Have you ever wondered answering this question: if you have the time, the money, and the power that you need, what will you do different in your life in order to pursue your dream ?
Literally, this kind of question appears so many different times through out my life. Contemplating my life back in 2009, I was one of the luckiest graduates to get a job after the greatest world recession in 2008. It happened to be my first step to begin my journey into the corporate ladder. As a fresh young graduate engineer at that time, the work expectation in industry was somehow quite overwhelming. Working 9 to 5 everyday seems like a normal habit. But unfortunately, it did not apply to me. As my own personal philosophy, “work hard, do more, learn more and strive for success”, I was not really satisfied by just working as a normal worker. I worked longer hour without overtime payment, learned more from others, and delivered results faster and more reliable. As a result, I learned more and earned more respect from my work colleagues and my managers at that time. Fortunately, that also led me to land in much better job with better salary. So, the bottom line is, “working hard is equal to success.”
Through out my first phase of my career after graduating from college, I learned that I had to gain more experience and knowledge in order to success and get better job with better salary. Unfortunately, I did not have some much time to spend for myself. Although, I did get more money in return, I still didn’t feel good about myself. At that time, I felt like a working machine in a giant company. No matter what I did, it would not make any significant difference within the giant organization. Therefore, I decided to go back to University in order to enhance more knowledge and get some insight.
Unfortunately, after going back to University, I didn’t have plenty sum of money to spend. Hence, my mind focused only on my thesis. Again, I didn’t have so much time for myself to think about my goal in life. Years after years, I realized that getting a job was not that easy anymore. The job market was getting more and more competitive. The company required highly skilled people with at least 5 to 10 years of experiences. Caught up with all the recruiters, HR, hiring managers had to say related to the job requirements, my focus was only on getting a job and back into the job markets. Surely enough, I’ve got one.
However, through out my entire career so far, I have never taken a break for thinking of my goal in life. Lack of clarity is probably more responsible for frustration and underachievement than any other single factor. That’s why Brian Tracy in his book, “The Power of Clarity”, says that “Success is goals, and all else is commentary.”
“People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.” — Brian Tracy —
Therefore, I committed to spend some time in order to find out what I should do in my life. The vision of your life will help you to be the person that you meant for others in this world.
Every seven years, designer Stefan Sagmeister closes his New York studio for a yearlong sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh their creative outlook. He explains the often overlooked value of time off and shows the innovative projects inspired by his time in Bali.
That was the quote from Stefan Sagmeister: “The power of time off” at TEDGlobal 2009. This TED talk really strives me to have some time off to re-direct and re-think about what I should do in my life.
He highlighted the importance of taking the time off in order to be more productive as such: “Right now we spend about in the first 25 years of our lives learning, then there is another 40 years that’s really reserved for working. And then tacked on at the end of it are about 15 years for retirement. And I thought it might be helpful to basically cut off five of those retirement years and intersperse them in between those working years.”
For me, knowing better about yourself and pursuing your dream in life are far more important than being productive and happy. Some people might think that success is equal to wealth, health and happiness in life. However, in order to achieve that, you might have to know what drives you forward and what gives you true desire in life, so called passion in life. Once you find your passion in life, your life will be more colorful, happier, and brighter.
Therefore, to answer this question, “If you have the time, money, and power that you need, what will you do different in your life in order to pursue your dream?”, I would simply say, “I will have to find out my passion in life and work it out for the rest of my life in order to achieve success and fulfillment in my entire life.