I remember sometime back listening to a conversation I heard at work between two colleagues who were discussing what they would do if they won the lottery. I listened with interest to this conversation as each told the other about all the great things they would do if they won a large sum of money. And as the conversation progressed, I could see that much of what they wanted to do, they could do right now if they really wanted to. They didn’t really need to win the lottery to achieve it.
So often you hear people discussing what they would do if they won the lottery or had the time to follow their dreams. In fact its something you hear constantly from people around you and it goes a bit like this…”when I win the lottery” or “someday I’ll do it” or “when the kids are a little older” or when the “kids have left home” or “when I retire”.
You know when it all boils down to it, each of these statements is simply an excuse for not taking action because taking action may require a bit of effort or it might involve taking some risks. So, it’s much easier to just continue on day after day doing the same things over and over until eventually you get stuck in a rut and come to accept that you will never do all the things you really want to. At some stage you may even reach a point where you don’t even dream about doing these things anymore.
We are creatures of habit. This is both a good and a bad thing. Good because it means that a lot of those regular tasks we do can be done without even thinking about them. It’s like when you get in the car – you don’t think about how you are going to drive the car, it’s an automatic process because you have had years of practice. Unfortunately though, the bad is that your life can settle quite comfortably into a rut. You know how it goes – you wake up, get the kids ready for school, go to work, come home, make dinner, get the kids to bed, watch a bit of tv and go to bed.
Even the weekends become a routine, you take the kids to soccer practice, go grocery shopping and if you are lucky maybe do something different like go to a movie or to dinner. Then on Monday you wake up and get the kids ready for school, go to work, come home, make dinner…and so it goes, on and on, day after day until the day you retire. And at that stage, your life has settled into its daily routine and as you are older you are not ready to take risks, so your retirement isn’t happy because you have lost the enthusiasm or the will to try new things and perhaps follow those long lost dreams.
Would you call this an extraordinary life? I wouldn’t. And don’t be blaming your kids here either, you can have a mundane life with or without kids.
If you want to have an extraordinary life then you need to start taking risks. The most successful people in life are the risk takers. This doesn’t mean taking stupid risks. Obviously you still need to do your research before taking on any risk but don’t go too crazy either….you can get bogged down with too much analysis and then you will start to focus on the negatives and that becomes scary, so eventually you decide its safer to stay at home and you never go anywhere or try anything new.
Now I am by no means an expert at this but I do have a tendency to take risks… I’ve thrown in my job before I was making a decent income in order to work from home, I moved to a new city where I had no family or friends, I’ve gone overseas when I barely had enough to feed myself while I was away, I bought that ebook when I knew nothing about making money on the internet and it cost a staggering $197 and it could have all been just a scam.
Even as business partners, Wanda and I take a hell of a lot of risks – we have been overseas countless times, even though there have been times when we really weren’t making a huge amount of money from this business and funds were tight. We didn’t dwell on where the money was going to come from – we just booked our fares and off we went. This is something we still do and now we only book our return airfare and book all other travel as we go when we are overseas. We both have a can do attitude and truly believed that we were going to succeed and so we live life accordingly. We could have said “someday we’ll go to Affiliate Summit” or “someday we’ll see the Colesseum” but instead we just did it.
Wanda has a quote from “The 4 Hour Work week” by Timothy Ferriss, on the wall in her office that sums it up nicely:
SOMEDAY
Is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.
If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually’
JUST DO IT
and correct course along the way.
Taking action and taking risks go hand in hand with being successful and having that extraordinary life. This doesn’t mean that you won’t fail. Failure is a part of life but the difference between those that succeed and those that fail is that those who succeed see failure as just being part of the road to success.
Don’t settle for less in life. We decided early on that we each wanted an extraordinary life, we don’t want our lives to be mundane and boring. We don’t want the 9 to 5 grind that most people take for granted and ultimately why we know that working online is the ultimate lifestyle…at least for us.
Don’t wait to win the lottery in order to do all the things you want to do. Take action now to live an extraordinary life – it’s fun, its risky, its exhilarating but most of all its fulfilling.
My internet business gives me an extraordinary life and I am more than happy to take whatever action is required to keep it this way.
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Thank you so much for sharing that! So often we get caught up in our lives that we forget to actually live. I am not a fan of the ‘norm’ and try to live an extraordinary life – but I’m still working on it!
.-= Tom | Build That List´s last blog ..Do Your Dreams Pass The ‘Wet Manure’ Test? =-.
I think we are all ‘still working on it’. I think what makes the difference is that we are aware that we don’t want to live a mundane life. Just knowing that makes us work towards living an extraordinary life.
You are so right, Paula.
Only the other day, my wife and I were talking about buying a property in the sun (the UK cold weather is just….well COLD!).
We were concerned about buying somewhere where we feel we would have to go back to all the time. You see, my wife and I like to visit lots of different places.
“But wouldn’t it be nice, if we had a small apartment only 2 hours away and at the spur of the moment we could just go”
“Yeah, perhaps. When we are older!”
True conversation only a couple of days ago.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..Seven of the Best Methods for List Building =-.
I guess it’s a habit we all get into. It’s always going to be ‘someday’ but in most cases ‘someday’ never comes.
