In the last two blogs I’ve talked about fear and obstacles that are standing in your way to creating a life you love. Even though I gave you encouragement to find the ways around those blocks that may come to your mind, I didn’t give you a good reason to really follow an alternative path of your own making. Here, I hope to convince you that it’s well worth the effort and mind games to think of ways to accomplish exactly what it is that you want to do.

Finding your dream job — or creating it — seems out of reach for many people. However, Ramit Sethi shows us that it’s possible if you want it bad enough to work at it. And, while I’ve not taken his class, I agree with the premise. It does take a hell of a lot of smart moves and work to land the gig of your dreams. It doesn’t matter if that’s working for another company, working as a freelancer with a specific client, or making your own company. It takes smart systems, attention to details, social grace, and skills to make it happen.

In other words, you should not allow excuses to get in the way of following an alt-path.

Why should you not worry about those important things like paying rent, putting food on the table, paying your bills? When you have a family it gets even more complicated. There are, undoubtedly, many reasons why you might hesitate before forging ahead on the alt-path. However, there are good reasons why you really should keep going.

Reason 1: If there is one thing I’ve learnt about the rigmarole of life it’s that you can literally piece together any future you want. You start with your choice of friends. Admit it, even as a rebellious teen, you hung around with people you wanted to, even if your parents threatened to ground you for life. You choose what you do in your free time after school. You choose what degree you go for. You choose what you do for a job to build your CV. You choose the extra curricular activities that you fill your time with even as you get older. You choose your path. It doesn’t just fall in line for you. Every step along the way you build yourself, your experiences, your passions, and your network. No matter what stage in life you are in, teenage to retired, you’ve built a path and life so far.

Recognise what you’ve built so far and embrace it. Every experience is useful, every painful experience teaching you something, and every joyful moment reminds you of why you chose to do it in the first place. Take a queue from Bob Ross and believe in yourself.

Reason 2: The world needs your skills. You’ve spent your entire life up to the point you’re reading this building a life. You may have had slip-ups, you may have a practically unmarketable set of passions (like my crocheting passion), or you may just be tired of the same old shit from corporate life and want to bust out of the rut. The world needs the skills that you have chosen to build over the years — whether in your paid time or not. Not everyone can be Bob Ross of the art world, nor does the world need another Martha Stewart. Nor would we. Their time is past. The university jobs are filling fast, and industry is the same way. Take the skills, experience, and life you’ve chosen to live thus far and package it into something unique, something that only you can offer.

Now, before you start saying that you can’t do what you want to do because you don’t have the necessary skills/requirements/network/whatever, you can work on it. You can highlight a specific set of skills that you’ve been working on for a particular dream job that will keep you on your path. You can choose what version of the history of you that you want to show for the next stage of your life. And if you really don’t have the skills, I suggest you get some education in before you quit your current job in favour or a new life.

Reason 3: You deserve it. You’ve worked hard, you’ve played hard. You’ve set your own standards, your own rules, and you lived by them. Now, it’s time you used what you’ve learnt and experiencing all these years to further your story into your own path that you are making. Take those bits of experience and weave it into a tapestry that tells a story for all to see.

Marie Forleo is a good example of this. She’s been all over the map from working as a waitress to a dancing queen to a life coach. She tells bits of her personal over many of her videos, and you realise that she’s not just been on a single track from her day of birth. It’s inspiring to know that you can take bits of your life and weave it into the part that you want to focus on at the time. The key is that she made her own life on her own terms, and yet she uses all those life experiences to enhance where she is now.

You deserve the life you’ve built, even if you’ve built it slowly on the sidelines.

Keep going with the path you’ve been designing for yourself. It might be a little nerve-racking, and you might want to hit the panic button over and over again, but don’t. With hard work, smart moves, and dedication you can have this “dream life”. The next post will give you some good ideas on how to work your way to it, even if you didn’t think you had it in you.

PS: Sorry for the Bob Ross kick. I across the garden shop at my colleague the other day about moving the happy little trees from one place to another so they’d look better. I think I’m better now that I’ve got it out of my system. At least with the happy trees. Now, there are the happy little birds and clouds to deal with. 😉