If you are miserable change, don’t settle

If you are miserable in your life, first acknowledge it, and then work to change it. Do you believe you are worthy of living a happier life? What is the toll it is taking on you mentally and physically to stay stuck in the situation you are in.

Fear of change and failing can be a deterrent but all you will be embarking on is a journey of exploration where failure is not a liability but a necessity. Explore and experiment to find out what you want to do and what lights you up.

You don’t need to stay stuck, you are feeling stuck because you won’t take the action needed to move yourself onto a different path.

There really is no excuse to staying stuck. Its uncomfortable and aggravating, I get it. You have to ask yourself, if this was a friend of yours what would you say to them? Possibly, “You are worthy of so much more”? Do you feel that you are worthy of living a more meaning, purposeful life? If the answer is “no”, then this is where you need to start changing your mindset.

And another thing, thoughts and ideas will help clarify what changes you want to make, but without action, they mean little to nothing. Pick a path, experiment and most importantly, TAKE ACTION! Without taking action, you will never move the needle.

You deserve a more joyful life. You are miserable. Don’t settle!

Live Life More Proactively

I have lived most of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop. I turn 45 in just a few days now. Based on the average life expectancy of a healthy male in the United States, I have already lived over half my life. My message is that I always lived in fear, day to day, wondering if I would be able to make my rent, if I was saving enough for retirement, was I doing well enough at work. What happens if I get laid off or fired.

I have been living my life in fear. Living a small life, not being proactive and thinking about how I could adjust my life to live it more meaningfully.

I have worked in the tech industry for many years. Looking back, I never wanted to be in that role. I wanted to be in a more creative role. A creative role such as writing, possibly? To this day I haven’t been able to pin down exactly what would make me happy. Maybe the reason I haven’t been able to resolve this issue is because I have been going about it wrong.

In a sense, in today’s society, you find a career and the main driver is money. Money will eventually make you happy, right? No, it won’t. It might be a good carrot on a stick when I was younger, but I am driven to find purpose in the work I do.

Adding in the need for purpose just complicates an already confusing puzzle. The majority of jobs out there don’t have purpose. The majority of work is meaningless. You would be hard pressed to find meaning in organizing a random spreadsheet or putting together a slide chart for a meeting. There are exceptions of course, however the majority of work completed by people has no intrinsic value for them except to provide a paycheck.

So, maybe the answer is that there is no one single job that will provide purpose to any given individual, possibly we are meant to find purpose in multiple avenues? I think this might be more of the truth. I for one would like to volunteer more. I have volunteered for organizations in the past, and this has satisfied my itch to help others. I didn’t need to get a masters degree in psychology to volunteer at an animal shelter or hospital.

I do think that a job should provide some level of enjoyment and self satisfaction. Being a in career where you like what you are do and do what you like makes for a far more satisfacory life than constantly going against the grain, feeling like you are always swimming up stream.

That is where am currently at in my career, swimming against the stream. I think I need to swim towards shore, dry myself off and pick a different path. My arms are getting way too tired to continue doing this.

What Is My Message?

I wonder what drives many people to write a blog, much less write anything at all. Is it to quench the fundamental need to express ones thoughts and share them with others? To scatter ones ideas into the empty abyss of the internet? Is it the need to be heard and in some small way validated through feedback offered by others? To be both seen and heard?

I guess to some it is a calling such as certain individual’s need to draw, paint, sow..etc. Its a need to create, to give birth to an idea in the small chance that this small fragile idea with germinate, grow and spread.

Writing in many ways is a very personal way of tapping into one’s most inner thoughts. it’s a conduit between the unconscious and conscious then expressed out into the world via a medium such as blog or article.

I know I have a strong drive to help others. In any profession I have had, it has always evolved around helping. I have struggled to find the right profession though where I felt my natural talents were fully realized. I have always felt like I was going against the grain in any job I have taken.

This of course is my fault. I can’t really blame anyone else for the path and decisions I have made. Of course I can blame others, but that never has helped me better my life.

I struggle to listen to my inner voice and head in the direction it suggests that I take. Instead I listen to what society as a whole has laid out for me. Conventional, outdated ideas and paths that have never fit me.

I am coming to realize that I have never fully fit in with societal norms. Others as a whole seem content or completely oblivious of the child safety bumpers that society puts up to cage and strain creative thought.

American society and corporate loves to tout that they encourage creative thinking and new ideas, but for the most part I don’t believe this is true at all. They want blind obedience and will take a subservient employee over a creative outspoken individual.

It is becoming more apparent as I get older that I will never fit into corporate America. That what I can focus on is making my voice heard through writing and creating. If at all possible I can strive to develop skills where I can work for myself.

Circling back to my original topic, my message is to help shine a light on what others in society might not be fully aware of. To give voice to various ideas and opinions that might spark someone’s curiosity and make them think differently about a subject or trigger them to ponder a particular idea.

That is all I can hope for. To make some small change into this world instead of settling for just being another misshapen cog in the machine.