There are so many types of risks. I have taken a number of really big risks during my life and there are many other smaller risks that until I really thought about it, I hadn’t consider them as risks at all.
As you say when funds are tight and you still go out and spend money on something you need for your business it’s another risk.
I think that ‘One of these Days and Someday’ is hard-wired into our genes. No matter what we achieve I think that we will still continue to think or say these things.
.-= Shirley´s last blog ..Golf Tips for Women =-.
I don’t think its necessarily hard-wired into our genes so much as it is what we are taught from childhood and it’s a habit that is very hard to break. But the first step is just becoming aware of the words that actually come out of your mouth and asking better questions. So instead of saying “Someday I’ll go overseas”, a better thing to say might be “How can I get overseas within the next 6 months?”
I am learning a lot from re-reading Tim’s book. I read the original, but the expanded version is even better.
.-= Ms. Freeman´s last blog ..Work Hard But Be Nice =-.
I’m glad you mentioned that. I have the original but will look at buying the expanded version now. It’s a great book and definitely worth a read.
I was thinking yesterday that this year is the year of making dreams come true for me. It’s AMAZING how time flies – a bit scary – and it’s made all the more scary (and painful) when I’m not living my life according to my interests, abilities and desires.
If I can make just one of my dreams come true this year, I’ll be happy. I would have proved so much to my (negative) Self.
Thanks for this post.
You can’t help but suceed Ebele because you have already made the decision that your life is not where you want it to be. Most people don’t even get that far because they think they are stuck with what they’ve got.
You know Ebele, it is just so easy to be so tied up with living that living passes you by. I knew that I would never do the things I wanted to because it didn’t fit into my significant others plans. So I eventually put all thoughts of doing these things out of my head and convinced myself that it was okay, I didn’t need to do them anyway when I had so many other things in my life.
Then I met Paula and my life changed. We found that we had so many interests that were similar and I mentioned that I would like to go to Florence as I collect Guiseppe Armani porcelain. Well lets go she said. What, oh no I cant do that I have my husband and children (grown up mind) to consider, they wouldn’t like it if I went to Europe. My husband was going to come to as well but somehow never quite made the commitment. So Paula and I went off to Europe. And she convinced me that as we were going so far we should do much more than just go to Florence.
Well, we had the best time travelling around Italy, Paris, London, Austria etc, we even hired a car and drove around Tuscany. Things I never thought I would ever get around to experiencing.
Our holiday was a great success and I have never regretted taking the step and putting aside excuses.
We have since been overseas a number of times and in fact are off again this year to Europe and the US.
We also take lots of little breakations in Australia whenever the mood takes us and we have seen shows and events I would normally have missed. Now if I want to do something, I do it. No more procrastination and putting the wishes of others before my own.
And you know what, nothing disastrous has happened because I now live my life as I want. So my advice is simple, if you want to do it – do it. Don’t let anyone or anything rule your life and stop you from living your dreams.
Good post.I think I live an extraordinary life, because I have the possibility to work from home.Many people envy me because of this and they hate their 9-5 jobs.
.-= Tom – marketing tips´s last blog ..How To Quickly Get Links From Remote Blogs =-.
Yes, the lifestyle of an internet marketer is a good one. For me it’s not such much working from home that is so good but the freedom you have when you are not working a 9 to 5 job. You are the boss and you make the decisions.
Paula, I just came through to your blog from the Warrior Forum. The last thing I want to do is come in here and post a link, but after reading this post (which is excellent BTW) it reminds me of a video from Art Williams that really gets me fired up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcBBBBFrlv8
Like he says, the primary difference between winners and losers is that winners just “do it”!
It sounds so kleshe but I’m tired and bored of the mundane things I do for every one here. I’m a house wife who is going to leave.
I’m not sure where to leave. Somewhere warm and I could swim. The kids are older and my husband is a lazy boy tv watcher of sports. I’m tired of feeding and cleaning the picking up the poop. (not the kids pop, their older). Everyone wants something all the time.
They’ll miss me yeah but sometimes I’m not so sure.
Anyone with an Idea of where I could go?
I’m hoping to go exotic for a while then I’ll decide when I want to come home.
If you want an extraordinary life you have to take some sorts of risks. That’s not to say you should just up and leave your family but you can have it all if you work at it.
Hey Thanks for the great motivational post.
I love the phrase “Just Do it” because I reminds me that doing something will always lead to something while doing nothing always leads to nothing.
In my opinion, taking risks usually also means getting out of our comfort zones. When we’re getting out of our comfort zone, we face all sorts of challenges but at the same time we will be able to learn something out of it.
For example, I used to be working as a recruitment consultant before and then I took the risks to quit my job in order to do internet marketing. Currently, my earnings from IM is not as much as what I have earned as a consultant. However, the main point is that I love what I’m doing right now and I’m glad that I took the risks and really enjoy doing and learning a lot from IM.
In other words, I would say that taking risks in life is extremely important as “taking risks = to learn something”.
Exactly, you are doing what you love even though you aren’t making as much money. We feel the same. We could be making so much more by coaching and running a heap of joint ventures and so on. But what would be the point? Yes, we would have more money but we would also have less time to enjoy it. I love this business and love having the freedom it gives us.