Children are the ultimate success story. Aren't they?
They’re stubborn and resourceful and relentless. They never worry about what others think of them. They don’t look in a mirror and ask, “does my diaper make my butt look too big”. They don’t take no for an answer and no matter what you may say to your fellow parents they more often than not get exactly what they ask for. They’re not worried if their friends have more Legos than they do. They don’t get jealous because the kid down the street has a newer tricycle, but we change as we get older, don’t we?
Ask a child what they want to be someday and their unhesitatingly say, superhero, athlete, fireman, spaceman, dancer…
Ask most adults and they’ll say something like, anything that gives me more time off pays more, less stress, more respect, more sleep, pays their bills on time…
What happened to your plans and dreams?
Sometimes it’s just as simple as we weren’t nurturing our plan and just settled. Worse yet, we never made a plan for happiness and the future in the first place.
Gallup, in its recently released State of the Global Workplace: 2022, states that In the U.S., 50% of workers reported feeling stressed at their jobs on a daily basis, 41% as being worried, 22% as sad, and 18% as angry.
Wow, Not the fairy tale life we were told we were going to have as adults is it? The good thing…It’s never too late for a course correction.
Many years ago, a movie came out called “Hook”. It starred Robin Williams as Peter Banning. A driven, successful but unimaginative workaholic lawyer with a wife and two children. He’s exhausted, overweight, frazzled, forgetful, and completely focused on his job to the detriment of his wife and kids.
As the story unfolds we find out that Peter Banning is in actuality the real Peter Pan. In the movie, Peter decided to leave Never-Never Land after meeting and falling in love with Wendy’s granddaughter, and in the process, he grew up!
Though wonderful at first, Peter gave up on his dreams over time and forgot everything that made him unique. He gave up everything for a paycheck. He becomes a lawyer whose job is to stage corporate takeovers of smaller businesses, effectively putting everyone out of their jobs. There’s an awesome line in the movie where Wendy now in her 80s looks at peter and says, “Why Peter, you’ve become a pirate!” He has literally forgotten who he really is, Peter freaking Pan! He’s become a “Lost boy” in the real world and now represents everything he hated about adults.
Does any of this sound familiar or ring any bells? Do you ever look at where you are in your life, career, or business and ask, how the hell did I get here? Is this all there is? What happened to all those dreams I had?
Further, into the movie, It turns out that Captain hook has missed his longtime nemesis and kidnaps Peter’s kids to Never Land to blackmail him into one final glorious battle. Problem is. Peter has no idea who he was or what to do to save his kids. Hook, disappointed and frustrated gives Peter 3 days to figure it out or the kids get it!
This is just like life. Sometimes we don’t get serious about our lives until God and the universe throws us a curveball forcing us to pay attention. We lose our job, our poor health habits catch up to us, and we say that were going to make those changes ”someday”… So, when that thing does happen, were not prepared for it.
But there’s a happy ending.
It’s not too late. Peter gets serious! Where before he was just going through the motions in life, now he has a purpose. He needs to save his kids. He creates a plan, struggles to remember who he was and what he wants, he works heroically hard and with some help of his friends and family, finds his happy thought. He remembers who he is deep down. He remembers that he left Never Land to follow a passion, to have a family, but he took his eyes off of his dreams and lost who he was. Pan defeats Hook saves his kids and returns home knowing he’ll never let that happen again.
In real life, I’ve found that any time I didn’t have a clear plan as to where I wanted to go in my life, someone else always finds a way to insert their plan instead. It's said that the universe abhors a vacuum and it's true. If you don’t take control of your life, someone else will to their benefit and not yours.
As I’m overly fond of saying, “everyone gets a do-over”.
What would your life look like if you were doing something in your, career, business, or personal life that you looked forward to doing so much that going to work on a Monday morning was just as fun and exciting as going home on a Friday night?
What would it be worth to get back on your path?
How would it feel to be doing something that you didn’t need a vacation from?
I love a good redemption story. Don’t you?
Want to find out how? Message me. Let’s chat!
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