You Are . . .
Every morning I go through the same routine.
The alarm interrupts the precious quiet of the early morning. After hitting the snooze button more times than I can remember, I finally sit up on the edge of the bed, and begin the slow, short march to the bathroom.
Finding my way to the sink, I rub the sleep out of my eyes and stare at myself in the mirror. And every morning I ask the same question.
Who am I?
The question is simple, but the answer couldn’t be more complex. I see who I am and I imagine the person I want to be. What I do and what I desire to do. I see the me of today, but I hope for a me of tomorrow.
When I stare at myself in the mirror, I see the gap between my reality and my dream.
Isn’t this the story of so many? We have a dream. But then a harsh, unforgiving world wakes us up and when we stare at our reflection, we see the same person we see every day. That same person doing the same thing we have always done, hoping that one day, our dream will magically come true.
Like sleeping beauty, we are waiting for a knight in shining armor to come and kiss us, waking up to find ourselves his princess. Waiting for a day that will never come.
The dream remains nothing more than a dream, all because we don’t understand how to turn it into a reality. The dreamer unchanged.
In his new book You Are a Writer, Jeff Goins tells us his secret to finally seeing his dream fulfilled. The answer is remarkably simple.
You are what you do.
Like most of us, Goins imagined something better for himself. He was holding on to what seemed like an impossible goal. To be a writer.
His dream came true, but not in the way he expected it to. Yes he had a hope and desire, but instead of waiting for someone to come along and anoint him a, like a ceremony of knighthood, Goins got out of bed and started typing.
Rather than stare at himself in the mirror and hope that today would be his lucky day, he put on his own armor, grabbed a sword, and started killing dragons. He stopped waiting for permission and started doing.
He discovered that the road to success lies in the daily of act of doing the work. A process that add up over time.
Goins reminds us that anything worth doing will require work.
Nobody ever tells you this. That writing takes more hours and energy than you’d ever be able to plan for. That no one cares about you as the writer until you’ve actually written something. . . That, above all, if you don’t love it, you’re kind of screwed.
Once he started doing this work, a work that he loved, he found his own path to getting noticed. From marketing to building a platform, from establishing and maintaing relationships to gaining permission, Goins learned how to become a writer by being a writer.
And in this book he shares everything he learned with you.
You are a Writer is a gut check for all of life. Whether your goal is to become a writer or to simply break through the mold of an ordinary life, the same principles apply.
We have two options. We can either wait for someone to hand us our dream on a silver platter or we can get busy being the person we choose to be.
What will you choose to do today?
Do you agree that you are what you do? Have you started the process of becoming the person you want to be?
Tell me you dreams in the comments.
