Picture it – your bags are packed. The playlist is curated. Your tank is full. You hit the gas ready for the road trip of your life!
And as you come up on the exit to the highway, you realize that you’ve missed one crucial step – you have no idea where you’re going.
“Well that’s fine!” you think. “I’ll just head south and see where the breeze takes me.” And a few days later, maybe you’ve discovered a cool little town along the way.
Or maybe you made some wrong turns and ended up spending 3 days in traffic and staying at shitty motels.
That’s the risk you take, right? My question is…
Is that the risk you’re taking with your life?
Waking up each day and picking a direction based on whatever whim you’re feeling in that moment? Sure, eventually you might get somewhere you want to be going.
But then again, maybe you won’t.
And you’re sure as hell not going to take the most efficient route to get there.
The biggest question I get asked as a coach is, “Yeah, but how?” And my answer is always the same – how you get there is up to you, but the first step is always deciding where you want to end up.
“I want to be a writer.” Cool! What does that mean to you? A novelist? Poet? Freelance writing articles for magazines?
Want to save money? Great! How much? And by when?
Exactly what your goal is is going to dictate how you get there. Without a clear vision of where you’re headed, you’re just winging the journey and hoping you stumble across something that works for you.
And look, I get that you might not know exactly what your goal is. But I also bet that if you quiet all the doubts and the fear and really listen to your gut, you have at least some sort of an idea. And I feel pretty confident that you at least know what kind of an experience you want to be having with your life.
Me peering into your soul knowing that you at least kinda know.
What would give you that experience? Just pick something. Because here’s the other doozy – just because you pick something doesn’t mean you’re locked into it forever.
Decide that you want to be a novelist, and after 3 months realize that it’s actually short form writing that gets you really fired up? Great! You learned something about yourself and can now adjust your final destination accordingly.
But without choosing something, you’re never going to know if you’re on the path that’s going to get you there.
So if waking up one day when you’re 65 and saying, “Welp, I spent most of my life wandering aimlessly based on whatever opportunities popped into my path, and this is where I ended up” – totally your prerogative! This just isn’t the blog post for you.
But if you know you have a goal for your life, it’s time to own that sucker.