If you are on a conventional path, following the conventional life, with conventional dreams and aspirations, then you are living a life deferred. You’re putting life on the back burner until you are ready for it. No, not until you’re ready for it…
Life is on the back burner until the planets align, fate favors you, and lighting strikes twice, or until you retire.
The question is: Do you want to live a conventional life?
Would you follow a path before knowing where it leads? When you follow the path that your feet were born on, instead of looking at the map and seeing all of your options, you are blind to the possibility beneath your feet. You let life happen to you. You don’t ever find the answer to your Burning Questions. Maybe you never find out what those questions are.
To borrow some excellent wisdom from minds far greater than my own: “It is not what I did that I regret, but what I did not do.”
It’s A Traaap!
Challenge conventions everywhere, especially conventional lifestyles. Keeping your eyes shut and staying the course leads to more pain in the long run than you will experience by confronting your fears now.
What are the greatest conventional idea traps that exist in society today?
College is a Good Idea
A college degree is becoming the new high school diploma. Academic brinksmanship is rampant to the point that a Masters degree is not enough in many fields. Most graduates have significant debt.
Who goes to college? Predominantly, fresh high school graduates. Do most 18-year-olds know what they want? The majority do not. College promotes knowledge and opportunity, but the system underneath it is the red-headed stepchild of capitalism and intellectual elitism.
The truth is that you don’t actually need college. It’s a safe route, but not one that success demands. Many non-college graduates have done extremely well.
The advertised “point” of college is to gain knowledge, training, and experience in a field that you have chosen as a potential career. When most students go to college, they have no idea what they want to do, and college doesn’t do a great job of helping others figure it out.
Students exit universities left and right looking for a job, any job, without a dream or vision of how they want to have an impact. If you insist on college, why not figure out what you want to do first, and then go learn about it?
Secret: A college degree does not free you from the conventional path, it ties you to it more strongly.
You Must Work To Live
The idea that you need to work Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm, should be left to rot in the 20th century. Everyone needs to pay their bills. Most people want toys and trips.
You do not need to slave away 60% or more of your waking hours to have them (and you do not need all of them either).
Selling your soul to a job in order to make ends meet is a quick way to burn out into ashes. It may be “required,” but there is always a more fulfilling path, if you keep looking for it.
You do not need to wait until your golden years to retire and enjoy your life. Your life has energy, vim, vigor, and passion ready for you to embrace every instant. Stop saying that you can’t do something, and start researching ways that you can.
Are you letting yourself be limited by “I can’t” or “I should“? Everyone is at one point or another. How can you break this pattern?
Secret: Working a job that you are not passionate about is one of the fastest ways to dissatisfaction. Changing the world for the better is more lucrative and lower-risk long term. Plus, it feels good.
You Must Live In One Place
In the industrial era, it was expected that you could work for your entire career in one place. Today, you can expect to have as many as six to eight different careers. Careers, not jobs. The world is changing fast, and if you’re tangled up in the idea that you must live in one place, you’re missing out on the juicy parts of life.
Major industries exist in certain places: entertainment is in Hollywood and NYC. Finance is in NYC. Auto is in Detroit. Fact: I’m an animator working in Kansas City instead of LA or New York. If you let yourself assume that you must be one place or another, that’s where you’ll end up. Not where you wanted, but where the world hath dictated.
You can make a living doing what you want from anywhere. This is a digital world that we live in, and your opportunity to work from wherever your heart pleases has never been more in your reach.
Take some time, get experience, and build a network of contacts, and then sell your possessions and go to a place that inspires you.
Secret: The only thing keeping you where you are instead of where you want to be, is a set of beliefs that is now outdated.
Radical Success Is Out Of Reach
Disclaimer: Have I achieved radical success? Not yet. Have I drunk the personal development Kool-Aid that tells me I can do anything, if I just buy their product? Hell no.
I believe in the power of consistent action. When a group or an individual takes intelligent and consistent action, radical success is usually the result. Do nine out of ten businesses fail in the first seven years in the United States? Yep. But that doesn’t mean success is in any way out of reach.
Most people believe that radical success is out of reach because they cannot see all the steps that it has taken the successful person to get there. Did Warren Buffet make billions by chance? Did Steve Jobs transform Apple instantly? Did Lady Gaga become Lady Gaga by accident?
It takes time and concentrated, consistent action. The only common denominator I’ve seen across successful businesses is hard work. When you are dedicated and you persevere, success will follow.
Secret: Radical success is in how you define it. It doesn’t have to be millions, it could just be working six months instead of 12 every year. Define it and make it true.
