Once you've Redefined Success, you should choose your activities carefully.
Do not participate in Relay Races, i.e. activities that you have a small portion of control in the success of the whole.
Pick things that you can fully control.
Biking, photography, travel, sewing, writing, etc. are all activities that are fully in your control and if you define success properly, you will succeed.
For example, if you like to travel and you've always wanted to take a trip overseas then when you research the requirements (i.e. costs, travel arrangements, etc.) and implement a plan (save $100 a week), you will be successful when you have enough money saved and have taken that long dreamed of trip.
You control all aspects of making the trip and therefore you control the likelihood of success.
Another example would be photography. You control all aspects of becoming a photographer.
Note that becoming a paid photographer is not fully within your control. No matter how much you think it is, it is not.
You must be "good" at taking certain pictures. You must find someone to buy your pictures or hire you to take them.
Trying to get paid for activity is a slippery slope to frustration and failure because you don't control the "paid" part.
Control where the finish line is in a solo race and as long as you keep running, you will win.
How to Succeed
Redefining Success
Success as defined by our society is measured in terms of Dollars.
This is counterproductive to our happiness because we cannot control the process of making money.
There are too many variables out of our direct control.
Monetary success is like a Relay Race.
Your part in a relay is important but not sufficient to win the race.
You must rely on others to win.
You can only control your leg of the race, from the moment you get the baton, run and hand off the baton.
You can run the best leg of your life, hand the baton off and the person trips and never makes across the Finish Line.
Are you a failure? No.
Are you a success?
If you Redefine Success properly, then you are a success.
Redefine Success to be limited to the things you can fully control and then you will succeed more times than you fail.
The Application
Once you've arrived at The Answer, the next step is The Application of the Answer.
Once again, I can only tell you how I applied it. But first, a little history.
My career is in software design and development, which happens to fit my Answer, create something from nothing.
When I was programming for free, 100% of my time was spent doing what I enjoyed.
When I turned my hobby into a job, the fun was slowly reduced to about 10% of the time.
The other 90% is spent doing all kinds of thing I don't like.
Effectively, I've ruined my hobby.
Of course, I have a great career, but at the expense of a hobby.
The lesson here is once you've arrived at the Answer, i.e. the activities you love, don't try to make money with them.
So, I do photography, blog, write screenplays, make short films, etc.
And don't get me wrong, if I accidentally make money in these endeavors, I'll be even happier, but it's just icing on the cake.
The Application of the Answer is simple. Just do it. (My apologizes to Nike).
Reduce TV watching, Internet surfing, etc. and redirect that time to the activities that make you feel alive.
The Answer
The next logical step once you've asked The Question is to try to answer it.
Easier said than done.
There is no single correct way to find the answer. The best I can do is try to recall my method.
I looked at all of things I like to do.
The list went like (write software, design software, write screenplays, take pictures, write music, graphic arts).
Now this is not a list of things I can make money at. Nor things that I'm good at.
The list contains activities that I like to do.
I could have stopped here but I wanted to understand what each item in this list has in common.
After a little while, I realized that all of these things had creativity in common.
Digging a little deeper, I also realized that all of these things require almost nothing but an imagination.
So I created an abstract version of my answer:
There it was.
Now the power of an abstract answer is that I can use it like a touchstone to compare an activity that wasn't in my original list to see if I would like it.
For example, painting isn't on my list but it fits the abstract answer. It's something that you create just using your mind.
So I'd probably like painting.
Reviewing the process:
- Make a list of activities you like to do
- Figure out what they all have in common
- Create a single statement that encompasses all of the activities in an abstract way
The Question
As I approached the age of 40, I started to review my life. Although this isn't an unusually unique endeavor, I did, however, stumble across something very powerful.
It was a question. Not an answer mind you, but a question. We are wrongly taught in school that getting the right answer is the goal, but that's wrong.
In life, getting the right question is the goal. Because once you have the right question, it's only a matter of time before you get the right answer.
If you have the wrong question, who cares what the right answer is.
Another unique aspect to the question is that it has as many answers as there are people.
And there are no wrong answers.
The Question:
After you win the $100 Million Lottery, you spend the next year buying everything you ever wanted and the following year you travel and visit everywhere on the earth you've ever wanted to see, twice.
On the very next day, what do you do?
It took me about a year to answer this question.
Whatever your answer to this question is represents the thing that makes you feel alive.
It also represents the things you should be doing today, tomorrow and every day for the rest of your life.
Because you shouldn't wait to start living your life until after you win the $100 Million Lottery. Because you probably won't.
Now to find The Answer.
