to ask ourselves what type of energy that person brings to our lives. Our goals will not always align with what others would like to see us doing. We must not let this affect us. To do what we love, we must take back our wasted time. We must change our focus to the things that we love. This redirection comes with discovering our inner greatness and holding fast to our ultimate goal of doing what we love.
