“Is this it? Is this all there is?”
My first boss told me I would ask myself that question. I was an advertising copywriter at an ad agency. This was my dream job. I loved the work. My entry level salary, however, was low. When I had a chance to leave the agency and take a job in state government, I turned in my notice.
That’s when my boss said to me, “You’ll be back. You think you’ll be happy getting out from all these deadlines and all this pressure, but one day you’ll look around and say, ‘Is this it? Is this all there is?’ And you’ll be back.”
He was a smart man. I didn’t like working in state government. I eventually came back … if not to an ad agency to being an independent copywriter.
I have been pursuing my creative purpose for a long time. I wrote and published a novel. I tried my hand at art and oil painting. I created videos. I worked in mixed media. I painted mini-portraits of children.
There’s one reason I could never stop doing what I do: this is how I am designed.
Is there a dream you can’t give up… that you are still trying to bring to fruition? When you are drawn to a career or to a calling, it’s hard to walk away even when the going gets tough. One thing that can help is to not focus so much on how far you’ve got to go, but on how far you’ve already come.
TAKEAWAY: Is the story you’re telling yourself how far you’ve got to go, or how close you’ve already come? How close are you to the dream you’d like to achieve?