#reverb10 – December 21

December 21 – Future Self. Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Bonus: Write a note to yourself 10 years ago. What would you tell your younger self?) (Author: Jenny Blake)

A brief message from me in five years, to me now:

Do not, do not, DO NOT keep doing things that make you unhappy because they are comfortable and familiar.

Do make as many mistakes as you have to in order to find your bliss, and don’t sweat those mistakes.  You don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.

Hang in there with the hard stuff–it will get easier.  It will start to become second nature if you give it a chance to take root.  You’ve allowed long experiments with things you hate, so be prepared to allow as much time for the things that might make you happy to work out.

Don’t settle.  Settling is time taken up with something that’s a 6/10 when a 9/10 is out there waiting for you.  Trust that the better thing is out there.  Remember the lesson of the Mirage* bar.

An even briefer message from me now to me 10 years ago:

Stop.  Stop what you are doing immediately.  Get out.  Don’t do it anymore.  Get as far away from this place as you can and start over.  Go find a new job, new friends, new everything.  This is the scariest prospect ever but it will be the best decision you’ll ever make.

Where the hell was I when I needed me 10 years ago?

*The lesson of the Mirage bar is this:  I have a friend who has long loved the Aero candy bar.  But he’d never had a Mirage bar.  He’d never even heard of it.  Then he had one and realized he liked it even more than the Aero.  The lesson we took from it, is that a lot of the time you’re not even aware of the thing that’s out there that could make you happier–but you have to be willing to try something new to ever find that out.  You have to be willing to maybe let go of what you have now to get what makes you really happy.