The inherent problem: The world has conditioned you to believe in a “normal path.” When do you take the time to step back and evaluate your choices?
A strategy: Recognize your potential is limitless, and allow yourself to discover your own path.
Tech visionary Steve Jobs has a quote that perfectly sums up the enormity of possibility that this world provides those are open to seeing it:
”Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact and that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it…Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
Order and structure are the standard conditioning of childhood. Color in between the lines, sit in your assigned seat, play nice in the sandbox and don’t question authority. These boundaries helped you make sense of a big, scary, chaotic world and were necessary for your initial development.
As you grew older this evolved into being steered onto a standard life path… the one where you are supposed to get “good” grades, find a “good” job, and build a “comfortable” life with a mortgage, spouse, and two kids.
In short, the world has conditioned you to believe this is the logical next step because it is what everyone else seems to be doing once they get to a certain phase of maturation.
If you were raised to believe in the comfort and security of this normal path, you’ve probably been so preoccupied in your own day to day activity.
As a result, you’ve likely never objectively asked yourself what has set you on this course and has maintained the guardrails for what you believe you are capable of.
Why is this, though? Is it subconscious societal conditioning? An unconscious desire to fit in with everyone else? Or something else?
Stop laying traps for yourself and start questioning why things are the way they are.
Yes, we may get lost in the day-to-day minutiae, but, there is so much potential to be realized if you look outside the walls that you’ve placed around yourself. This is a process of discovery.
Consider this… The life you are living is scripted to some degree, but only because you’ve chosen to be a part of that particular story.
When you begin to assess your environment and explore the values that are driving you, however, you start to achieve a higher level of self-awareness. If you look deep enough, you may even start to envision a greater sense of possibility based on what you find.
If you believe in the power of agency over your own decisions, then you also have to believe in the ability to design your life for the better.
In sum, there are so many possibilities of what you can do, be, and have – at the same time, however, being confronted with so many options can be overwhelming.
Without determining exactly what you want to pursue, life is lived without any direction, and comfort is found in the familiar walls that you’ve put up around yourself to recapture that ingrained sense of comfort.
In order to scale those walls you need to be confident and recognize there is so much more on the other side waiting to be discovered.
Possibility awaits if you are willing to take the chance to explore it.