Don’t Die Having Lived the Wrong Life

I work with business owners every day.  Some of them are in places that they never wanted to be.  They are doing things that they never wanted to do.

I’m not in the Gary Vee camp that says you have to be 110% passionately in love with everything you do every second of the day.  I’m a really happy person, and I love my life.  I am blessed in so many ways.  I am much more in Covey’s camp that says that everyone has to do thing things they don’t like at times.  Part of success is discipline.  And often a part of discipline is doing stuff you don’t naturally want to do.  Covey talks about how discipline brings freedom (the discipline to practice the piano gives you the freedom to play beautiful music).  If you’ve set your life up well, the time spent doing things you aren’t excited about is minimal.  If you’re really spiritually mature, you can be happy in the face of a wide range of circumstances – even bad or unpleasant ones.

But life isn’t a trial run.  Too often, I see clients get focused on the fires that are right in front of them and ignore the fact that they’re on a ship going someplace they don’t want to end up.  In Covey’s discussion of Habit 2 – “Begin with the End in Mind” he says:

“It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of sucess only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.”

STOP!

Is your ladder leaning against the wrong building? Where do you want to end up?  If you project out your current business (who you’re working with, who you’re helping, the type of work you do day-to-day), is it a journey you are excited about taking?  If everything goes swimmingly, do you want the business you’re building?  Or have you been so busy running as fast as you can that you didn’t even know you were going someplace you don’t want to be.

Photo by: Pavel Tcholakov