Alternate Realities of You

What do you think about the multiverse? metaverse? alternate realities, all these kinds of things. Is that possible? Is it going on? Are there alternative versions of you out there running around? Being like you but doing completely different things, living completely different lives? What do you think about that? So weird is that cool? Science fiction and philosophy and physics in the movies have been sort of grappling with this. We’ve got companies like meta creating the metaverse. And in a lot of ways I’m disinterested in in that kind of thing. I’m not interested in having an alternative life inside of my computer, even though maybe we’re all part of the simulation right now. And that’s exactly what’s happening. I don’t have any idea that is brain breaking, from my perspective. And if that’s what you’re into, I think that that’s cool. It’s awesome. But I am, I am interested in this idea of practically speaking, what other versions of me or you are possible? What could have been, and I’m not interested, I’m not trying to make you feel like what you’re doing is not correct, or anything like that. I’m not interested in talking about regretting things, or past mistakes, or I could have been this could have been that. Nothing like that. It’s more a function of what could I be? And is that something that I want? I guess maybe I’ll take a step back. I’m at a point in my life, where I’m 44 years old, so sort of right, kind of right there in the middle, midlife, sort of the deal. And I find myself in a place apparently, where I’m interested in asking these kinds of questions. And doing a lot of doing a lot of of work. And thinking lots of thoughts about where I’ve been, where it is, I’m interested in going my place in the world, what I’m good at the impact, I want to have all those kinds of things. And because of that just sort of jumped into my head about, you know, it’s interesting. When I was younger, I don’t think that I really believed that I could be anything. But looking back, I definitely could have been. And now at this point in my life, I still think that I can be really anything that I wanted to be. Fortunately, I love my work, I love what I’m doing, I feel very fulfilled and very content with the direction of my life and the new things that I’m working on and the new directions that I’m moving in. And I’m interested in helping other people to have that same amount of contentment. And to feel like, their lives are good, I want you to feel like your life is good. I want your life to be good. So that’s where I’m coming from with this. And I just thought it was kind of a cool spin. You got Spider Man into the spider verse and all of these popular culture kind of a thing kind of things. And I think that people have been thinking about and considering these kinds of alternate realities for a really long time. So I know I’m not breaking any new ground here. But I wanted to put my spin on it. So Steven Pressfield, the great Steven Pressfield, the author of The War of Art Legend of Bagger Vance going pro, he talks about shadow careers, how many of us have professions like this is how we earn a living an attorney or an accountant or whatever financial professional blue eyed really wanted to do was was be a singer, or to be piano player. Do you know the song Mr. Tanner? By Harry Chapin if you don’t know the song, Mr. Tanner by Harry cheap and just turn the video off and go search for it right now and come back. It’s such a wonderful song. It’s about a cleaner. But his real passion was singing and he ended up pursuing it. So check that out. But Steven Pressfield talks about the shadow careers how so many of us have things that we’re really passionate about yet. We have never really pursued them or taking them all the way to the Giving them the amount of oxygen or energy or time or resources that it really takes to make them a bigger part of our lives. And I guess that that’s really what I’m interested in doing is, is helping people to get a little bit closer to whatever version that they want whatever work that they want to be doing to get closer to that. And I know how it goes. I know that modern living places, so many demands on us that at the end of the day, I don’t necessarily have lots of extra time or energy, or attention to be devoting to something that I’m quote unquote passionate about, or really interested in, maybe you do, maybe you don’t, we have set up for ourselves a bit of a meat grinder, when it comes to how we move into being a grown up. You know, when you’re a kid, all you’re doing is living, just living every day, get up, having fun, hanging out with friends, try new things, doing stupid stuff, doing really smart things. And then we tend to go to tend to go to college. And for way worse, college is so expensive now. So we go into debt. And it’s that inflection point right there, that we move from living every day as kid to surviving. Now I’ve got to go and get a job, that I don’t necessarily like to start paying my student loans, I’ve got to live in an apartment or a house. So I need a mortgage or you need rent, I need a vehicle. So I just pile on layers and layers and layers of debt. And well, now I’m in this job. That I guess is if I could see this turned into a career, I can, I can look at it, and change my perspective on what I’m doing. So that I do feel good about it, which is a really positive thing. But we just kind of get stuck, super easy to get stuck. And then we fall in love, have family. And I really hate to refer to that as being stuck. It just limits our options, it limits our flexibility, it limits our ability to try new and different things. So I get it. That’s, that is in a lot of ways, the meat grinder the the self imposed, sort of a glass cage that we all put ourselves in. And I’m interested in helping to look through that cage and potentially break through it or create some windows, that we can find some different avenues. So what did you when, when you were a kid? What did you really love doing? What were some of the things you really enjoy doing? What did you think that you were going to be when you grew up? quote unquote, you became an adult? What, what in your mind’s eye? Did you think that you were going to do? Or did you think that you wanted to do? I think that that’s interesting. More. So now that you are wherever you are at if you’re 20 years old, you’re in college, if you’re 30 years old, you’re graduated, if you’re 40, you’re 60 years old, knowing what you know now, what would you like to do? What? What is possible for you? What do you have the potential to do? Could you be president? Could you be president United States of America? I think you probably could be. Could you be CEO of a company? Could you be a musician? Could you be a singer? What? If you could do anything? What would you do? And I’m not saying that you should throw the baby out with the bathwater and just stop doing what you’re doing. Because that’s not helpful. It’s not constructive. And your loved ones would come after me if you all of a sudden just stop doing what you’re doing wholesale and started doing what you may want to be doing. That’s why I’m saying just let’s knock some windows in our glass box here. And let a little bit light in and be able to do some things that we’re really interested in doing. So if circumstances were different, what would you do? What would you want to do more of think that all of these things are possible? Could I be a state senator, could I be the mayor of my town? Could I be on the city council? Could I be on the school board? Could I do these things? Could I be a writer? Could I start a podcast? The answer all these questions are yes. But I don’t know.

