Many musicians, painters, sculptors, and performing artists dream that people will one day appreciate their work. They may become famous and wealthy sometime in the future. But they also know that the odds are against them. Less than one percent of those people would achieve success in their fields.
With the odds against them, they continue to paint, sing, dance, sculpt, and audition for creative jobs. In the eyes of regular folks, they may seem irresponsible and irrational. Why won’t they take on everyday jobs like most of us? Aren’t they worried about homelessness in their old age?
These artists do not desire to live safely and comfortably. In their life, they have only one priority, to create art. They do not know if their art will be appreciated. They do not do market research to determine what art to produce. They show up daily with a single purpose, to create a piece that their hearts desire.
Regular people’s lives are filled with constraints of “can’t,” “shouldn’t,” and “what if.” Every thought that came to us was filtered through these constraints. As simple as asking a person to go out for a movie will have to be filtered through these can’t and shouldn’t.
We spend most of our cognitive time sifting our thoughts and desires. These constraints stop our forward motions. No wonder most of us do not achieve much of anything in our petty little lives.
Instead of recognizing that we are wasting our lives, we reasoned our underachieving as our desire to live a simple life.
We told ourselves and others that our simple lives were safe and comfortable. We fantasized that we would be okay with living in an old shed, hiding in some no-name towns, driving a beat-up Pinto or a Prius of prior years, clothing and feeding ourselves with scraps from Walmart, Kmart, or Sears, all in the name of being safe and comfortable.
How can one escape from that miserable, underachieving, and unrewarding life?
All one has to do is not to be constrained by the can’t, shouldn’t, and what-ifs. Does that sound simple enough? But how?
The “how” is even more straightforward; focus on step one of what you want to do, and don’t think about steps two, three, or four. None of the other steps are knowable until you take your first step.
If step one is the priority, the subsequent steps aren’t important. After step one has been accomplished or realized, the real and natural next step will appear. That becomes the new step one. Repeat the focus on step one, and your constraints will be lessened and eventually eliminated.
Look at the people around us. The majority of them are living constrained life. They wouldn’t know that to be the case. They told themselves they were living their simple, safe, comfortable lives.
That is why 99% of people do not contribute to our world meaningfully. The one percent of people who live unconstrained life made our world the wonder that it is.
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