Noah Fleming

Over the past few months, I’ve been going off on a little bit of a tangent. (the blue highlighted words in this post are links to some of those past posts)

This has led to me spewing off my own optimistic ideas of the life you could live.

I believe you can do work that matters.

I believe you can create your own map.

I believe you can follow your own rules.

I believe you can reach your goals.

I believe you can do whatever you want for a living.

I believe ALL of this boils down to the choices you make.

But I need to bring myself back to reality for a minute.

This type of advice isn’t for everyone. After all, to accomplish any part of what I’ve said over the past few months, you’re going to have to get down and dirty with the lizard. You’re going to have to face your biggest fears, one after another.

And every step of the way, your very own brain will be telling you to turn around and get back to reality. Every step of the way, people will be telling you you’re acting nuts and being foolish. The people closest to you will urge you to stop with the wishy-washy dreaming. They’ll say, “shut up, put your head down, and get back to work.” What’s the big deal with giving away 30 years of your life in the bigger scheme of things?

Sheesh.

But seriously:

It’s easy for me to write about all the goodness that can come from being an optimistic person and viewing your glass has half-full.

It’s easy for me to tell you to “follow your passion” or “get rich of worms.”

It’s even easier for me to tell you that if you don’t set out to do what you were destined to do, you might end up in a lot of pain.

But here’s the thing I’ve realized. If you’ve been reading ANY of what I’ve been saying, and somewhere deep-down inside you there’s even a smidgen of something saying, “Yeah I could totally do that,” perhaps there’s a smidgen of a voice inside you telling you that you DO have enough ambition to actually light the fire.

Then maybe I’m not too far out-to-lunch.

Every single one of us has that smidgen somewhere. It may be hiding right now. It may not show itself very often, but you can be damn sure it’s there.

One of my favorite authors, Steven Pressfield, has written an amazing post on “Ambition” that inspired me to write this post and look back at my own posts over the past few months.

And he hits the nail right on the head.

An oak litters the earth with ten thousand acorns, and inside every one is the drive to grow to be as mighty as its daddy. Every lion cub, every fledging eagle carries in its DNA the will to be king of beasts and lord of the air. That’s nature’s law. Why should we humans expect to be different? ~ Steven Pressfield

That’s reality.