The Blame Trap

As a species we have the power to change the world - certainly our own world -of this I have no doubt, in fact I am a living embodiment of my live-it-now do-it-all philosophy. I live my life in the creation business (I create my world) and I love every minute of it; thus far I have managed to make manifest every desire I have set my intention on. This is not meant to sound smug. I see my self as a very ordinary person who has managed to liberate himself from a life of unnecessary toil. If I can do it, believe me, anyone can.

I measure my accomplishment not by the balance in my bank (though lots of noughts can be very pleasing) rather I measure my lot by the fact that when I get up in the morning and when I go to bed last thing at night I feel happy. That's what makes me a success.

As a child I always dreamed of making my living as a writer, a words smith, a crafter of letters, as an adult that is exactly what places bread on my table from one day to the next. Success off course is very subjective. Your idea of nirvana may be - and very probably is - entirely different from mine. As long as what you do makes you happy then it would be fair to say you are a success. It's when you spend your life doing the things you don't like that the Monday morning feeling stretches through until Friday afternoon and Sunday's are a dread because they precedes Monday (if you see what I mean). That's when you find your self-thinking 'is this what I really want to do with my life?' Especially if you feel your 9-5 is a must-do, and that you are only there because (you feel) you have no other choice.

People are forever telling me that they would love to write, to sculpt, to garden, to teach but they can't because their life, their wife, the mortgage, the kids, their environment, circumstances (even God) won't allow it. This very statement - one I used (to death) as a younger man - by its very nature creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is probably the most over used and certainly the most disempowering combination of words you could ever make the mistake of employing because it does exactly what it says on the tin. If you can't because you wife says so you give her all your power, it means that until she says yes you're stuck where you are. If you blame the environment, circumstance or your upbringing you give all your power over to these inanimates because, again, it means that, until they favour you, you're glued to mediocrity. If you believe you are powerless - and let us be clear on this point, the moment you fall into the blame trap you are powerless - then by definition you are exactly that.

The reason I know this is because I have fallen into the same trap more times than I care to remember. As a fledgling I spent my days wallowing in procrastination, blame and self-pity - I hated my lot but, off course, my lot was never my fault (is it ever?)

So my motivation for writing this article is that I learned my lesson early on - and made good. I feel suitably qualified, therefor, to suggest that 'it doesn't have to be this way, you don't have to spend the rest of your life at the lathe.'

The answer is as simple as a Greek drama; take back the responsibility to your own creative power. Admit ownership of your future then set about building a palatial existance that makes you happy, and by extension makes all those you love happy also. It takes bollocks of cast iron to take the reins, but if you want to trail-blaze then riding shotgun is where it's at.
Think about the job you do for one moment. You probably spend two thirds (at least) of your waking life in work. Two thirds! Now if you don't love the bones off your job, if you are not inspired to the point exhilaration about the nuts and bolts of your employ, if they don't have to drag you away from the office kicking and screaming at the end of each day because you want to do more, then you have to ask your self 'why am I there?' and just hope that your first answer is not 'the money!' I am emphatic about this message so please don't think me conceited when I tell you that I love my life. I love being me - but it wasn't always this way, I spent the first half of my life living other people's idea of normal and I hated it to pieces. Now I enjoy my life so much I don't want to sleep of a night, I want to be out there experiencing everything. You see, when you love what you do it stops being work, it's fun. It's unconventional certainly, unpredictable definitely sometimes it scares the living shit out of me for sure. But I like unconventional, I thrive on the unpredictability and (if I am being honest here) I like being scared. I love being overwhelmed, even out of my depth. I have become comfortable with discomfort because discomfort is a sign that I am growing. I don't want to be stuck in the middle of some Cornflake sized comfort zone sweeping around a metaphoric lathe, I want to be precariously balanced on some craggy precipice where I can see it all.

'Yea I agree' you may concede (followed closely by the obligatory BUT) 'but it's really hard.'
Off course it's hard, it has to be hard, you can't temper a blade without putting it through a forge, what's the use of a ribbon when you haven't run the race. It is hard, but please, lets keep things in perspective here; carrying a hod on a building site is back-breakingly hard, working your brain into mush on a computer every day can be hard with a capital H, in fact any job - especially the ones you despise - that entails bargaining two-thirds of your incarnation just to make the mortgage is harder than a big bag of hard things. We all know about hard. It's what we do on a daily basis, at least when your sweat is vocational, when you are hacking away in the right jungle you can sit down at the end of another satisfying day and think 'this is what I really want to do with my life'.

We are where we are in life through choice (oh yes we are, even if it is just the fact that we do not choose to change where we are). If we don't like it we have the God given power to reinvent ourselves - the moment we think that we lack this power our thoughts make it so.

Someone dead famous (so famous I can't remember his name) once said - and he was right - 'if you think you can or you think you can't you are right.'