How good is the work you’re producing now?

Would you be willing to sell it to your closest friends? If the answer is no, why do you feel okay about selling it to other people? Do you think they won’t be able to notice what your friends would?

All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends. If your work isn’t up to the quality level you feel comfortable sharing with friends, it’s not going to bring you success.

Why’s that?

Your friends cut through your own delusions. You can lie to yourself, and pretend what you’ve created is great, but when it comes down to it, you can’t fool your friends with what you produce. They are an honest reflection of yourself. If you’d feel awkward sharing what you’ve done today with your friends, you’re probably not producing the quality level you know you’re capable of.

For Buddhists, an integral part of the Eightfold path is Right Work, or Right Livelihood. Right work is optimal work, work that doesn’t hurt or harm any living thing. Work that brings happiness to both the worker and the people who recieve the work.

Is your work Right Work? And what sort of a job nowadays would really fit as Right Work?

It’s a process of discovery. Each person is born with unique talents and gifts, and under a different set of circumstances. It’s our job as humans to figure out what those gifts are, to build upon them, and then find a way to share them with the rest of the world. Once we’ve done so, the whole world falls into alignment, and the process of becoming successful becomes effortless.

You’re only doing what you would do for free.

And that’s a huge leap in your thought process. When you’re producing out of love of the process, you’re producing in a genuine way. It’s not a rushed job, and it’s not “just to pay the bills”. People notice when you put your heart into your work. Everyone appreciates someone who excels at what they do, regardless of what it is. Just watch a professional athlete who loves their sport, and you’ll see why.

So why waste your time on this earth in mediocrity. Why settle?

If you know what your talents are already, what are you doing to develop them further? Humanity benefits most when everyone develops to their true potential and finds happiness within their work.

If you haven’t discovered them, give yourself the time to discover them. Taking a long trip to a foreign country is a great start. It’ll make you realize just how ingrained and relative your social values are. Then you’ll think about what you really want. And that’s the start of everything.

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This year was a very successful one for a group of my friends. Their band got picked up by a major label, they’re touring with a band they grew up admiring, and they’re getting more success every day. I spent a good bit of time with them on tour this year, and it made me realize the real danger and temptation of living through other people.

See, each of us live through someone (or something) to an extent. It may be a child, a lover, a friend, or even a job or a TV show. Either way, you’re letting someone else’s work give purpose to your life, instead of taking the time to find your own. You’re setting yourself up for a fall.

Stop Living Through Others

Nobody else wants to be in charge of your life. Giving yourself over to a cause (or a person) is the quickest way to get taken advantage of. No matter how good the cause, nobody is ever going to magically give you a direction you’ll be happy with. It’s something you’ve got to discover for yourself.

Vicarious living happens a lot in relationships. One partner is successful or extremely gifted, and the other decides to live to enhance and facilitate the other’s gift without developing their own gifts. The “gifted” partner is under constant pressure to produce from the one who doesn’t, and when he or she does, the other feels as though they can take some credit. Round and round they go, until the gifted partner decides they don’t need the “ungifted” anymore, and that’s where the “ungifted” suffers big time.

See, they never developed their own gifts, figured that was too difficult. But nobody is ever going to develop our gifts for us. We’ve got to get out there, figure what they are (by ourselves), and start working on them every day. The universe “owes” them nothing, because they were already born with everything they needed – the tools to become successful or gifted themselves. Because they chose the path of worshipping someone else’s gifts instead of pursuing their own, they’re destined to suffer the consequences.

Not taking the time to find and develop your own gifts should be illegal. But most people don’t do it anyways, and instead decide to seek out people who do, and latch onto them. But that person owes you nothing. You can undergo the same difficult growing process they went through, only on your own. You may do it slower, but you can still do it.

This is why I think it’s so important for kids to take a year off to travel between high school and college. If that’s out of the question, then between college and career. It becomes so much more difficult to take a year off for yourself later.

Discover Your Own Gifts

Long term travel is the best way to find out your gifts. But most people think it’s only for the rich, or people with huge savings. Let me be the first to tell you, taking a year off to travel doesn’t necessarily have to cost a million billion dollars. I took my entire first year off after high school for under $2,000. I moved to Costa Rica, began volunteering, and got my room and board paid for. I spent very little money in an entire year, and when I decided I wanted to back to the United States, I still had enough left to ride a bus up through Central America. I got to see every country in Central America after a year’s stay. It was a great gift, and it made me realize how lucky I was to have been born in a first world country. It also made me realize how brave the people who come to the United States illegally really are. It’s a hell of a trip to make; a human life is worth a whole lot less in most of those countries.

But after I left, I really had no clue how I could make my travel keep paying for itself. Sure, I could volunteer in one spot long enough, but then what about the cost of a flight to another country? I couldn’t really earn it working in that country, that’s illegal and very sketchy in corrupt governments. It also sucked to come back home and save money. I now realize the solution is the internet.

Technology has improved 100 fold since my time in the jungle. Even the smallest countries have an internet café; and if you can write in English, you can run a website successful enough to pay you to travel around the world. Just write stuff people want to read about, build a readership, and then put advertisements on your site.

You may have to start with a time of volunteering while you get your website up and running, but that’s really no problem. There are plenty of great organizations that will put you up with room and board in exchange for a few hours work every day. At the most, building a profitable website will take you six months. Just save up enough to go where you want to live, volunteer for six months, and write something of value every day. If you’re a horrible writer, take the time to become a great one. Post to your website daily or weekly for six months, and eventually you’ll have a large enough readership to pay you to travel around the world. On a budget, yes, but you’ll be seeing the world nonetheless.

You’ll also develop into a much more complete human being than you ever thought possible. Seeing different cultures firsthand is a quick way to learn compassion, and to understand the shortcomings of your own culture. By stepping outside of the environment you were raised in, you allow yourself to grow beyond it. That’s one thing people who never leave their home country can’t do.

The tools to do it are all there. But very few people ever really take the plunge. It seems so much safer to do what society tells us to, but how rewarding are 40 hour work weeks, really? I’d much rather take my chances with personal discovery than wait for the world to produce more people for me to worship.

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