What Do You Want To Make Real?

You have things that only exist in your mind. 

Some of them might be tangible, like a house or business you want to own. 

Others might be intangible, like the kind of spouse or parent you want to be.

A few might be in between, like the ability to play an instrument or run a marathon.

Often, these thing are called goals. There’s a lot of advice out there about how to achieve your goals. Some of it’s pretty good. Some not so much. Most of it boils down to one question: What are you putting your energy into?

That’s really it.

What are you putting your energy into?

It’s the question that leads to all the answers. 

Are you putting your energy into working towards that house or starting that business? Are you putting your energy into becoming the kind of spouse or parent you want to be? Are you putting your energy into learning an instrument or training for a marathon?

Or is your energy trickling away, a little bit at a time, going into a little of this and a little of that, every single day, until there’s nothing left, and you have nothing to show for it? 

Does that sound scary? It should. It’s no fun to wake up one day and wonder where the years went.

Where did they go? They went into taking care of other people. They went into doing the dishes and folding the laundry. They went into sitting in traffic, listening to news stories you don’t remember. They went into playing games on your phone. They went into arguments and drama. They went into dealing with a few real emergencies and a whole lot of things that felt like emergencies that probably weren’t. A lot of them were probably absorbed by the TV or other glowing screens. 

All that energy was siphoned off in a million little ways, over all that time, and probably very little of it brought you any closer to your goals, or closer to making the things in your mind real.

The good news is that, if you aren’t dead, you still have time. Time to put your energy into the people and things that matter to you. And that includes yourself. Who are you, when you’re not trying to do what you think other people want? What bad habits have you outgrown, and what good habits should you develop? There are a lot of questions you could ask yourself, but the first one is still the same.

What are you putting your energy into?

If you don’t like the answer, it’s within your power to change it. And there’s no time like the present.