Are you one of those people that lives life and let’s it take you where it wants? Or are you one of those that fight so hard to fit bits of your life into how you envision it should be? No matter how you answer that…let me ask you this…are you happy? Do you think you could be happier if you lived your life in the other sense?
As a child I used to be the second type of person. I was good at math and science so I thought I should go to one of the top schools for engineering (Carnegie Mellon University) and do that with my life. Oh my…I was a classic Type A personality. I had my whole life structured. I lived life on how I thought I was supposed to live it…lived it based on the expectations of others and of society. I’m pretty sure that’s when I went gray…
A funny thing happened later in life. At one point in time I had so many life changing events happen at once…any one of them enough to stress someone out, let alone all three happening. I ended up quitting a cushy job, getting a divorce, moving 3000 miles away to a place where I knew only one person, and started up an Internet consulting company (right after the dotcom bust) all at once. Stressful? Egads. Did I survive? You betcha. You know what? It was actually the happiest year and a half of my life.
So what changed?
I learned that I cannot control everything in life. By “giving up” this control, I felt a great weight lifted off my shoulders. Suddenly life seemed a bit easier and things just seemed to happen. When I started letting life take me where it wanted I was happier ad healthier. I also ended up redefining who I was. I went from a supposed engineering type fella to a tech guy (again, this was when I thought that’s what I SHOULD do) to someone that relishes on being social and using my social behaviors to forge new relationships in business and personally. (It’s also the reason I ended up setting up TheSocialBeast.com…because that’s what I am!).
I moved to Atlanta a few years ago and again found myself in a social situation, helping promote local bands and such. Of course this didn’t pay the bills right away and I ended up taking a couple jobs I THOUGHT I should take based on my technical skills. Blech. Then I started listening to my own babbling about following your passions, enjoying life, etc. There I was again…starting to enjoy life again, going where life takes me. I think it’s taking me in a neat place yet again.
Yesterday I ended up having a bunch of meetings…the first was a phone meeting with someone I had worked with back in Santa Cruz many years ago who called on me to help get his new business off the ground. Awesome! One of my passions…
Next up was a meeting with Jake’s Ice Cream. It’s their 10 year anniversary and I’ve been asked to be an event planner and help plan a fun summer festival that will happen to celebrate Jake’s anniversary while also creating a fun event for the community. Rock on! Another one of my passions…
So here I am…plotting and planning but trying to be super flexible and go where the universe wants me to be. Who am I to fight it?
