So you settled for your life...

When we were kids we had the most astronomical goals set for our future selves. How many times did you say “I’m going to be a doctor…I’m going to be an astronaut…I’m going to a millionaire”? As time went on reality set in. That reality being- Life is hard.  You see, when you are a child most of your conscious brain activity is spent imagining. It is an amazing aspect of our thinking; the ability to imagine possibilities without limitations. We become older though and some of us get churned into the systematic ideology of checklists as well as the pros and cons of every situation.

This indoctrination begins to rob our imagination of its life force and instead allocates those resources to the logic and fleeing centers of our brain. We begin to say things like “Well I wanna be doctor, but I don’t have the money for school… I want to be a millionaire but my ideas aren’t realistically valued at that price”. Logic has its place. It can certainly be a tool that scaffolds our goals into existence, but like Charlie Chaplin said in the satirical film The Great Dictator “We think too much and feel too little” Sometimes you just need to tap into that passion- that childhood imagination that is free from frivolous anchors.  The reality though is a lot of people just can’t cut those anchors. Why?  

There are two major areas of life that people settle in, the first being careers. For careers the bar starts really high and that’s great! Along the way however, life’s hardships happen and that is where you are met with 2 choices:

1.)   I evaluate my situation … make small positional changes and continue for the same goal.

Or

2.)    I lower the bar and go after a sure thing.

A lot of people choose the second option and sometimes that works out, but at what cost? See, a reason people go for the second option is as they get older they want more security. We all want security and that’s not a bad thing, but again you have to ask yourself how much did I give up for that security and was it worth it? Jim Carrey said it best in a speech that he gave to a graduating class.  In the speech he got to a point about his father who had the ability to be a successful comedian just like his son… but he began to fear he would not be able to make it in the industry. So he settled for a secure job as an accountant. The world needs accounts and if that is your passion by all means. For his father though- it wasn’t.  He was sacrificing his passion for that security. Long story short he was let go and the family struggled to survive. The lesson that Jim learned from this was that “you can fail at what you don’t want so you might as well take a chance with something you love”.  In that simple yet profound statement there is a beautiful truth of taking a chance on your hearts desires.

          Now the second major area of life where people make compromises are the relationships they choose to remain in. Aside from the need for success humans have an innate desire to be loved; that special kind of love between 2 people who wish to spend the rest of their lives with one another.  In fact, some people desire this love so much that they tap  strictly into their logical reasoning to try and rationalize being in a sublunary relationship lacking fulfillment.  They know they are being abused emotionally, physically. or psychologically but they say to themselves “I can’t leave because I won’t be able to support myself” or “I know this situation is bad but no one else will ever love me”. This is the moment- the crossroads of all relationships and when you find yourself saying I CANT or I WONT too many times that is the moments of clarity where you need to decide to make the right choice for yourself most importantly your heart.

My focus here is for you to realize that when you start to bottle neck your imagination, your passion, or your creativity and solely be dictated by one aspect of your brain (i.e. logic) you begin to settle on an existence that provides only surface satisfaction. When there is only surface satisfaction no amount of internal rationalization can quell the burning outcry of your heart’s desire and it will beat you to your knees until it is heard.  Never settle and always take on challenges to improve the quality of your life.

-Joncary Faubion