Take Charge of Your Life
"Consciously following a path towards your goals instead of blindly drifting through life really is the secret to success..." So concludes this
post from Matt Inglot that explains how an entrepreneurial wake up call rescued him from a career of "writing boring code for stuffy monolithic corporations..." More of the post follows:
"I had a[n]...experience several years ago which completely derailed me from my current path, which at that point was simply going in the direction life took me in. Sure I was making “choices”, such as planning on going ahead with a degree that I deep down knew wouldn’t be right for me, and planning to somehow be happy working in a cubicle the rest of my life (despite having had a chance to briefly try it and strongly hating the idea of being in front of a computer all day doing someone else’s work).
After all programming was my talent, so why on earth would I want to be anything other than a programmer graduating with a computer science degree? I had goals too, or so I thought. Surely a Ferrari was a goal? I mean it wasn’t humanly affordable on the salary of a corporate computer drone, and I had no plan to attain it otherwise, but yes that was my “goal”. I completely didn’t understand that where I was letting myself drift in life had nothing to do with what I actually wanted. To make things worst this direction was highly encouraged through high grades in “smart people” courses and congratulations from others on making such a great and rewarding choice.
Luckily the entrepreneurial bone in me activated and... I was exposed... to a strange freedom that was offered nowhere else. I read some extremely positive literature from people that seemed...happy. This was a world that my programming books had never exposed me to. Never before had I seriously read about ideas like goals, personal development, financial planning, and the idea that becoming truly successfully was something other than luck or born talent...
It’s not that I disliked programming - I’m having an absolute blast putting my skills to use with my website development company - it’s that I enjoyed working on projects of my own devising and not some insigificant cog in an obese software application. I took a year and a half off instead of going straight into university during which I awakened consciously further and further.
In the end I chose to enter a business program and because I had the opportunity I chose to go the double degree route and end up with a computer science one as well. My end choice in degrees is not important however, what is important is that for the first time in my life I had honestly been able to step off the beaten path, consciously examine my surroundings, figure out where I actually wanted to go, and then go in the direction that would actually take me there.
It’s possible and relatively easy to get to where you want to be in life if you stop long enough to start moving in the right direction..."
