Bobby Matson @bomatson: Quit my agency job to learn to code full-time. Advice for setting your own speed limit? (credit, derek sivers)
ANSWER:
Never worry about your speed limit. Tomorrow might never get here. Yesterday is long gone.
Today you are right where you are supposed to be.
Everyone is rushing around with plans for the future. If we get there fast then life will be “better”. But once you get there you realize life didn’t get better. It just changed.
Sometimes I get upset. If someone says something bad about me. If a family member is rude to me. If I’m unhappy with my own posts. If I’m unhappy with a failed opportunity.Or if I regret a missed opportunity.
But the key is to recognize that none of these things are the “real” me. I might have unhappy feelings sometimes. But those things are not me. That’s a practice. Separate yourself out from your feelings. They are all artificial. They were programmed inside of you by years of identification with “what you should be”, “where you should be at”, “what kind of person you were raised to be”, “what levels are your peers at”, “what goals did you have in the distant past that you feel you missed”. All of these things are man-made.
But deep-down inside, you aren’t man made. Get past the thoughts that are tortured into you by a thousand commercial imprints a day. Get past the emotions that are build up by decades of habit, get past the beliefs that are programmed by family, friends, colleagues, the news – all of whom have their own thoughts and fears and expectations. None of this is the real you.
You don’t need to rush to any destination. You are already there. Once you realize that, then you can choose to go wherever you want, whenever you want, without anything stopping you.