Have you ever thought, “I wonder what would have happened if?”
“We regret the things we don’t do more than the things we do.” – Mark Twain
I have. I remember when I was about 16 years old and I thought back on the past 5 years of my life and had a stark realization that I had spent far too much of my life doing things that didn’t make me better or happier.
Since then, I’ve decided to make the most out of every moment I have. Naturally, I’ve failed a few times with activities like:
- Watching YouTube All Day
- Playing Call of Duty for hours
- Getting Beer Boozy All Day on a Sunday Afternoon
- Spending Money on Meat Pies and McDonalds
- For me… there are plenty more…
Because I’ve realized this, I have the power to live a more conscious life.
Every Day is an Investment
I recently read a blog post by Seth Godin that describes this exactly.
In it he says, “Your boss is lucky to have you.” It’s not the other way around. You’re special damnit. Each day of your life is an investment and it’s important that you use that time wisely.
“Investing in the wrong place for a week or a month won’t kill you. But spending ten years contributing to something that you don’t care about, or working with someone who doesn’t care about you… you can do better.” -Seth Godin
Most importantly, you have to start every day.
Everyone must make a conscious decision to start every day. The only difference between people who are really good at it and those that haven’t started is just that the the people who are really good at it are really practiced at starting.
When Lewis Howes was interviewing Bob Harper, Bob Harper made the point that Lewis makes a conscious decision to drink protein shakes after his intense workouts. Lewis (who is a successful entrepreneur) has the same number of hours in a day as the rest of us and he has the same desire as ALL OF US to spend the afternoon eating cake and watching the entire 3 seasons of King of Thrones.
Despite this same feeling, Lewis exercises his hustle muscle and makes something happen. He knows that once he gets started he’s going to be far happier with himself. That’s what happens with the successful cats. They simply start every day.
A Tool for Starting
Ramit Sethi and Ben Chasnocha discuss a video by Jeff Bezos (founder of amazon.com) in which Bezos describes his decision to leave his job and start a company called Amazon. He came to the decision based on what he called his Regret Minimization Framework. Essentially, the idea is to make decision based on how you expect you might do if you were looking back at your life when you were 80.
In the Sethi video, Ben Chasnocha continue with “It’s the things that you do everyday that matter more than what you do once in a while.”
So the point is, start everyday. In fact, if you got this far, start right now. Please feel free to write me a message or a comment below and lets build something useful and make the world a better place.
Much Love,
Ian
P.S. These photos where taken from a recent trip to Sydney. We got to spend some great times with our family living there and also some great friends who live in Rose Bay. They we’re simply beautiful times and that city just blew me away with how beautiful it is.