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Two compelling book titles in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport a few months ago. We can surmise that being great (left book) is done on purpose, and being bad (stinky, right book) is done by not being on purpose. This is the Midlife Movement and the Midlife Herd in a weird analogy. The truth (in these book titles) is rather harsh, isn’t it. So is midlife.
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Three years ago, I took a first try at writing a book. It lasted one day. Know what happened next? Nothing? Nothing happened. Well, I took a second try a year and a half later with a blog post entitled “One Push Up”.
Daily writing began in earnest a year ago. So literally, prior to that, I was writing one post per year. Ya with me.
Here’s the very first “blog post” I ever wrote, three years ago. Maybe reading this will give you hope to not give up on your dream.
EVERYTHING’S IMPORTANT
(April 02, 2007)
How many books and articles have been written, over time, about what’s really important in life? In business? In leadership? In raising children? In becoming successful? In learning to prioritize your life? In achieving financial freedom? In becoming the best you, you can be? The answer, we all know. It’s thousands and thousands. This begs a profound question. What are they all trying to say? Really?
Two of the most magnificent days in your life are the day you were born, and, the day you figure out why!
Have you figured it out yet? If you’re like me, and the rest of your human brothers and sisters, the obvious answer is no! Most of us, simply because we’re human, will go to our graves not knowing . How tragic is that? It’s criminal, eh?
How then, is it possible to travel for decades on this glorious planet, and never figure this out? This too is a no-brainer. It’s because, “EVERYTHING’S IMPORTANT”!
What do you mean, Jeff? Think about it. We have all had bosses, or maybe we were the boss, and, it’s one fire-drill after another. Everything’s important, right. It gets so confusing that we finally just cave in and say, “OK, everything’s important”. It’s that seemingly insignificant moment that you doom yourself to a life of mediocrity. Really!
It’s like the story of the frog in a pan of room temperature water, sitting on the stove. A group of teenagers slowly turn up the heat to see what the frog will do. We all know how this plays out. The frog never notices the slowly changing water temperature and dies as the water finally reaches the boiling point.
How is this possible? It’s possible because you and I are weak. We are conditioned to accept mediocrity. We are shown images of greatness in the media. Constantly. No one ever talks about the serious, but do-able, effort required to be excellent. And so it goes. We give up, It’s perfectly acceptable to give up. Everyone does it. Why should you be any different? Because!
Because if you don’t try harder, you will never know the difference between joy, liberation and inner peace, compared to the alternative – a life sentence in your unfulfilled journey. Is this your legacy? The legacy you want your children to see and model? Go to jail, go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200 dollars.
Right now you should be feeling some pain. Emotional, psychological pain. This is a very good sign this book is for you.
It has taking years, no, decades, to discern the truth. You’ve probably heard it said: “Wisdom comes from experience, and experience comes from making mistakes”. The truth is here at your fingertips. In these pages. You can do what you want at this point. The choice is yours (there’s a BFO)!
I know of no other person who’s invested more time and emotional labor to simplify life’s truths. They say, “to teach is to learn twice”. Your journey is like mine. We are born. We grow and learn. Somewhere on your path, is your answer to your question, “Why am I here”?
Are you ready?
Pause!
Yes, pause and think.
This will make you feel uncomfortable, no doubt. You should get used to this feeling, so that, in time, you will welcome your pain that comes when you slow down, and look inside yourself. You will discover, there is no other way.
If you think about why you are reading this book, then your answer to continue or not will be automatic. Yes!
Please turn the page when you are ready.
Ever heard the phrase, “Don’t die with a book in you”?
Have you ever dreamt of writing a book?
It’s way more work than people think. And yet, it’s way less work than people think. A paradox that only someone who’s done it can know.
Found a LinkedIn connection, Susan Harrow, who blogs about these types of things too. Wanted to share her perspective with you.
Click here to read Susan Harrow’s article, “Write a Book Fast and Earn Big Money in the Process”. It’s a bit on the salesy-side, but offers a perspective different from mine.
PS. Do you still remember the important message from the top?
(Don’t die with a book in you)
One more thing, if you’ve never written a book before, and think you can in 90 days and make a ton of money, God Bless you. Odds are, you will never get started, and if you do get started, you’ll never finish.
This is simply the way life works. If you disagree with this, please feel free to send a copy of your first book by May 1, 2010, and then I’ll confess to being a liar. Deal?
jeff noel knows. No, seriously.
I know the reason why we get old.
“You don’t stop doing things because you get old. You get old because you stop doing things.” — Rosamonde Pilcher
“Why did you create five blogs in the first place, knowing that you’d never be writing in all five everyday anyway?”
Two logical reasons:
Mid Life Celebration is about balancing life’s big choices, and there are four:
This fifth blog, jeffnoel.com, was created because I thought there should be an “office” or “headquarters”, so to speak – one that didn’t have a theme and wasn’t part of the model.
And when the previous jeffnoel.com didn’t renew after having that domain, www.jeffnoel.com for seven years, it was a natural choice to pick my given name as a dot com.
That’s it. That’s how it happened. And now, I can’t stop myself.
In a sea of blogs that drone on about whatever, I’m carving out a space among the few who have five-a-day, droning on about whatever.