Make the Leap - Part 1

There is something you were meant to do. The fortunate among us know what that something is and are moving toward their goals. But for every person that has the “something” figured out, there are multitudes who haven’t. Many only know that all is not right with their lives. They feel an emptiness inside, an uneasy void that will never be filled by a life of greater means, but rather by a life of greater meaning.

I fell into the latter group for the longest time. For years, I did everything “society” expected of me. Land a good job? Check. Buy the nice house? Check. Get married to a wonderful woman? Check. Start a family? Check.

But what next? Was I supposed to then find a better job? Buy a bigger house? Continue an endless cycle that would never satisfy, repeating it over and over until the checklist, and I, were exhausted, with nothing left to do but check-out? I wouldn’t trade my family for anything, but I did come to the dawning realization that a stable job, working toward a retirement that may never come, was not my path in life. Yet, that knowledge did nothing to show me what was the path. I was ready to make a leap, but to what?

It was then I recognized that I was on a quest, a journey to discover what I was supposed to do with my life, and that, was the first leap I was supposed to make. Once I realized that my short-term purpose, was to find my long-term purpose, I felt energized. I had a goal. The work drudgery of my “good job” was bearable because I leapt into the unknown where I was free to discover what really mattered. I’ll admit, there was much fumbling in the dark, sliding my hands along the walls of the world for a light switch that might illuminate my path, and nothing clicked for a while. Nothing clicked until I turned the search inward and probed my memory to find some old dreams I had cast aside where they languished, nearly forgotten, in the recesses of my mind.

In Make the Leap – Part 2, I’ll reveal the dreams I set aside and how I returned to them. But in the meantime, if you are one of those who sense something is not quite right with his or her life, don’t get discouraged. You are in great company. Many successful people did not discover their true purpose until late in life. What’s important is you make the commitment, and leap into the unknown, to search for it.