[dropcap style=”font-size:100px; color:#992211;”]W[/dropcap]hat if you currently live a very comfortable lifestyle and you have a lot of assets?
How can you justify running off to do what truly makes you happy if it might put all your current assets at risk?
To abandon a comfortable lifestyle that isn’t deeply fulfilling is to abandon nothing. There’s nothing of real substance there to protect. An income, a car, a house, or a lifestyle are not worth protecting if the cost of such protection is your own fulfillment and happiness. People who achieve some of the external trappings of success without internal fulfillment are only living an illusion when they tell themselves they have something of value to protect.
In most cases the feeling that there’s something to protect is just an excuse used to avoid facing the real fear — that maybe all this stuff isn’t really worth anything compared to what’s being lost… that maybe I should be living more boldly and not be so concerned about what happens to all my stuff.
Why are we here? Is it to acquire stuff, live a comfortable lifestyle, make our families as comfortable as possible, and then die?
While you’re working so hard to acquire and protect all that stuff, you could die unexpectedly. You might die today. You might die tomorrow. Maybe you won’t die for another 70 years. Death happens to people every day. We all end up the same way.
So what is the point of a life dedicated to the acquisition and protection of stuff? All of your money and possessions can be taken away from you by forces outside your control. No matter how many asset protection techniques you apply, you can never guarantee full security of your stuff. It’s perpetually vulnerable.
What are you truly risking if you go after your dreams? If your current lifestyle is unfulfilling, then you’re starting broke, no matter how much money you have. It doesn’t matter if you start with 
£0 or £1 million. You have nothing to lose either way. You’re only a temporary steward of the money and possessions that pass through your life. So when you risk money, you don’t risk anything of any enduring value. Earn money, lose money, invest money. But don’t make material objects more important than your own fulfillment and happiness.
Look around your home at all your stuff. Recognize that in the long run, it will all eventually end up as dust. None of it will endure. It’s all temporary. Your house will eventually crumble. Your car will wind up in a junkyard. You cannot permanently keep any of this stuff. Eventually you’re going to lose it all. Or it will lose you.
So what kind of life is that — one that’s dedicated to the guarding of dust? Is that what you want your life to be about?
Life is just too precious to waste. If you are spending your days working at a job that isn’t deeply fulfilling to you, then you’re spending your days guarding dust. There’s no real value there. Stuff cannot fulfill you. Ultimately it will only distract you from living on purpose.
You’ll know you’re really living when you would live pretty much the same way even if you knew you only had 18 months left. If you would make some big changes in your life upon learning that you only had 18 months to live, then why not make those changes now? Someone reading this probably has less than 18 months to live. Maybe it’s you.
Live for what is real to you. Live for what truly matters to you.
If you do what you love, then you can surely find a way to turn it into an income stream — then the more money you make, the more you expand your capacity to continue doing what you love in bigger and bigger ways. Taking what you love to do and turning it into a source of income, either as an employee or an entrepreneur, seems hard to resist. If you’re going to spend so much time working to make money, why not make that money in the pursuit of your dreams instead of in the protection of dust?
What kind of to-do list would be real to you? What items might it contain? Compose a new piece of music. Write something inspiring and share it with others. Give your spouse a massage. Exercise. Play with your kids. Make a snowman in Las Vegas. Clear out some clutter. Read a really great book. Audition for a local play. Start your own business. Do something that leaves you feeling at the end of the day that you really contributed the best of yourself.
Don’t die with your novel still in you.
Image by Pixabay/Antranias
