Follow Your Bliss
I’ve always had a knowing that whatever I’ve found interesting or exciting or passionate or moving or motivating there’s a way to make a living at it. It doesn’t make any difference what it is. My son, Sands, age 21, is passionate about surfing. He’s in college at the University of Central Florida and doing fine, but his whole life is about surfing. He gets up in the morning and checks where the waves are all over the world. I tell him he doesn’t have to get a business degree now; he doesn’t have to go to college in his 20’s. He talks endlessly about surfing—the feeling of being on a surfboard, riding that wave, being at one with the ocean.
I tell him there’s a way to make a living while following his passion. Imagine yourself there—teaching people to surf, working in a surf shop, starting a surf shop, making surfboards, studying oceanography, being a boat captain who takes people to surfing locations. There are endless ways to be connected to your dream, to follow your bliss. And it doesn’t matter how old you are or how long you’ve been doing something. Men in their 40’s and 50’s tell me, “I can’t change professions now. I’ve been doing it for 25 years.” I ask, “Who decided you would be an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer?” “I decided when I was 18.” “And now you’re 50? Would you go to an 18-year-old for advice on what you should be doing with your life?” Not unless that youngster tells you to listen to your bliss! I think it’s a really important lesson for us all.
Namaste,
Wayne