Is it courageous to do what you love ?
I have recently stumbled upon the question of whether it is courageous to change your life, live your dream and do what you love doing. Or whether it is actually even more courageous to stay in a life that works but feels unexciting and doesn’t fulfill you.
My considerations were triggered by a friend of mine who has quit her full-time corporate career (with her husband following within the next weeks) and who is about to realize her dream life by moving to a different/new country and setting up their own business in what could be described “the middle of nowhere” or “the countryside” (please note that what a dream life is to YOU will be different by definition ! and replace her version in your mind with what a “dream life” would be for YOU).
My friend told me that people around her where passing comments such as “you are so courageous” to do what you are about to do. She could not understand at all why people would see her plans as “courageous” and explained to me that in her mind there was nothing courageous about doing what you love, and that, in fact, it was the easiest she could think of doing, because doing what you love is so effortless.
Her words triggered some deep contemplation on my part and for the first time I wondered whether it might indeed be more courageous or at least more risky to stay in a life that is not the way you want it. Usually people point out the all the (financial, emotional…) risks of leaving the “mainstream way of life”. But what if the risks and costs of staying in a mediocre life are even bigger ? And what are those risks and costs ? …the lack of excitement, …the lack of aliveness, …the lack of adventure ? I think the biggest risk is probably not to have fulfilled one’s potential, not to have even tried. To come to the end of one’ life and to find that one had not even tried might be the biggest pain of all.
Robin Sharma captures this beautifully in his quote:
“What fills our hearts with regret are not all the risks we took. Instead, what causes us to feel immense sadness is thinking about all the risks we didn’t take, all the opportunities we did not seize, all the things we did not do. Life is short and the years will slip away very quickly, like grains of sand passing through your fingers on a hot day on the beach. You were meant to shine and let your talents see the light of day. There is but one failure in life and that is the failure to try.”
So, I have found deep admiration for my friend’s perspective and I deeply wish that my own daughter will grow up with the same attitude that it is more courageous, and that there is more to lose by staying in a mediocre life than by realizing your dream and doing what you love. She will have all my support when she comes round to it.
If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being,
then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life.~ Abraham H Maslow (1908-1970) – Psychologist & Author ~
Related Article: How to be courageous ?
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