No doubt you have found yourself more than a few times feeling lost about the next move to make.

And why wouldn’t you feel that way? A quick visit to the online realm of the influencers is all one needs to find themselves feeling unsuccessful, burdened by irrational possibilities, and stuck in place by option paralysis, and all before we even start our workday.

Our technology has given us a twenty-four-seven feed to millionaire kids, shameless only fan accounts, karma-dodging pranksters, and an endless stream of proof that we could all be anything we wanted, but if we can be anything we want then who should we choose to be?

It should be simple to choose a path, right?

You know who you are. You know what you like. Yet, here you are, standing in place, confused by the complexity of the multitude of options available to you now.

More often than not when you think that you can be anything then you end up choosing to be nothing at all.

A decision must be made if you are to escape the path that leads to the death of dreamer.

Time is not a forgiving creature, and it will devour up your opportunities the longer you waste time pondering all the opportunities available to you.

It all feels so complicated, doesn’t it?

Do you buy that course for 97% off that promises to teach you how to dropship your way into a lambo?

Perhaps you set up a webcam, some lights, and start streaming to a couple of your friends?

Sell some rocket-monkey NFT’s.

Write and sell a book without being the one to write or sell the book.

Create a course on a subject you know very little about and market that course like it’s the answer to your target marketed viewers and collect that easy money.

Hell, you can even set up a business where you start farting in jars (just watch out for the potential health issues there, I hear it can be heartbreaking).

IT ALL STARTS WITH CLARITY AND CLARITY STARTS WITH ASKING CLEAR QUESTIONS.

First, we must look inward, and we have to ask ourselves ‘Who has our job?’

That’s right, you won’t be inventing anything that has never been heard of. The wheel has been made and it works just fine. Everything at this point is a variation, a mutation, an evolution if you will, of what has come before it.

Having a clear vision of who is currently enjoying your future career will help you pinpoint the start of the path you must be willing to take.

The beautiful thing about us humans is that we are addicted to storytelling, and we tell our stories every day as they unfold in everything that we do and technology has made telling those stories even easier.

Once you have chosen your mentor your career as a detective begins.

You will now become a humble and dedicated student (not a stalker). You will now learn to imitate before you can innovate.

I am not saying that you will leave no room for your individuality, of course, you will, but you are walking a path now that has been walked before, simply not walked in your unique shoes.

There are rules to joining any club that you wish to join. Sometimes those rules are written in clear ‘Submission Guidelines’ and other times it’s as vague as Fight Club “and we do not talk about Fight Club.”

You know who your mentor is.

You know the rules of the club.

Now how do you get invited to sit at the table along with your peers?

This is the part where you start to act like those in the field that you wish to be in.

Once again, you stay your unique self as always, but people like to tribe-up with like-minded individuals, and when they can see you as one of their own then a seat at the table will be much easier for you to achieve.

You can’t be everything that you think you could be, there simply isn’t enough time and energy to accomplish it all, and therefore a sacrifice must be made, at least at the beginning.

Choose your main path, put a ring on it, and love the hell out of the journey ahead.

You will doubt yourself often, in Mandalorian terms “This is the way.”

But you will only get better and more confident, and eventually, you will look back on your journey, embrace your personal story, and you will appreciate what it took for you to make it here to be the successful person that you knew you could be.

But it all starts with you choosing to learn from the one person that you know has your job.

The post Feeling Stuck? Choose Your Mentor And Forget The Others appeared first on The Troubled Monk.

By now you have done the math enough to know that life is not going to be slowing down on handing out the rules and expectations for how you are expected to live within the society that you are a part of.

No doubt that you may have been growing ever restless about why you feel as if you are missing out on something important as if there is something not quite right with how you feel about the direction your life is taking, but you can’t quite place your finger on it.   

It’s a generational thing.

As our awareness naturally raises through the constant influx of information that the internet provides us daily we become more sensitive to the invisible strings that pull on all of us throughout our lives, and we become more agitated by them because we know that not all of these rules and expectations should apply to us. After all, we are all unique, and we all know that our lives should be our own to live, and deep down we are starting to want to know who is putting their thoughts in our heads, and we want to know who we need to blame for this restlessness in our souls?   

It’s a generational thing.  

You were born into a family that has a long history that dates back to a world that you could never truly know. Your parents can only teach you what they have learned and have been taught from those that learned from those who came before them. Each one of us is forced to grow up within a society that has been learning from its past as well, and like all great revolutions, it takes a long time to come to a full realization, and what we believed in long ago is still mostly what we believe in now; because, in many ways, this generational thing still works for the system.

Hollywood sold us on the American dream.

Disney sold us on what love should look like.

And social media is selling us on impossible standards.

We are taught from birth what to think and what to feel. Sometimes it is as innocent as being provided the best advice by your friends and family to keep you out of trouble, out of prison, and out of the morgue. While other times we are being led down a specific path by marketers, governments, and corporations. Each one finds its way to get into your head, your heart, your soul, and into your bank account.

Still, it’s a generational thing.

It is this way because it’s how it has always been, and it still works for the most part.

And here you are, one restless mind among the others, trying to find your voice, just like the others, and not quite knowing why that voice is so damned hard to find, just like all the others.

And the truth is, you are living in a society that was not made for you. Society is an abstract thing. It is chaos with some rules attached to it to keep it from spinning out of control, and not all of those rules are going to apply to you, even some of the laws are going to go against your core being.

The tribe you are in is far larger than the friends and family that you know, it consists of the world around you that has also been taught the rules, the expectations, and the laws. So you see, freedom is a beautiful idea in a world that doesn’t have true freedom for most of us, and we are starting to see the imbalance of power that exists, and your restless mind is preparing for its revolution against this all.

But generational conditioning is a powerful thing.

Chances are, you are not going to change society in this life, but you can learn to work with it in a way that works for you. Much like a painter, if you learn to step away from the painting, in this case, society being the painting, you will start to see it for what it is. From this vantage point, you will see that it’s ok to choose your way, that you don’t have to be a ‘yes’ person to make everyone happy around you, and that it isn’t important to make everyone happy around you. If you take a step away you will see that you are free to make your life what you want it to be.

Yes, a lot of the programming can be blamed on a generational thing, but that being said, despite all the expectations and rules, it is up to you to accept or deny the system.

The next generation of ideas belongs to you.

Will you choose to accept the discomfort of blazing your unique path?

I hope so because the world could use a few more free-thinkers.

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