No Purpose; Do What You’re Good At; What’s That? Being Confused.

Sometimes as an Emerging Man, young or old, as we emerge out of our recent past, we step out onto a new edge… maybe a logging road; an empty highway; a river bank; and we wonder, “This is not what I imagined it would be… did I make a mistake? Do I keep going? Do I quit?”

Today’s article is a nod to that moment we all share in, that moment of confused doubts.

Emerging Men: “Do what you’re good at.” They say.

Question: How do we know what we are good at?

Emerging Men: “Stop trying multiple things, focus on ‘that one thing.'” They say.

Question: At what age can we know what we like to do if we haven’t tried a few different options?

Emerging Men: “Stopping feels like quitting. I’m no quitter.”

Question: Have you meditated on, “What ill’s will happen if you stop? Do you still think the world will stop, because you still think it revolves around you?”

Emerging Men: What gauge can I use as a discernment tool?

Question: Have you heard about the 10,000 hour rule? If it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery, then can we use 10,000 hours as a bench mark to ascertain if you like doing what you are doing?

Emerging Men: Any other tools?

Question: Can you write down your current responsibilities?

Emerging Men: Why would I do that?

Question: If you have a house, a mortgage, 3 kids, a wife, 2 dogs, a cat… quitting a paycheck to move into an abandoned warehouse to paint… may not be realistic…don’t you think?

But… could you clean out the attic; using half of it as a studio; going through the discovery process of becoming the next Toulouse-Lautrec? Growing through the levels of first being interested; then growing into… monthly hobby; weekly hobby; daily hobby, morphing into habit; discovery of “can this be a career, a paying gig?; understanding commercial viability; refining your work; scheduling your work; persisting in your work; developing the new revenue stream; taking a few stabs here and there; and if successful starting to weave those new daily responsibilities into the fabric of your current daily life?

Emerging Men: What if I don’t have any major responsibilities? No family, no long term job, I don’t even have a car payment.

Question: Then what are you waiting for?

Self Improvement; Personal Growth; Changing Careers; Re-Branding yourself as an author; is hard work. Really hard sometimes. Sometimes you lose focus of your purpose.

But if it was easy…

In order to clear the confusion we need to learn how to think different; the best exercise for thinking different IS thinking different.

When you emerge out onto your next edge… embrace the moment of being a little confused… realize this is your chance to think differently… maybe you only create one “Assembly of Hunters” that hangs in your bedroom… as a reminder that, “I tried it, didn’t like it, but I found this direction because of it…”