Do What You Want

“Do what you have to do, to do what you want to do.”    

Denzel Washington

 

     Beep!  Beep! Beep!  What is that incessant noise that you first hear faintly and then so intensely you have to shut it off?  As you wake from your sleep you realize it’s your alarm.  The sound is so familiar yet deep down you wish it wasn’t.  You wish it was a new sound that wasn’t an alarm.  At this moment you would love to get just 7 more minutes of rest.  Yet you know you can’t today.  Today you must get up and get to work.  You have responsibilities that must be met and you are going to do them.  You have dreams of a better life and you are determined to accomplish them.  You may not want to but you know you have to get up and go.  This is the only way you will ever have the chance to decide to do what you want to do.

 

Life is a Journey 

 

     You are on a journey called life.  Your journey is unique because it is yours to live.  Yet your journey is also the same as everyone else’s because your journey will take work.  Your journey will take effort.  You may not have to bleed, sweat and cry as much as your neighbor but you will have to do something.  Heck, the effort that it takes actually makes life interesting.  If everything was just given to you with no effort on your own life would get pretty boring.  Sure it would feel good at first but only because of the effort you have put in to date.  Eventually you will grow tired of just sitting back and doing nothing.  When you do nothing you stop growing.  When you stop growing you get closer to death and you have no desire to die.

 

      No matter your current circumstances there is no doubt you have put in some effort along your journey.  Yet with all of that effort you may not have the option of doing what you want to do.  As you have grown older you have taken on more responsibility.  You have purchased homes.  You have purchased automobiles.  You have gotten married and had children.  You have become accustomed to a lifestyle you want to maintain.  To meet these responsibilities you have gotten gainful employment.  You need the income from that employment to fuel your journey.  You are going to answer that alarm clock and get out of bed because you have to go to work.  You have to do what you have to do.  

 

       So you know what you want to do when it comes to meeting your responsibilities.  Actually that is an easy exercise to complete.  The logic is very simple.  If you want to maintain or improve your lifestyle you will have to do what you are currently doing and work.  However, is maintaining or improving your current lifestyle all you want to do?  Is there a want deep down inside you that you have not let come to the surface?  It is very easy sometimes to get caught up in your lifestyle and allow it to dictate what you have to do.  Once you allow this to happen you can get trapped in the cycle of just working for that.  The problem with that cycle is you could end up missing out on something much greater.  You could miss out on finally do what you want to do.  You could miss out on calling the shots.  Instead of your boss telling you what to do you could be getting asked to do it and you could decide whether you want to do it or not.

 

What Category Do You Fit In?

 

     None of this is possible without know what you want to do.  There are three different categories that you most likely fit into.  

 

• You have no idea what you want to do.  
• You think you know what you want to do but you haven’t tried it so you aren’t sure.  
• You know exactly what you want to do.

 

Depending on which camp you fall into you will have different actions you need to take.  Let’s discuss each one below.

 

Actions to Take

 

     If you have no idea what you want to do I’m sure you know what action you must take.  You must find out what you want to do.  This sounds simple but if it was this would not be a category.  Most experts tell you to find your passion and then decide to follow it.  They tell you to take stock in things you like to do and determine one of them as your passion.  They also offer surveys that they say will tell you what your passions are based on your answers to numerous questions.  This is not the advice that I will give.  My suggestion is you start small. Determining what you want to do in life is not something that should happen overnight.  If you have gone this long without knowing it will most likely some time to figure this out.  Instead of waiting on that epiphany to come to you start small by deciding what you want to do in your current job.  Start small be deciding what you want to do when it comes to your family.  Start small by deciding what you want to do when it comes to your intellect.  Smart small in all 6 dimensions of wellness. Set small goals and accomplish them.  The more you accomplish that cycle the easier it will be to decide what you really want to do in life.

 

      If you think you know what you want to do but haven’t tried it so you aren’t sure, it is time for you to experiment.  After all life is one big experiment.  Your action is to break down this big experiment and do a bunch of little ones.  Yes you will need to do your research and learn as much as you can about this thing you think you want to do.  This research however is useless if you don’t take action on it.  If you think you want to be an event planner you don’t have to quit your job and take your 401K savings to open up Denzel’s Events LLC.  Sure it’s possible you are right and things turn out great.  That would be an example of a huge experiment going right.  Yet all experiments aren’t going to go right.  Many will fail and that failure will teach you something you can use for the next experiment.  The lesson you would learn from Denzel’s Events LLC failing may be too large and set you back further than you would like.  Instead do some much smaller experiments first.  Plan some social events with friends and family.  Volunteer to plan your team’s next team building event.  Go to your local restaurant and pitch an event to help them market their product to the community.  All of these experiments will help you decide if being an event planner is really what you want to do.

 

     If you know exactly what you want to do then you also know what action you need to take.  That action is to continue doing what you are doing.  You keep your eyes on the prize and continue to remind yourself that you are doing this now so you can do that later.  Day by day and moment by moment you will get closer to your dream.  You are fortunate to be in this position and you should be grateful for this fact. That gratitude will help give you the energy you need to finish the mission.  You know what you want and you will have it.  Congratulations, we all are looking forward to seeing you get there.

 

     No matter what category you fit into you are going to have to do something.  That is both truth and beauty.  It is truth because nothing is going to be given to you.  You will have to put in effort to get the results that you want.  It is beauty because it is part of the journey of life and life is a beautiful thing.  You are going to get out of life what you put into it.  Just make sure you are putting into it with a goal in mind.  That goal is to ultimately do what you want to do.  You will have to do some things along the way to get there and that is just a part of the journey.  As always I wish you the best and remind you to enjoy the journey!

 

With gratitude,

Drew