Verum Insights...

At the moment of your birth, you were given a life. You didn't ask for a life, nor were you aware of your rights or your obligations. Nevertheless, air entered your lungs, you started breathing on your own, and you started crying, which is to say the first thing you did upon arrival is to start complaining about being uncomfortable.

At the time of your birth, not only were you not provided with any prospectus, but you were also deprived of any guide that might give you good advice for making the most of your single, finite, non-renewable life. The end is inevitable, and so far as anyone can tell, there is no court with authority to grant your appeal for a do-over if you don't feel as if you got a fair shake at your one opportunity. The bad news is that there is no second chance at the end.

The good news is, while you are here, you get as many chances as you want to live the life you want, the one that provides you with meaning, purpose, and happiness. You can start over when you are eleven, when you are twenty-two, or when you start—or end—your forty-seventh trip around the Sun.

How to Ruin Your Life

One of my favorite quotes is from Steve Jobs, who once said, "Why join the Navy when you can be a pirate?" I'll do my best to unpack this quote for you, at least as it pertains to my take on what the world's best marketer meant.

Throughout your life, there is tremendous pressure to conform. You are surrounded by people who have certain expectations of you, and you are penalized for not knowing or understanding those expectations, so much so that you find it easier to get in line than to stand out.

Over time, you learn to repress your desires to be something, do something, have something, or make the contribution you want to make, conforming to what you see around you. You find out that you joined the Navy, even though you would prefer to wear an eye patch and walk around with a parrot that spits curse words at passersby while sitting on your shoulder, nodding its head up and down.

Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing at all. —

Your life is the only thing that truly belongs to you. Nothing else you believe you own will belong to you when you are gone; you are just holding it for a little while. No one ever tells you that your first obligation is to yourself, that you have to decide for yourself what you want from your time here.

You ruin your life when you allow yourself to conform, repressing who you are, foregoing the things that you want to be or do, and depriving yourself of what you want. You might have noticed how fast time passes by—and how fast your regrets pile up around you, caging you in.

Your obligation to yourself is what allows you to obligate yourself to others. Becoming the person that comes after the person you are now will enable you to make the contribution you are here to make—and more still, you create a glitch in the Matrix by providing an example for others who would avoid joining the Navy.

Facing Your Fear

One of the things that I have noticed and written about is that we humans tend to fear the wrong danger. We fear having a difficult conversation when we should fear not having it. We fear acting when we should fear not acting and allowing things to continue towards a bad outcome.

There are so many fears that come with owning your one and only life, starting with the fear of being judged by those who have conformed and expect you to do the same. There is also the fear of failing when you set off on an adventure to find yourself or do the thing you want to do. These are real fears, the kind that can be debilitating unless you have a greater fear, ones that would make the judgment of others or failure impotent.

You should be afraid of not living the one life you have on your terms and to the best of your ability. You should be afraid of getting to the end, regretting the fact that you didn't even try. Recognize that you have taken on obligations without your consent, mostly conforming and settling for comfort over adventure.

The First Couple of Steps

The first step here isn't to tell the boss to go to Hell. The first step is deciding what you want for yourself. Only you can do the work of being introspective and understanding why you want what you want and what it means to you.

The second step is to become the person you need to become mainy by building the chatacter of a Great Man to live the life that you imagine for yourself. The concept of being more, doing more, having more, and contributing more all begins with "being more," transforming yourself into the person who isn't afraid to own their one life completely, without apology, and without regret.

Almost nothing vying for your attention is worth your time. None of it rises to the level that it should take precedence over what you want from your life, not a pandemic, not partisan politics, not social media, not the fact that the world is on fire (something that has been true since it started spinning).

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

A Man does not strive for Greatness and Embrace medicority 

There is no compromise in a Dream