Gag. Gag. Gag.

You know, this whole “follow your dreams” thing is getting a little old, right?

Coming from me, that’s probably surprising.

But the problem is that so much of it is fluff. So much out there encourages you to start “living the life of your dreams,” while frolicking on a big white puffy cloud and nibbling on a tray of bonbons. Let’s all join hands now in our camel-colored moccasins and braid one another’s hair while singing to the god of daydreams, already.

The truth of that matter is that nobody knows what a damn bonbon is in the first place, and secondly, that nobody knows what their”dreams” are, either.  EXCLAMATION!

Did that sound like me yelling? Because I was totally yelling.

Just Like Everything Else, We Do Whatever Society Tells Us To

So since there’s all this new-found hoighty toighty pressure to “follow your dreams,” and since most of us, by and large, do whatever the hell society tells us to do, here we are running around like a pack of rabid tortoises, drooling all over ourselves and trying, with no avail, to become all “enlightened” and “free” and “happy” and “zen” and “I-don’t-know-why-I’m-doing-this-but-I-only-own-100-things-ish-because-clearly-I’m-not-a-good-person-if-I-own-more-than-one-pair-of-shoes.”  Assuming tortoises wear shoes, of course.

I guess that’s what they call a movement. Don’t even get me started on how annoyed I’m becoming with that word. Movement…crusade…tribe…cult…still-not-thinking-for-ourselves.  Aaacck.

Anyway, back to the flock of tortoises. Here we are, trying to make like foxes and run into the wind, but there’s one little problem (besides the fact that if we really were tortoises, those shells would be crazy heavy to run with):

WE HAVE NO IDEA WHERE WE’RE RUNNING TTTTTTTTTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Yelling. Again. Pardon my exclamation point.

Everyone keeps preaching that we need to follow our dreams (guilty of this), but how can we do that if we haven’t first taken the time to figure out what those even are?

I talk to people every day who become frustrated; they’ve tried several paths, haven’t been happy with any of them, and are starting to get discouraged. They’re starting to believe that resigning themselves to life as a secretary might be the better route, after all. And you know what? If you’re happy being a secretary, then fantastic. But many of you won’t be. But it’s the easier path, so you’ll take it. Because you’re frustrated with trying so hard to follow your dreams, but you’re still not happy.  But that’s just because you don’t actually have a clue what your dreams even are; you’re just sort of throwing things up there until one sticks. And that’s sometimes an effective method…but it’s not very efficient.  And since we’ve only got, oh…say…40 years or so, you might want to consider an alternative.

We’re a fast food nation. We demand speed. We want everything on the double. And dreams are no exception. So instead of taking the necessary time to figure out what they are, we opt to dive into whatever we think might suit our fancy at the time. And then we’re disappointed when we realize that–wait a minute–we aren’t that crazy about this or that after all, and since we aren’t crazy about it, we don’t put the necessary time and effort into it. And if we aren’t doing that, then nothing’s going to happen–certainly not dreams coming true.

This Is Not About Soul Searching

If we want all that sexy enlightenment and freedom and happiness and zen, we’ve got to take the time to figure out what path will bring us those things.

Most people assume that they’ve simply got to do a little “soul-searching.” (Quotation marks are clearly the highlight of this post.) So they sit down, pour themselves a cup of coffee, do a little thinking, and then assume that they’ve got the answer.

If only it were that easy.

This is not about soul searching. Sure, that’s nice and all, but soul searching is incredibly limiting.

The only things that we know, are that which we’ve experienced. So in doing soul searching, we’re actually performing an inventory of the things we’ve done in the past.

But what about everything else out there that we haven’t yet experienced?

If you really want to increase the quality of your life, and find some zen happiness once and for all, the key is not soul searching. The key lies in getting out there and doing things that you haven’t done before. Because clearly, the things you’ve already been doing haven’t been that compelling–or you’d probably be on the road to sexy happy zen land by now–or at least have a better idea of where it lies on a map.

It requires some guts! It requires some risk-taking. It requires new experiences. And it requires you to get off your butt and start doing something–not just thinking about what you already like. There’s so much out there that you don’t even know you like yet, and one of those things might just be the very thing you’ve been missing this entire time.

NEW IS NECESSARY.

Stop being a chicken.

Go be somebody.

AFTER you figure out who that somebody is that you want to be.

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