You Can’t Start Until You Finish X
This is the quintessential excuse: “I really want to start my novel, write my screenplay, make my film, start my business, get my blog going, but I need to finish this other thing in my life first. “
Let me be the first to call bullshit on whoever says this. Any monumental task such as creating a business or undertaking a huge creative endeavor, is composed of thousands of tiny steps. Those tiny steps can be research, planning, brainstorming, networking or anything that moves you one molecule toward your goal.
You can’t start next week, next month, or next year. You can only start now.
Honestly answer the question: “Why haven’t I made time for this yet?”
The scary part of self awareness is that once you know your excuses, making them is less effective. Now start.
Secret: No goal is too large to start now – there is always a small task you can do this moment that will move you forward.
It’s Too Risky to Be an Entrepreneur
Is there risk in being an entrepreneur? Yes, but not nearly as much as you’re afraid there is. When I started working in animation, I had “arrived” in the career of my choice, doing exactly what I wanted. Life was bliss and I was living my long-time dream.
Reality hit hard two weeks later: the entire animation staff was fired because the studio didn’t want to finish the project.
What did I learn? That when the power of the paycheck lies in the hands of someone other than you, your personal power is crippled.
It is risky in today’s age of upheaval and recession to not be an entrepreneur. If you lose your job and have no skills or income that you are responsible for to fall back on, what happens? You scramble, fast.
Instead of scrambling and hustling when shit hits the fan, why don’t you work to create your own extraordinary circumstances before you need them?
Secret: The “Safe Bet” of a job is no longer safe. It’s time to find out how you can eek out a living for yourself.
You Get Satisfaction From Life Outside of Work
I keep running across the prevailing assumptions that “It’s just work,” and, “I can be inspired by things outside of work.”
Why in the world would you spend 60% of your waking Monday through Friday hours in a way that is not filling your spirits? That sounds insane when you really think about it. The entire middle and lower-classes seems to have drunk the Kool-Aid here.
It’s time to realize that your passions can get you paid. There is nothing keeping you from living a fulfilling life except your fears.
Will you find satisfaction in work overnight? No. But it exists when you finally choose to create it. Work and passion do not have to be separate ventures.
Secret: In such a quickly changing world, you have opportunities every day to recreate a life that follows your passions and gets you paid.
To avoid falling into Conventional Lifestyle Traps, it boils down to one question.
Does life happen to you, or do you happen to life?
Photo by zak_greant
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Great List!
Though I concede to some of these, it is while I pursue my own independent success.
Good article…
David Damron
The Minimalist Path
I like the resiliency, but I have to take some exception to the idea of college as machinery for capitalism and intellectual elitism. For the medical career I'm seeking, I need a college education because that's where this is taught. It's not taught on blogs. You can't learn it from Twitter. It's fantastic if you want to be an artist or work in a creative field to skip college if you're able to acquire and enhance the necessary talents on your own, but the reality is that I will need the knowledge of fundamental Chemistry and Biology to ensure my knowledge level is up to snuff when I'm reading someone's lab work – or else the consequences could be very problematic.
Other than that, I see where you're coming from and this is good stuff
Hey Eric,
I think the issue is more that people go straight from high school into college, many without any plan except, “Well, this is what you do after high school.”
In a case such as yours where you know what you're doing, then college is obviously the next step. If you don't know what you want, you can end up spending lots of extra money and time spinning your wheels.
As far as capitalism meets intellectual elitism – the continuing rise in tuition prices, the inclusion of furlough days (in places like CA), the insane text book price racket, combined with the what in a lot of cases is regurgitation and flattery to professors instead of original thinking. Perhaps I'm disillusioned with the system.
Cheers,
J
Thanks David! Glad to see you around
I would definitely say you're sounding disillusioned with the system, as those remarks are as cynical as any I've ever seen from you. We're in agreement that we shouldn't herd kids out of high school into college, but there are a lot more things to be discussed there than I quite frankly can budget the time for right now.
Where we part ways is where you begin to blur the lines between decisions made by government (rise in tuition prices and furlough days, these are necessitated by tax revenue, and people do not like to pay for education with tax revenue) and “intellectual elitism.” Rising costs are not due to the rising wages of the professors, and professors are entitled to earn a living through teaching and research as much as anyone else is entitled to earn their own living following their own passions. A Chem professor makes about $85,000 with a Ph.D per year while someone who works in a private lab can push six figures with a master's.
I think the people who teach it are passionate about what they do, enough so that they are doing it for less reward than they'd get if they just went out and worked in the field for which they are experts. To say that professors or universities made up of professors are engaging in elitism by driving costs up for some reason doesn't make a whole lot of sense – maybe I'm missing something? More importantly, it doesn't acknowledge that the problem isn't that the education itself is rising in cost more than any other service in our country, the problem is that education is not a priority on a national level for Americans anymore, and most states are having severe revenue problems because of the economic conditions of the land.
