Sometimes you need to amaze yourself
What we’re capable of and what we settle for are radically different.
When you’re a kid and you’re asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? You say you want to be a fireman, an astronaut, a deep sea diver, things like that. Kids are rather bold that way. My son for example has his heart set on being an engineer. It’s noble, and I want to help him pursue that if he’s really serious.
But what so often happens is kids get to be a little bit older, they go to high school or college and it’s just they’re just bludgeoned in the mind. Constantly told to “set your expectations.” Be realistic here. Not everybody can be an astronaut. You want to be a businessman? You have to have this whole plan. You have to do this, and this, and this. It’s just too difficult, you may as well go to the tech school, learn a trade, and live a decent life.
So that sense of adventure that is naturally in all of us is essentially beat out of us with the hammer and sickle called “reality”. We settle for something that is far less than what we’re capable of. No wonder people are depressed, just unsatisfied with life.
I’m not advocating anyone do anything brash like quitting a job with nothing else lined up. But I will always advocate stepping out of the comfort zone and doing something that makes the heart rate beat just a little bit faster. It’s how I’ve lived my adult life, to the point that those who know and love me know better than to try to talk me out of something that seems absurd to them.
Once you stick your neck out there and do something that makes you a little bit vulnerable – and live to tell about it – it’s quite exhilarating. Then you build up a little momentum, and you don’t want to stop. Next thing you know, you’ve accomplished something you never thought possible. You do that mime of buffing your nails on your shirt and say, “Ah, it was easy…”
This sense of adventure is something we all crave, and it’s the latest installment of the CRAVE series that Sana and I have been working on this week. If you want to hear what she and I have to say on this, give it a listen!