"Are You Where You Want to Be in Life?"

I often ask people, "Are you where you want to be in life?" and I often get the answer, "No, I'm not." Then I ask, "Well, where DO you want to be in life?" This is where the conversations get fun because the answers start at "I don't know" and escalate to the highest heights of whatever can possibly be imagined.

If the person answers that they are not where they want to be because they don't know where they want to be, it's not totally okay because typically I'm not having this conversation with teenagers or even college students. I'm talking about adults who are out in the "real world" and long gone from their days in a classroom. On the other hand, it doesn't make sense crying over their lack of direction up until that point, so I'll say that it's kind of okay to not know because it gives us a "ground zero" to start from.

The fact of the matter is that many people are just going through life on auto-pilot with no clue as to where they're going; and because they don't know where they're going, they're never going to know when they've arrived. Hell, because they're not focused on where they're going, they might "arrive" and not even know it.

I remember one day years ago, when I had to take public transportation to go to work, and I fell asleep on the bus. When I woke up - or rather when the bus driver woke me up, we were at the last stop of his run - with me missing my stop quite some time back.

This event paints the perfect picture of what I'm talking about because I was on the bus "just traveling along." I wasn't driving, so I "wasn't in control" of how I got to my destination. I "got comfortable" on my ride and I "fell asleep." I was still traveling along, but "I had no clue as where I was & because I wasn't paying attention to where I was, when I arrived I had no idea that I had arrived." Because I had no idea that I had arrived, I "kept on traveling" until I "ultimately ended up somewhere I did not know or want to be." However, "once I was awakened," and realized where I was, "I had to go about the work of going back & getting to where I was supposed to be."

Is this not just about the exact recipe as to how people wind up "lost & found" in life?

"just traveling along."
"wasn't in control."
"got comfortable"
"fell asleep."
"I had no clue as where I was & because I wasn't paying attention to where I was, when I arrived I had no idea that I had arrived."
"kept on traveling"
"ultimately ended up somewhere I did not know or want to be."
"once I was awakened,"
"I had to go about the work of going back & getting to where I was supposed to be."

If you're not where you want to be, in life there's only one person responsible for changing that direction, and that person is you. No one else is going to know when you're unhappy before you do; so since you're the first person who's going to know when things aren't right, logically speaking, only you can be the first person to go about making things right.

I beleive people make two kinds of mistakes: (1) Mistakes made out of ignorance, and (2) Mistakes made out of arrogance. It's okay to be lost if you don't know you're lost. That's a mistake made out of ignorance - you didn't know any better; but once you realize or are made to realize that you're going in the wrong direction, any conscious decision to proceed in that direction can't be labeled as anything else but arrogance - you're gonna' go where you wanna go because it's where you want to go, even though you know it's the wrong direction! Hell, not only is that arrogant ... it's downright stupid!

So ... Let's talk about getting back to getting to where you want to be in life. If you're not there - or on your way there, you have to wake up and you have to wake up NOW. No one can live your life for you. No one can do your work for you. Oh ... you might get over & trick someone into taking your load upon their shoulders, but the universe has a way of balancing things out, and I guarantee you that you will come up short.