I haven’t been here for a while now.
I have been wrapping my brain around, through and between and finally starting with full intent to finish.
And it feels good.
I picked up the term ‘starting’ from Seth Godin’s new book, Poke the Box.
A book he was going to name “Go Go Go” and talks about understanding failure in a way that I have never heard.
While listening to the book on audio for the last few days, it’s been eating me up that I have not posted here at my blog for a while. I feel as though I have let down my ‘non existent’ audience. Along the way, I remembered that I love this free, no borders, no rules avenue I have to let out some of my thoughts for the world to read. At least perhaps someday.
The good news is that I have seen, heard, read, found some really cool stuff! There are a couple people in this world whom I feel very attracted to. People I can relate to. Teachers that have appeared because of my due diligence is seeking.
I’m even willing to bet you’ve heard of a couple of em. I’ll lay out my list anyways with links to their sites in case you wanna check em out for yourself.
Pam Slim – Escape From Cubicle Nation
Chris Guillebeau – The Art of Non-Conformity
Leo Babauta – Zen Habits
All three of the above all preach one common theme. They just do it in their artistic way. They all teach that if you want to change the world, your world, all you have to do is Go! Go! Go!
One of my favorite memories brings back this event that I believe each one of us goes through. In some way. Let me paint a picture for you and let us see if you can relate.
It’s a warm summer day and you’re out with your friends swimming in a back yard pool. One of your buds decides that he’s going to climb up on the roof of the garage that’s close enough to the deep end to use as a high dive. That is of course you have enough peer pressure to drive you up to the hot roof and actually make the plunge.
You daringly go up and wait for the kid who’s house it is to show everyone how it’s done. You watch and make sure he lands in the water safely and comes out of it alive. That gives you at least a bit of courage. You look around and walk up to the edge of the roof, glaring down at the cool water below. As you figure out just how much of a jump it’s going to take to clear the ground and land in the water, your heart is practically jumping out of your chest.
Showing invincibility, yet scared out of your freakin’ mind, you tell yourself, you’ll jump on 3 NO MATTER WHAT. You hand over any free will to the number 3 and tell yourself that the second you ‘hear’ it, you are going to jump.
Did you jump? Did you take the plunge when you were a kid? Or did you ‘chicken out’?
Some kids did. Some kids sat up there for what seemed like eternity while his friends cheered him on. No matter though… Some kids never made the jump.
Do you remember that feeling? The one when you were looking over the edge convincing yourself that you would be okay? I think going through something like this is enough to make a life long lasting impression on who we are. In that moment, we tested out what we were made of and began to understand what it would take to make these decisions throughout our lives.
I forgot how to jump. I lost that edge at some point. I stopped counting to 3. Did I just ‘mature’ or did I conform?
What’s amazing though is I have realized it isn’t too late to start. It isn’t too late to juice up on that fear of uncertainty and just jump. The world wants us too. The world needs us too. If we can, than we must.
I have personally taken it upon myself to make that leap. If I fail… well, then I fail. In this case though, failure is a huge victory. Because it means that I jumped. I will jump again and again and never stop jumping. The failures will show up. Hopefully tons of them… but the second I jump again, they are erased. Forgotten. Wiped away. That’s the beauty of this game. The trick is actually playing it.
The greatest tragedy is not how short life is but rather how long it takes to start living it.
Go! Go! Go!
