Drew @The_IT_Guy_: why do you love what you do?
Answer:
For the past fifteen years I spent a lot of time looking at my bank account. I would look every day and spend a lot of time counting the days until I would be broke if nothing changed. Since most of that time I wasn’t receiving a salary from any specific company it was easy to calculate.
My kids used to sleep upstairs in the matrimonial bed and I was too stressed to sleep there so I would sleep in my kid’s empty bed. 3am I could feel the blood pulsing through every part of my body. My brain would be on fire. I was going to go broke. Nobody would hire me for anything. The IRS was after me. I couldn’t get my business/hedge fund/website/deals going – whatever it is I was working on – and I was definitely going to go broke.
There were a few times in between. Whenever I was doing something I loved I would suddenly forget about my bank account. The situation hadn’t changed. But somehowI had confidence that the bank account woudl take care of itself. if I caught myself worrying about it I would pound my chest, say “Abundance” and focus back on what I was loving. This happened several times in the past 15 years. Every single time I was doing something I loved, I made money off of it eventually. Enough money to stave off homelessness and in a few cases, to create some security for my family.
Right now I love what I do. I am doing two things:
A) decreasing doing the things that don’t give me pleasure. When you are in the flow, opportunities will abound. Everyone will pop up with opportunities. You are a tree that is blossoming out of the ground. And a tree sprouts many branches. But like a bonsai tree from Japan, you must prune the branches that don’t increase the beauty of the art that is your life. You must prune every day, even thesmallest branch that threatens to become so big it weighs down and changes the shape of the entire tree and kills off the branches in its way that contain the flowers and leaves you truly love.
The hardest part in this decreasing is even finding time to do nothing. That means not even doing the things I love to do. Silence, noticing the boring things around you, not always obsessing on the object of your love or crush, is part of the pruning that ultimately creates the most beautiful tree. When you notice nature, nature notices you and you become a part of it. Silence, observation right now of the beauty around you, both physical, emotional, and spiritual, helps you to maintain the flow so that you haveenergy to give the things you love.
B) Creativity. I love writing this blog. I love thinking of the posts I can write. I love the very human interaction of interacting with more people than ever digitally. I wish i were even more creative than I am but I’m working on it. It’s something I want to improve. Andwhenthefeeling of change hits me, when my creativity goes in a different direction, I hope that I can follow those whims and prune the correct branches instead of the branches society has taught me I “should” prune.
How doI know what is “love” and what it isn’t. My body will tell me. My emotions will tell me. When I feel anxious, or obsessive, or nervous about an outcome, or if I start looking at my bank account, then i will know that love is lost and I will look to shake things up. And when the darkness inside of me starts to quake in the middle of the night, because I’ve been there before, I know everything is about to completely change.