What Would You Do If You Had A Million Dollars
I asked this question last night on CinchCast and I’ve received answers from several people on Facebook, Twitter, and CinchCast. Most of the answers are very conservative like, “I’d pay off bills”, but none have knocked it out of the park like I thought they would. Let me explain what I mean.
When I posted the question, I was thinking about how most people wake up one morning and find themselves working a job that they never planned on. At some point we realize we are tired of the boss, tired of the traffic, tired of being tired. And in between our moments of being full up of it all, we have flashes of what we would rather be doing.
I believe these flashes are single frames of a much bigger movie that is privately playing in the back room of our minds. We don’t get to see all the film so we don’t really know how the story plays out, but we have enough pieces to think that we would enjoy watching the whole thing. What stops us though is the ticket cost.
You see, most people think that if they only had a million dollars, they could go off and do the things they really want to do. I thought this myself for a long time. That’s a marvelous idea, so long as we really know what those things are.
I believe the reason we don’t do the things we really want to do in life is because we don’t actually know what those things are. We haven’t taken the time to define them. We have flashes of them, but we haven’t spent the time to really sit down and think about what those things would be.
The other reason we don’t do the things we want is because we think the cost is too high. We have the belief that we need lots of money before we can even think about doing the things we want. We tell ourselves that our job, our family, or friends, and our money all have to be in line so that we can be free to really express ourselves through our actions. I hate to tell you this, but the traffic lights of life will never all be green at one time. The universe isn’t going to send you a text message to let you know when it’s okay to really start living.
What we need to do is let go of the idea that we are waiting on something and just lean into doing what we really want to do now. We don’t earn any more time in our lives. We only get to spend time. We can spend it doing what other people want us to do, or we can spend it doing what we are meant to do.
Here’s an exercise to show you what I mean. Follow along if you’re interested in doing what you want to do with your life. You’ll need a piece of paper and a pencil for this part.
Spend some time being totally honest with yourself about who you are and what you would really like to be doing with your life. Don’t rush the process. It’s not a race and the answers are to important to be hurried.
Once you’ve spent time thinking, write down on paper those things that you would most like to do. Don’t worry about if they’re possible, or how you’d actually accomplish them. Just write them down. Don’t let reality get in the way of this part of the process. Just brain dump your ideas and see what comes out in writing. And yes, you must write it down on paper. Writing things down has some major effects that we won’t go into here, but just know that writing down your ideas will go further in making them real than any other activity.
If you don’t feel you can get all your ideas out in one session, then keep the list in your pocket and add on to it as you are inspired.
Here’s a portion of my own list as an example:
- I own my own business
- I read lots of old books
- I teach people how to do things
- I run three miles a day
- I go trail hiking every year
- I go rock climbing
- I teach kids to play chess
- I have been to New York City
- I travel abroad
- I have laid on a beach in Hawaii
Be sure to write your list in the present tense as if you have already do these things. You don’t want to think of them in some foggy distant future. Write them down as if you are going to do these things today.
Oh, and don’t worry about writing down stock answers like working in a soup kitchen or helping the homeless. If you want to do those things great, but don’t write them down if you only think that you should. That won’t do you or the homeless any good if they aren’t sincere. Look for honest ideas.
Now that you have your list, or even a portion of a list, ask yourself. Do you really need a million dollars to do half of these things? How about a quarter of them? What about one of them? The real answer is no. You don’t need a million dollars to live your life. We are not defined by the balance in our bank accounts. We are defined by the things we actually do. I understand that time is a factor, but that’s a whole other discussion.
So here is today’s challenge.
I dare you to start your own list by writing down three things that you would like to do in the next six months. Listen to this audio clip.
Then write down three things that immediately come to mind. Don’t spend hours thinking about it for this exercise. As I said earlier, you don’t want to rush the process, but for this part of the list we are trying to capture just a few items that are sitting on the top of your brain. These are the ideas that you think about most often. These ideas can probably be easily accomplished, if you will let them happen.
Once you have three ideas, write them on a piece of paper and then post them here in the comments. What you would do if you had a million dollars?
Share your list with me.
I want to hear what’s you have to say.
Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com
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