Believe In Your Future Self
Wtf does that even mean? Let me explain. You have an idea in your head for what you want your life to look like. At the very least you have a pull towards something. The goal is to sort out what that “something” is. The only way to do that is be reflecting on it but that process is for a whole other post. Once you’ve sorted out what your ideal future is, that idea, than you can start working towards it. In this post I will break up that process into two parts, the first I will talk about how I have started doing that and the second is the challenges I have recognized along the path.
The Path
For a little context I have been trying to close the gap of where I am in life to where I would like to be. This process takes time especially when massive life changes take place like buying a house and becoming a father. It’s all a balancing act. You have to start making sacrifices of time from one thing to give it to another. My path is leading by example. Settling because it’s easy isn’t an option for me because I want to show that if you don’t give up it will work out in your favor. This requires two things. The first, defining what success means to you, and the second picking the best path, for you, to get there. (ex. a married person with a child might need to balance life a little more in their pursuit than an unmarried person with no child that can dedicate more time to their version of success). I have always wanted to have a significant impact on the lives of people. This impact runs deep and wide. With that in mind and taking into account the time restraints I have within my day and after trying countless other options I have found that becoming a content creator is my best bet. It allows me to maintain my involvement with my family and still pursue this goal.
Part 1: The Start
With a relatively clear vision in mind, starting hasn’t necessarily been easy. I never had an ambition to be a “content creator.” This is a fairly new field and I can’t say it’s been an easy topic to bring up with people because of the mixed opinions on it. At the end of the day though it’s me and my life. No one else lives it for me, so they can have their opinions but they won’t live my life for me. Creating video was an early goal of mine in life. I moved to California to pursue the idea of making movies and telling stories to teach life lessons. I was young and didn’t realize what it would take to be successful in film. Left that t pursue professional soccer. Same outcome, it took more energy than I realized but I was willing to put in more work. I made it all the way to semi-pro. Now we are here, pursuing a content creation lifestyle, but approaching it with a business mindset. The idea is share life experiences with my audience, teach them valuable lessons, show them what the world has to offer if you keep going, and make something that I’m proud of and my son can learn from. This fulfills my urge to be creative, tells stories, and teach/share knowledge as well as impact the world. The hardest part is the uncertainty of if this idea will succeed or not.
Part 2: The Challenges
Their are two main challenges I have recognized so far. Not to say there isn’t more to come but lets jump into it. The first is starting. Funny as that sounds I want this to succeed so bad that I’m genuinely afraid to fail. At first I was in denial but I want everything I create to be top notch. However, I’m reasonable enough to know that starting something new isn’t easy and often be fitted with a massive learning curve. I had to allow myself to be a beginner again. As a result of that my first two videos on YouTube didn’t perform well but the idea is to learn and gain information and skills along the way. Not be perfect the first time around. The second challenge I thought would never happen to me, but here I am writing about it. That is questioning whether this is the right path. In all my past endeavors I have never questioned if what I was doing was the right this. I just dove in and went for it. I’m not sure if it was because I was more naive, younger, had less responsibility or didn’t over think it but now I question every step. Hence the title of the post.
The Solution
I’m going to keep this part very simple. I don’t want to over complicate something that ultimately should make my life easier. The solution to my self sabotage of overthinking and fear of failure is to invest my energy in the tasks each day. If I think about the long term plan and all the steps that my future self took to get there I probably won’t go anywhere. I’m doing this by tracking a couple habits until it gets easier., then I will track a couple more.
In theory this will shift my mindset to think like the person I want to be. My envisioned future self. I don’t want to become a content creator, I am a content creator. Thus I think and act like one now. I will keep you posted with how that works out for me.
