Playing It Safe

According to curiano.com Steve Jobs once said “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror everything morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”  And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

I look at that quote and the two wolves that live inside me begin to battle. My negative wolf says well Steve Jobs you had more money than god when you made this statement so you had that kind of freedom to change what you are doing on any given day.  The positive / encouraged wolf says if I knew today was the last day of my life, I would not want spend it the way I spend most of my days and I feel empowered to make a change.  My two wolves will have a go around at one another battling back and forth for an hour maybe and then they are silenced by the practicalities of life.  Laundry, crying children, dinner, making lunches and I forget for a time that if I were to die today I would do something different than I do most days.

My husband and I have been going round and round in our heads that we need to do something different, start a business, change a job, go for broke …. something.  I think part of it stems from the fact that we have all our lives played it safe.  We are exactly what we are supposed to be.  We work, save money, take the kids to the zoo on the weekends and work some more.  We haven’t ever just gone for it. Thrown caution to the wind and done something that was either going to be a huge success or a huge failure.  He has started a new job in a different industry at least.  I have been in the same job since I graduated College and am basically furniture there.  I’ll never leave.

I think the successful people in the world are willing to take a chance and at some point in their lives taking that chance had huge consequences.  I don’t mean successful financially, I mean successful in happiness.  Sometimes success is money and freedom from financial obligations other times success is being able to look in the mirror every day even the hard days and say if I were to die today would I have spent my day the way I did?

I think we are on the cusp of change, I can feel the wind blowing in a new direction.  There is a knot in my stomach and a hitch in my throat.  I think the knot in my stomach is my negative wolf; the hitch in my throat is the positive one and the one you feed is the one that will win.