You have plenty of time. How many more years do you have left? Let's say you'll be very active until the age of seventy or more. How many years is that? Perhaps I have thirty more active years maybe forty. A lot can happen in thirty or forty years. Is it too late for me? Is it too late for you? Probably not.
Don't rush toward your dreams, but savor every step and enjoy the present. Reaching your goal is not the point. In fact, it does not matter whether you ever reach your goal. The point is the way we live each day.
Don't hurry through life on the way to your goal. Live your life, enjoy, and make the most of each day. Your goal is simply a guide not a do or die phenomenon. If you can have a goal and enjoy the process of getting there, you have truly lived. It's the process that's important.
It's your life. Play a little. Take chances. You will succeed if you aren't too rigid about succeeding. Test things out. See what works. Don't try to hold on too tightly.
Our dreams recur. Perhaps yours are so deep and so quashed that you don't know what they are. Let them come out, then test them later to see how true they are for you. Dreams are serious things, and you might as well live them. Because, when you are old, you will find great satisfaction in having lived your dreams in having lived your life. If you don't try to live your dreams, you may later be filled with regret.
Advance steadily in the direction of your goal and don't worry about how long it will take you to get there. If you advance steadily, you will get there as soon as you can, anyway. Just do what you can. I've seen people advance steadily for many, many years. They somehow wound up doing amazing things that would have seemed impossible and frightening if they had concentrated on them earlier. By taking life one step at a time, and not getting anxious about the future, they steadily advanced, taking small steps, but lots of them. The steps that followed seemed smaller still, and not frightening, and they became the persons they were meant to be. They followed their own, not completely defined dreams. As they lived each step, the next step became more clear.
Goals evolve as we test and see what feels right for us. We try a step, and sometimes step back rather than take our lives in a direction that we thought would be right but was not. And then, after a number of years, we look back, amazed at our own progress and surprised that this could happen to us sure of our direction, still taking the steps one at a time, and testing our direction as we go.
And so our lives unfold. The excitement is in the present the hope is in the future, and we know we are truly part of the universe as much as each star and each tree. We belong here doing our part, full of life and living what was once a dream, and unafraid of failure.
If you can uncover them. Sometimes these deep dreams of yours may shock your family and friends, and may even shock, you. Better that you should know what they are.
I once had a client who had very low self-esteem, and had been doing "safe" work at a major corporation. He would sit hunched, with his head turned up toward where I was sitting, and he would meekly talk about the interviews he was going on. He didn't have a clue about what he should do with his life. There was so much confusion between what he thought he should do and what he had done in the past, it was very difficult for him to find some direction to head toward.
Then one day, as we were discussing all the usual things, this timid, hunched over person said in a bland tone, "You can't imagine how thrilled I'd be if I could be the leader, running the entire thing and being completely in control."
It seemed impossible that these strong words were coming out of this person's mouth. Looking at him made it seem even more unlikely, yet there was some deep, elemental truth about what he wanted for himself. I wrote down what he said because it was one of those truths that can be so easily lost so easily dismissed with a "let's be realistic, honey."
I believe that if this person keeps his dream in mind, he will someday be an incredibly dynamic person, "in charge of the whole thing" whatever that may be. He will learn to hold himself better, to sound more dynamic, and to look the part. And when this dynamic winner emerges, it will be the real him. I believe that the timid, play it safe person is not the real him, but some twisted person that emerged when the real him was submerged.
And, if this person remembers his dream, he will surely advance toward it. Ten years from now, he will look back and find it hard to believe that he is the same person. The living comes not in finally reaching his dream the living comes in becoming the kind of person he truly is deep inside. The living comes in his day to day life as he simply lives it.
Those words were the most important he ever said during the many hours I spent with him. It will take him years to be the real him that's been buried for so long. But what a happy way to spend ten years. I can't think of a better way to live them concentrating each day on the task before him, but remembering the person he was meant to be. Finding his own place in the universe and being proud of it.
