JFDI: Life is About Creating Yourself

One of the most important lessons that I’ve learned recently, is to let go of my perfectionist side and to simply just go with the flow and start. Begin. JFDI. (A play on Nike’s Just Do It).

Often times, the process of wanting to have everything in place just the way you want it before you even take the first step, is just an excuse and actually goes a long way to stopping you from achieving critical success. Whether it is that paper or project proposal that you’ve been meaning to write and have put off for a couple of weeks now, or even more practically speaking, working out at the gym with the goal to lose a few pounds that has been on your to-do list since new year’s eve 2007, I think the key here to just begin and go from there.

I initially had a completely different blog post to share with all of you for the month of April, but I decided to scrap that after it had been sitting in ‘draft’ mode for the past two weeks. Speaking of which, these past few weeks, not to mention for most of the month of April, I have spent living out of a suitcase, saying ‘hi’ and ‘goodbye’ ‘see you later’ to a lot of old and new friends, while living a life that I could have only imagined in a million years.

It was barely a year ago when I was trying to figure out what the next stage of my life would look like, once my contract with my previous employer came to an end. The question at the time was, to renew or not renew my contract, with a lot of pros and cons on both ends. More importantly however, I think my dilemma spoke to the much larger question of what I believe, many of our twenty-something peers are currently asking themselves, how do I pursue my passion while creating a meaningful impact on those around me?

Time and time again, it’s not about the money, as not only have I been told this numerous times, but I have also seen it for myself: pursue your passion and the money will follow. When you’re part of a rockstar team working hard to make TEDxAlAin happen, and you’re flying business class from Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi on a ticket kindly sponsored by Etihad Airways in order to do so, you know that there is a lot of support out there, financial or otherwise.

After an incredible journey so far that has taken me across three continents and one sub-continent (if you count the Middle East), I have come to the realization that life is not about ‘finding’ yourself. You can never truly really ‘find’ yourself, since every person you meet, every experience you have and every opportunity you come across, will shape you and change you in ways that you may not even realize yet.

Rather, life really is about creating yourself, and creating your own lived reality. And Ruby, I wholeheartedly agree, if you do want something bad enough, the whole world will help you.