My sister and I were in the metro last night.
She told me about her discussion with a friend.
This friend told her that he hates traveling on the metro after 9 pm because it is depressing for him to see so many unfulfilled and tired faces returning from work – who will be back on that train ready to go to work the next morning after not sleeping enough. This friend of hers is 22 years old and does not want to live such a life for long.
I am sure he is not the only one having those thoughts. Then why don’t enough of us break out of the rut? Because sometimes we don’t know the way out.
But there is a way out of the rut. In fact, there are a couple of approaches.
One approach works well when you don’t have a lot of responsibilities and lives connected to you. If this is the case then for some time get out of the world of wants and start living to take care of your needs. Because the gap between wants and needs is a lot so this approach is pretty efficient. This approach will give you time to work on your dreams and allow you to say no to what is unfulfilling and you can do it for 2-4 years at one go to reach a point where you’ll start living your dreams.
The other approach takes longer. This approach is good when you have lives of people connected with you, who have certain wants and you can’t let them down or disrupt their lives to tend to your own ways. In this situation, plan to take leaps by mastering what pays you money now. And for a while continue doing what you are doing even if it may not be your dream job.
Chances are you are selling your time to keep the engine of wants running. If that is the case, then get really good at what you do then sell time to the highest bidder. Use an increase in earnings to bring your savings to a level where the wants of people in your life will not be hampered for a year. Then take a 9-month sabbatical to do what you need to do to live your dream.
It is important that you spend time every week on your dream for a year before your sabbatical and prove to yourself that you will be consistent and diligent about working on your dream during the sabbatical.
Chances are when you spend 9 months on whatever your dream is, you will create headways and leverage that you can use to really live your dreams.
You may have to do two to three such sabbaticals over a 5-7 years period but the beauty is that you can do it without disrupting the wants.
You are the best judge to see which approach is better. Decide based on your circumstances. And, one by one we’ll be able to reduce the number of unfulfilled faces around. But it starts with our own lives.
