“I’d rather have one night, than nothing forever
Yeah that would be alright, with me, it’s now or never.”

This line comes from one of my favorite songs to listen to when driving long distances. The song is called “Now or Never” by Tritonal featuring Phoebe Ryan. While the song is about a lady caving into a man’s attraction to spend the night with him because it’s “now or never”, the song struck me because of the call to take action towards my dreams.

How many times we have heard or told ourselves, “Once I accomplish my goals, then I will be happy and my problems will be solved.”? I had lived with that philosophy for almost my whole life, and I can say for sure that my problems did not go away once I accomplished my goals.

When I graduated from school, I was happy for about a month because I accomplished a goal I had set since childhood. But, my problems did not go away because I still had to find a job!

When I ran my first marathon, I was happy for about a week that my hard work from grinding on the trails that summer had paid off in scratching an item off my bucket list. But, my problems in my personal life did not go away. I mean, “running” away from your problems does not actually solve anything!

When I traveled solo to Europe twice over the past two years, I was happy for a few days that I finally did things for myself without expectation from society, friends, and family. But, my problems at work and at home did not go away once I returned from my trip.

More often than not, when we reach a milestone in our lives, we are left questioning ourselves, “What happens next?” We have two choices:

• `We move onto the next shiny and sexy goal that we largely abandon what we had learned from our journey
• Or, we continue use those milestones as stepping stones (pun totally intended!) towards becoming better at it.

One word that recently struck me is “craftsmanship.” Craftsmanship is defined as “a skill in a particular craft (an activity of making things by hand)”.

My friend recommended me to read the book “The Software Craftsman” by Sandro Mancuso about two years ago. I read the first 60 pages of the book and then stopped reading it, because I realized that the next step was to actually do the work. I still have not finished reading that book to date, because no amount of books read will matter unless I do something to apply the lessons learned. Sure, I can converse with people what I know to make myself look like a smart ass, but that would not be a productive way to bring value to peoples’ lives.

To build on top of my previous post on how Hope is Not Enough, it takes dedication and quite a bit of time to read, re-read, do the work, and even re-do the work, in order to master the discipline. The work is not sexy or interesting in the surface AT ALL, because the novelty of learning something new has largely worn off once we’ve understood the fundamentals. Rather than persevering when we hit the plateaus, we fill ourselves with distractions, such as watching novelty videos on YouTube, drinking alcohol, buying more material things, and minding people’s businesses on social media. Yet, the work remains to be completed.

When I previously carried that mindset of “Once I accomplish my goals, then I will be happy and my problems will be solved”, I often resigned myself towards that day if my day did not go well. I figured, “There’s always tomorrow.”

Yet…what if tomorrow does not come? Can we go to bed this evening without regrets, knowing we took action towards our dreams?

When that realization dawned upon me, along with the thought of “Oh shit! I am turning 30 years old later this year!!!”, my mindset shifted towards:

What can I do right now that will bring me one step closer to my goals and to a better version of myself, while being happy through these challenges?

To answer that question, I ask myself: What is the gift standing in front of me?

To make this concept relatable, I’ve applied this tool on aspects of my life that I consider my “crafts”.

For my craft in software engineering, the gift standing in front of me is having the equipment (powerful laptop) and resources (a stable Internet connection with access to quality learning content) to piece together a puzzle (developing the program)

For my craft in writing, the gift standing in front of me is having the opportunity to share my thoughts in order to inspire readers to take action in their lives (using WordPress + Facebook)

For my craft in running, the gift standing in front of me is having the health (not having injuries sustained) and endurance (cultivated through hard work over the years) to actually do the run

By answering the question, “What is the gift standing in front of me?”, we find happiness in the present moment as we put in our reps. Or to quote a previous post of mine, “the ordinary becomes extraordinary.”

Of course, there are times where working on our crafts is not feasible. Yet, we can still ask ourselves in that moment: What is the gift standing in front of me?

When spending time with family, I find the gift of having family whom I can share the moment with when friends inevitably come and go. And no fam, I will not invest in bitcoin. (Hint: it is a bubble and not an investment!)

When waiting in line at a restaurant, I find the gift of conversing with the person next to me; if the person does not want to converse, I find the gift of time to reflect on my goals published in a private document stored in the cloud.

There are times in which we are faced with Resistance in taking action towards a goal of ours. To fight this Resistance, we can tell ourselves, “It [our dream] is not happening overnight, but I will work on it [the task that will bring me one step closer to my dream] tonight!” By taking small steps of action and encouraging ourselves to enjoy the process, we build momentum, which then propels us to take even more action. Sooner or later, we find great things along our journey that bring us fulfillment and happiness. And don’t you want to bed without any regrets by taking some form of action?¹ After all, it is now or never.

 

¹ I hope you found the double entendre in that sentence 😉 To be real, I don’t condone sleeping with someone outside of marriage, but that is a topic for potential discussion at a future post (if it comes!).

The cover photo is from the lyric video to “Now or Never” on YouTube.