Most people have decided to live their life practicing in preparation for the real performance.
"I'll be happy when...." is the way many people think they are living their lives. Yet, happiness is not something that happens to you. Happiness is inside each of us now. We are motivated from within. We only have to allow happiness to surface.
Happiness = K (Knowing who you are) X D (Discovering your life's work) X L (Learning not to tolerate what's not important). That's the formula for success and happiness....know yourself, your true calling and that you get what you tolerate.
In medicine, you look at how "well tolerated" a drug will be related to its side effects. At work and home, many people evaluate new opportunities related to what can be well tolerated. Yet, after life, most people don't want their tombstone to read, "He tolerated stuff for other people because they paid him." Especially, when we realize that we can have more fun doing work that engages our passions. Life is too short for doing work you don't enjoy for people you don't respect.
Is your present life half empty or half full?
Here are some stories of half empty lives brought to us by Jared Sandberg in his Cubicle Culture column in the October 16th edition of The Wall Street Journal:
Carol Birth, a 31-year-old single mother and teacher, dreams one day she will go back to school to get her doctorate. But not before she can provide for her son. "So, you keep going. You keep going because it feels selfish to stop," she says, adding that some days she is pretty sure she would rather clean sewers than do what she is doing now.
David Eddy, a software programmer and father of a high school junior, used to have an entrepreneurial dream with two high-tech start-ups...and now...he is (just) dreaming of the predictability of a cubicle job that will help with looming tuition expenses.
Sandberg tells us that so many people tell you to "follow your dreams"--from commencement speakers to executive coaches--that it is easy to get the impression you aren't. But there is scant evidence that people aren't doing pretty much what they want. He mentions that a Gallup Poll found that 90% of Americans are at least somewhat satisfied with their jobs and 75% say they're satisfied with their pay. Two-thirds would take the same job again "without hesitation."
However, in highly developed countries, there is a growing percentage of people thinking about the meaning of life. This genuine spiritual concern is broader than traditional views of religion practiced in numerous countries of the world. Yet, it is unclear to most how they want to live their life in a meaningful way...afraid or unwilling to follow their dream.
"Nothing happens unless first a dream." Carl Sandburg
There are too many smart, educated, talented people operating at a slow speed in jobs they are just tolerating. They have put their dream in a lock box so they could go out and make a ton of money to support the big house, expensive cars, summer/winter places, private schools, college expenses, etc. The unfortunate outcome of following this path, is that they become emotionally invested in that world--and don't really want to ditch it by opening up the lock box and letting their dream surface.
Such people have decided live their life as a dress rehearsal rather than live every moment to the fullest. They continue to look outside themselves rather than to seek answers within. They continue to paddle upstream rather than cruise downstream living a life of passion...doing what they do best.