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| Fat Bastard |
I am great at forging and grabbing opportunities; I wanted to attend this year's Explore event at the Royal Geographical Society so I called them and told them about The Cycle Diaries. Now I'm in the running to sit on the cycling expeditions advice panel. BOOM! I needed some more public speaking gigs so I got in touch with Women's Institute. BOOM! Book deal? I emailed a publisher with my idea and now they want a sample chapter. MUSHROOM CLOUD BOOM!
Yet I have experienced more failures than any of my friends who are not so opportunistic. Most of them are making moves in their careers. Their general trajectory is upwards with promotions, best sellers and amazing new adventures. Meanwhile, mine has had the trajectory of a limp cock; failure at university, the military, my own self-employment (numerous failures) and now a faltering writing career.
As I write this I'm overdrawn at the bank and have no reliable source of income. I'm at rock bottom, paralysed by the weight of my ideas and expectations.
All this failure has got me thinking that perhaps being an opportunist is not key for successful living. But if sniffing out and taking advantage of opportunities is not the key to success, what is?
I realise now that success isn't about finding the right opportunity or even following your passion. Those things might get you going but in this world of constant distractions and stimulation they could also lead to your doom.
Some introspection and a great metaphor later and I've figured out where I'm going wrong: I'm at the great big buffet table of life, chowing down on opportunity after opportunity, my plate is full but I just keep going back to the table to get more, never finishing what I have.
Instead of relentlessly chasing the dream I need to know how to finish what I start. We all know and are repeatedly told that consistency of purpose is a key to success but how can we build it into our lives?
To solve this I turned to The Cycle Diaries bike ride, my one great success to date. Matt and I rode our bikes over frozen mountains and through baking deserts and eventually we got to our destination. We were consistent.
Our ritual was simple; we'd wake and eat, cycle for a few hours, eat, cycle some more, set camp, eat, write then sleep. This was repeated over a 16 month period.
On the days when we missed out on writing our journals during the evening or not making the distance on the bikes we felt unsettled, like something was missing. We had developed certain habits that allowed us to complete the ride.
We would set aside time each evening for writing, not impractical, large blocks of time, just 10 minutes in an evening to focus entirely upon writing.
Sometimes it took us weeks to cross inhospitable landscapes but we got there through constant application of effort, one turn of the pedals at a time. We let go of the vision of conquering the obstacle and only concentrated on the present moment.
The answer revealed itself. If I am ever going to finish the buffet of life then I'll have to forget the sculpted fruit platter and stack of pastries merely focus upon what I have to eat in front of me, right now.
I'll have to learn to let go of the end result and make completing a daily task my goal instead. That is my aim; Not to write a book, instead write for just 10 minutes each morning. That's is all.
Once you have committed to 10 minutes of action per day it is almost easier to do it than it is to feel the guilt and the shame of not doing it.
Another benefit of this baby step approach is it avoids burnout. Committing huge blocks of time or making sweeping gestures about how many thousand words you're going to write per day is just unhealthy, infeasible and will lead to frustration and, possibly, divorce.
Once the habit is in place then I might don my stretchy trousers and return once more unto the buffet.
