Question Everything

Most of us live a life where we don’t question our everyday-doings. We go about the day and our life the “usual way”.

As kids, we’ve been taught to behave a certain way and to do what’s right. We carry the same societal conditioning into our adulthood about the rights and wrongs of living life.

You keep putting your head down, doing what everyone else does – grow up, get a job, get married, buy a car and a house on mortgage, have two kids, work every day tirelessly to retire someday.

In the process, you die every day to live someday waiting for the day of retirement when everything will be as you always wanted it to be.

But guess what? It doesn’t work out exactly as per the plan.

What a sad way to waste a life.

The culprit seems to be the “So, what do you do?” question at parties. You want to be able to say you’re a successful entrepreneur minting millions, or a doctor, or a lawyer, an engineer – someone.

Whether you love it or not is entirely different (and unimportant). You don’t have to love your work so long as it’s socially acceptable, right?

Wrong.

Is it possible to make a living while doing something you love? Look around you – you will find tons of people crushing it while blurring the lines between work and play.

Take Pat Burke from Tipperary for example. Pat sells Irish dirt to Americans at OfficialIrishDirt.com.

Do you think his idea was met with bubbling enthusiasm when he first started? After all who’d have thought you could make people lighten their pockets by selling them dirt?

Turn out, he proved them wrong.

Or take Jason Sadler. He rents out his torso for ads reportedly earning $66,000 in first 3 months of his business.

My point? The “normal” cycle of wake up, drag yourself out of the bed, curse your boss as you check last evening’s emails, reach work to curse some more, think about escaping your career for good, fighting your way home in traffic and fall asleep on your couch is actually not quite normal.

If you’re someone who’s striving now and living a passionless life just to see a glimpse of happiness and peace in later, think what you’re giving up.

The future is uncertain, so why continue the drudgery of 15-days-annual-leave (or whatever that is called)?

Because your parents said so? Friends? Family? Frenemies?

Listen to yourself – is it worth it? If not, what are you going to do about it today?

One way to find out is question everything you do and think deeply. Go back to being a child. Be childlike curious. Ask “purpose” questions:

For what purpose do I watch TV? To stay entertained. For what purpose? To feel happy. And so on…

Even slow progress is progress. A small start toward your own business goes a long way than thinking about how cool it’d be if you had one.

If you feel something is off, it most definitely is.

Start with questioning everything you’ve learnt. It’s how you unlearn and relearn. It’s the only way.