motivational mondays

What a past two weeks it has been with a whole bunch of changes that pretty much messed up the routine and schedule in my life - which was severely disturbing to a mildly OCD planner like myself. Two weeks into my new job, I find myself pondering over the benefits of the time investment, my motivations to joining the company, and the consequences of such a choice - including momentarily giving up being involved in a family business of which I pretty much invested most of my life preparing myself for.

Under the sudden realization of the many concerns that have been weighing on my heart, today, I broke under the pressure. Today I pondered over the dreams that I've had, my passions, my responsibilities, and wonder if I have been overwhelmed with the grinding axles of time that I had made a distracted choice of a harder, side-path - veering further away from my true dreams and goals in life.

To be honest, I don't believe that any experience is a wasted one. Rather, I believe everything has a purpose and a learning that can be gleaned...no matter how painful. However, I also believe that not every learning has to be experienced first-hand. Mistakes can be learned from that of the experiences of others (saving you the consequences) - that's why I believe in reading and listening to the experiences of others; after all the millions of years of life and the gajillions of lives that have been lived, someone out there, at some point in time, has bound to have faced a similar challenge and learned to overcome it.

So as I now tackle issues of my dreams and where I best fit in the world, as the younger sister ranted about not knowing what to do with her life, the older sister considers new horizons, and the brother starts on a new job as an assistant youth pastor this coming Wednesday, this week's topic is on dreams and fulfilling our potential. I think I'm also going to schedule an accompanying open family-project to make our own "Adventure Books" like in the show Up. It'd be like an activity where we'll just cut and paste pictures and words into a book of our dreams and aspirations. One of my girlfriends and I spent some time doing it one night and it turned out to be a really revealing experience - as it challenged me to think through my  dreams and goals of the past and present and to reevaluate how important they were to me.

These are the articles that are going on the door this week.
Get pondering...

1. The World Needs You To Do What You Love.
   - Including 5 things your could do to get paid to do what you love.
2. Do Interesting Things.
   - A short but very motivational read.
3. The Five Reasons Why You're Not Fulfilling Your Potential
   - It's a pretty real piece, which is what I liked about it.