My Reality Check Bounced! - Jason Ryan Dorsey [1]
Are you helplessly watching your credit-card debt get bigger and bigger, while your relationships get shorter and shorter? Are you a victim of a bad economy, a mountain of college loans, or an egotistical boss? Are you living back in the house in which you grew up, sleeping in your old bedroom, pleading for gas money? Or do you find yourself trying to share one bathroom with five roommates? Do you still not have the love life you want, the friendships you want, the adventures you want, the home you want, the body you want, the career you want, the respect you want, and the clear sense of purpose you want?
To make matters more frustrating, you know you deserve better. You’re smart. You can work hard when it matters. You know how to push yourself when you need to. You also were raised to think this was supposed to be one of the best times of your life, but it doesn’t seem all that euphoric right now.
All these factors make your situation only more frustrating and, in some cases, depressing. Friends can see it on your face no matter how you try to hide it. They can hear it in your voice. You sense it as soon as you wake up in the morning. Your annoyance with your situation shows through in everything you do. You, too, might even have the look.
I know because I went through this soul-searching turmoil myself. And it’s becoming an anthem for twentysomethings around the world. I hear it from recent college grads to twenty-nine-year-old corporate executives: How can doing everything right end up feeling wrong?
While you might long for a sense of purpose, direction, love, or belonging, someone else your age salivates over a 7 Series BMW or a job in New York City; but one thing you share with all twentysomethings is a determination to create success on your own terms.
That’s what differentiates you from previous generations. You don’t want to play by someone else’s rules. You’ve seen what punching the clock nine to nine every day, sitting in an airless cubicle, playing the corporate schmooze game, and worshiping things at the expense of more meaningful dreams can do to a person’s spirit, and you want no part of that. But what do you want?
Success on your own terms:
• To be free to enjoy sunny afternoons with friends, dance when no one is looking, and laugh out loud
• To be able to travel the world and learn about other cultures, ideas, and beliefs
• To pursue a clear and meaningful purpose
• To work with people you like, learn from, and respect
• To feel healthy, loved, and in love
• To make a difference in the world
• To use your talents, energy, and creativity
• To live in a place that feels like home
• To be respected
• To feel like your life means something
That’s all part of filling the reality check void, and that’s what this book is all about.
The challenge for you is that your vision of a meaningful, fulfilling life can conflict with an impersonal real world that does not want to accommodate your needs, ambition, personality, background, and perspective. It expects you to accommodate it! This creates an adversarial relationship that can make you feel powerless and grow into frustration, second guessing, confusion, and restlessness.
BREAKFAST WITH TIFFANY
Back at the coffee shop, I asked Tiffany what she could do to make her life more the way she wanted. I’ve found that most people who feel stuck like Tiffany know what they need to do. They just haven’t done it. Tiffany answered, “I need a job where I’m happy. That would be the biggest thing. I want to look forward to what I spend most of my day doing.”
We talked about this for a while and came to the obvious conclusion that she needed either to somehow change her current work situation or to consider getting a different job. The only advice I gave her was something she had simply lost sight of in her frustration: She was still in control of