I will remind you that in a purely capitalist system, I could agree with the concept of elitism. The fact remains that private schools are undoubtedly more expensive for students than public ones.
Regarding your point about books, the text book pricing issue has been answered within the textbook market by the rise of online marketplaces such as half.com. Additionally, many colleges now offer rental of books for a fraction of the cost of purchase.
Finally, regurgitation and flattery? That sounds like that was a harsh personal experience with a bad professor or several bad professors. I've never had to regurgitate anything other than core concepts of math or science, or foundational concepts of syntax and grammar. Regurgitation is a nasty way of saying that I had to demonstrate that I had mastered the concepts. At the collegiate level, moreso than any other level, I've been blown away by the amount of encouragement I've received to come up with unique perspectives and ideas by very talented educators, which may be simply on the other end of the spectrum – maybe I've had great instructors – but generally, when I write non-scientific papers, I'm encouraged to pursue unique views. A great example is from my Composition II course a long time ago, wherein I turned in a half-assed paper and expected an “A.” I received a “C.” I was most upset with myself, but in retrospect, I wrote an average piece of work. Nothing that I said in that paper was any different from the “on the surface,” non-analytical writing that my classmates had turned in. That upset me, initially, but my instructor pushed me to go deeper into thoughtful and thorough analysis of topics when I wrote about them, and that genuinely made me into a better writer. Just a different perspective, I think. It's all based on our experiences, I think I've had many more positive than negative experiences within the college environment but I don't know what would qualify as the “norm,” as you're right – we crank out nondescript business majors more than anything else, anymore.
Perhaps this is something we should chit chat over a beer or something
I still don't feel like we're quite debating the same thing yet. I certainly enjoy the amount of thought you put into it, and while I debate some of your points, I also agree with some (teachers deserve a fair wage, fair/good grading practices, and a few others).
When I became self employed almost 10 years ago I consciously started breaking these rules. Life transformed pretty quickly and I've been fine-tuning ever since. When I'm coaching my clients the key is to focus on what's important, what feels good to them. There's no “one-size-fits-all” path in life, which is why this conversation drives up the emotions – and that's a very good thing!
I think that the inner wisdom that every individual has is a wonderful guiding force when tempered by good experience.
There isn't a one size fits all path, but there is certainly general wisdom that can be applied across many situations.
I agree with several of these points, but one that really hits home with me right now t is “You Must Live In One Place.”
I've been traveling all over the place this summer, and I've got to admit that I'm having a blast. Running your business from wherever you happen to be doesn't really fall into society's mold, but the molds seem to be changing as time goes on.
I think my favorite part of the growing trend in “changing molds” is that more and more people are coming to find their own molds instead of buying into their own. Being true to ourselves is hopefully becoming a more and more high priority in the world.
As one of those broke college students that picked up student loans straight out of high school, it's kind of nice to have someone else spell out what has been in the back of my mind for the past four years. Don't get me wrong, I love school, I truly enjoy the lessons I've learned from my experience (in classroom and out)… but the only reason I am where I am is because I let someone else dictate what I had to do after high school. I have been living in a short-sighted world, constantly moving forward but to a completely unknown end. I wish I had waited to put myself thousands of dollars in debt until I knew what it was all for.
You’re not alone! I certainly have my own opinions about the “Must go to college” mentality, but the biggest problem with it that I can see is how much people are pressured into it from parents AND from peers.
“Oh you’re not going to college? What’s wrong with you?!” That type of question should not exist. It makes sense when you’ve decided on a path, but throwing anywhere from $10k-50k+ down the hole without a purpose seems like lunacy to me.
In an (my) ideal world, the system would focus on finding and honing talents and skills, then going to college if it is necessary to achieve dreams and goals, or a career demands it.
(And even if Chico isn’t the best bang for the buck, it’s still a fun place to go college, eh?)
You're not alone! I certainly have my own opinions about the “Must go to college” mentality, but the biggest problem with it that I can see is how much people are pressured into it from parents AND from peers.
“Oh you're not going to college? What's wrong with you?!” That type of question should not exist. It makes sense when you've decided on a path, but throwing anywhere from $10k-50k+ down the hole without a purpose seems like lunacy to me.
In an (my) ideal world, the system would focus on finding and honing talents and skills, then going to college if it is necessary to achieve dreams and goals, or a career demands it.
(And even if Chico isn't the best bang for the buck, it's still a fun place to go college, eh?)