overcomplicate the issues. We blame our iPhones for not waking us up. What did we even do before we had cell phones with alarm clocks?
That’s the great temptation with the Editing stage. When we’re there, we get a little skittish and fire up the fog machine. Rather than edit our lives, i.e., start to make decisions, we cloud our path and pretend there’s a fog of complexity in the way. How can we possibly be expected to make any progress in this type of weather? It’d be dangerous to even go out on a night like this. Maybe this whole awesome thing was a mistake and we should head back to the familiar road of average.
And so we retreat, back to what we’ve always known. There is a suffocating comfort to it all. Letting go is not easy. The hoarders we see on TV who are stockpiling cats and newspapers have nothing on us emotional hoarders. At least the things they refuse to give up create physical piles before their eyes. They stink and cause a scene that can’t be ignored.
On the other hand, the dreams you’ve always had but refuse to actually work on tend to create hidden piles you don’t have to look at unless you really force yourself to. The hopes you refuse to edit and learn to master don’t rot so tangibly—at least at first. You can skate through decades without a family member knowing, but then one day you’ll run into me on a flight to Baltimore just like the woman we talked about in the first chapter.
That night we met, she was essentially asking me the same thing I had asked myself at the kindergarten in Vietnam. How did I get here? How did I get to 72 with so few of my dreams ever acted on?
How did I get here?
You will say those five words in your life. Everyone will. In the middle of a bad relationship or a career you feel is stealing years of your life, you will say, “How did I get here?”
The first time local media interviews you about your wildly successful business or someone wants you to sign the book you wrote, you will say, “How did I get here!”
And the only difference will be the punctuation.
If you choose to be awesome, you’ll aim for a whole lot more exclamation points and a whole lot fewer question marks. Because it’s not a question of whether you’ll say those five words. It’s a question of how you’ll say those five words.
Will you be making a declaration like a thunderstruck blogger in the mountains of Vietnam?
Will you be asking a question like a retiree flying over Baltimore and decades of life?
I can’t find the woman I sat next to on that flight. The Internet still has its limits, but if I could, I now know how I would answer her question. I would tell her the same thing I’d tell you.
Start today, regardless of your age. Turn off the fog machine. Acting on the dreams you learned about in your previous destination is not complicated. Walking deeper into the land of Editing is not as complex as fear and doubt are trying to tell you it is. In fact, it starts with just one question.
The biggest question you can ask
One morning some bakery owners asked me to help them figure out their path to awesome.
They didn’t have big, floppy baker hats on or any artisanal breads with them, which was disappointing, but I got over it. They stopped me in the hall of a hotel at a business event. They were married and told me their story:
“We’re sick of Texas. We want seasons again. And hills and trees. We’ve got a little bakery in town that people love. We make different breads and sandwiches. It’s growing and we’ve started to build up a local following. But now we want to move to Idaho. And we don’t know what we should do when we get there. Should we open another bakery? Should we focus on wholesale? Should we do catering? Should we have a little restaurant?”
As we talked, it became clear that they had gone through a long list of questions as they journeyed through the land of Editing:
What would make the most money?
What did the town in Idaho
That’s the great temptation with the Editing stage. When we’re there, we get a little skittish and fire up the fog machine. Rather than edit our lives, i.e., start to make decisions, we cloud our path and pretend there’s a fog of complexity in the way. How can we possibly be expected to make any progress in this type of weather? It’d be dangerous to even go out on a night like this. Maybe this whole awesome thing was a mistake and we should head back to the familiar road of average.
And so we retreat, back to what we’ve always known. There is a suffocating comfort to it all. Letting go is not easy. The hoarders we see on TV who are stockpiling cats and newspapers have nothing on us emotional hoarders. At least the things they refuse to give up create physical piles before their eyes. They stink and cause a scene that can’t be ignored.
On the other hand, the dreams you’ve always had but refuse to actually work on tend to create hidden piles you don’t have to look at unless you really force yourself to. The hopes you refuse to edit and learn to master don’t rot so tangibly—at least at first. You can skate through decades without a family member knowing, but then one day you’ll run into me on a flight to Baltimore just like the woman we talked about in the first chapter.
That night we met, she was essentially asking me the same thing I had asked myself at the kindergarten in Vietnam. How did I get here? How did I get to 72 with so few of my dreams ever acted on?
How did I get here?
You will say those five words in your life. Everyone will. In the middle of a bad relationship or a career you feel is stealing years of your life, you will say, “How did I get here?”
The first time local media interviews you about your wildly successful business or someone wants you to sign the book you wrote, you will say, “How did I get here!”
And the only difference will be the punctuation.
If you choose to be awesome, you’ll aim for a whole lot more exclamation points and a whole lot fewer question marks. Because it’s not a question of whether you’ll say those five words. It’s a question of how you’ll say those five words.
Will you be making a declaration like a thunderstruck blogger in the mountains of Vietnam?
Will you be asking a question like a retiree flying over Baltimore and decades of life?
I can’t find the woman I sat next to on that flight. The Internet still has its limits, but if I could, I now know how I would answer her question. I would tell her the same thing I’d tell you.
Start today, regardless of your age. Turn off the fog machine. Acting on the dreams you learned about in your previous destination is not complicated. Walking deeper into the land of Editing is not as complex as fear and doubt are trying to tell you it is. In fact, it starts with just one question.
The biggest question you can ask
One morning some bakery owners asked me to help them figure out their path to awesome.
They didn’t have big, floppy baker hats on or any artisanal breads with them, which was disappointing, but I got over it. They stopped me in the hall of a hotel at a business event. They were married and told me their story:
“We’re sick of Texas. We want seasons again. And hills and trees. We’ve got a little bakery in town that people love. We make different breads and sandwiches. It’s growing and we’ve started to build up a local following. But now we want to move to Idaho. And we don’t know what we should do when we get there. Should we open another bakery? Should we focus on wholesale? Should we do catering? Should we have a little restaurant?”
As we talked, it became clear that they had gone through a long list of questions as they journeyed through the land of Editing:
What would make the most money?
What did the town in Idaho
Similar Books