Maybe You think Well, that’s something I’d like to do, I would really enjoy doing that. But I couldn’t do that. That’s, that’s really not for me. And we have these limiting beliefs. And, again, sort of the self imposed glass ceilings or glass boxes that we’ve created for ourselves, either through our behaviors, where we’re in situations that are impossible to do anything else, or just our minds. We’ve thought that we’re not capable, or that’s not for us. And all these things, I think, are probably incorrect. And that just keeps us kind of stuck. We also have a lot of us bad routines, and poor habits that are also preventing you from doing the things that you’re interested in doing. I advocate that there is plenty of time in the day, for you to be putting some additional energy or resources towards whatever it is that you’ve always wanted to do, or that you want to do now, that alternative version of you to bring that person into reality to actually make that alternate version, a real thing. But we’re stuck. We have stuck, like I was talking about from a financial standpoint, or maybe we are, you know, in poor physical health, or we have poor mental health, whatever it might be. So I think that in order to get moving in the right direction, we need to interrogate our current reality and say, okay, I’d sure like to be able to do this, what is preventing me from doing that? Is it a lack of knowledge? or understanding? Do I need to learn new information? Could be, what are my habits? Where have they gotten me? And where will they get me if I keep doing what I’m doing? Purpose is a really, really abstract thing, the whole why we do things. But I think it’s very much worth exploring. It’s not an easy thing to dig into. But it’s very much worth exploring. And then a lack of goal setting, I know that this was really true for me for a long time, I just didn’t really think and set goals. So you put all four of those things together. The purpose being why it is that you do what you do, your goals being what it is that you want, your habits being what you actually do, your beliefs, also your values. That’s who you are. So when you think about okay, here I am, looking backwards looking forwards. What could I have done what I wanted in the past? What do I want now? And how do I bring a little bit of that desired future into either my current reality or a reality two years from now, or four years from now, life is really, really short, but it’s also really, really long. And I don’t think it’s ever too late to start moving in the direction of whatever life that you really want, whatever that is. And we could start really small. But I think a big part of that is setting an intention of this is what I want. I’m perfectly capable of doing it. other human beings are doing it, what is stopping me from doing what I really want to do. And then it’s just step by step, Inc, incrementally moving towards that. And that is really the work, it’s digging into all of those things. Who you are, what you want, how you do things. Why it is that you’re interested in doing these things. And if you can do that work, I think that you can start to create that what could have been start to explore these alternative versions of you, you’re so dynamic, you’re so capable. You can do really anything that you set your mind to, I just know it, that first step is starting to do that work. So I started writing, speaking of just for me, I when I was a kid, I was a good writer, hopefully, I’m still a good writer. But I just didn’t write. And as for a variety of reasons, the environment that I was working in, it didn’t give them the opportunity to tap into my inner creative or to really be expressive. And that’s probably an excuse because I certainly could have been doing it and just not necessarily publishing it. So you know, that’s funny. We need to be honest with ourselves why it is that we weren’t doing things. But what’s important about that is I started writing again, couple years ago and I’ve written Two books, literally, in the process of publishing, it’s probably published now my third book, it’s called the purpose book. It’s really what I’m getting at with all of this is doing that work, doing that exploration and digging in sort of popping the hood, or opening the back of the computer, whatever metaphor you’re interested in using, and looking at what’s what’s, what’s kind of going on, what is it that I really want? What if I could be doing anything? What would I want to be doing? And then figuring out how to bring a little bit of that into your life. Hobbies, you can make it a hobby, you could make it a passion, project, whatever term you want to use. But I think it’s right there for you. But we need to take steps toward it. Life, our life, the life lives that we want, are not guaranteed to us, but they’re available to us. It’s a lot closer than I think many of us think that we need to start taking that taking those that journey of 1000 steps one at a time. So we’d love to have you check out the purpose book. I wrote it for you. And I hope that if you do pick it up, you will get a lot out of it. And if you do get a lot out of it. I’d love to hear from you. So as always, do your part. Doing your best