Jon Fisher - I Took the Only Path To See You

Imagine if you live in New York and you want to move to another city. The smart thing to do would be to decide what type of place you would want to live, then research different parts of the country to see which areas most closely match the criteria you set for yourself. Not only does this take time, it also means defining what's most important to you. Sadly, because of the time and effort required, most people never do this.

Rather than define what they want and then look for a place that provides that, most people will just jump in a car and start driving in whatever direction looks most promising at the moment. Instead of defining criteria for the best place to live for them, they'll just wander from place to place, never quite being happy where they're at but quite never knowing which direction they should go either.

Sound familiar?

The first step to happiness is knowing what you want out of life, just like the first step to traveling anywhere is knowing where you want to go. While this may sound simple, it's actually the hardest step of all. Not only must you imagine a brighter future for yourself, but you must believe it's possible for you to reach it.

If you don't believe your life can be dramatically better, you won't bother pursuing it. If you believe in a brighter future but don't believe you can achieve it, you also won't bother pursuing it.

Taking the first step to happiness involves faith – faith in yourself and faith in the world. Faith means embracing an idea, often with no facts or proof to support it. Yet before you can take that first step, you must have faith, and accepting that unknown can be the hardest step of all.

Deciding what you want involves taking a chance. The moment you imagine a brighter future for yourself, it's far too easy to tell yourself you can't have it, you don't deserve it, you're too young (or too old), you don't have enough education, you don't know how to get it, or you're not good enough for whatever reason.

The biggest obstacle to happiness is none other than yourself. The biggest obstacle in your way isn't your parents, your neighbors, people around you, the economy, the government, or the world you live in. The biggest obstacle in your way is staring at you in the mirror every morning. You are your own worst enemy. Yet, you are also your own best chance – but only if you believe you can do it.

So give yourself permission to dream big, and don't limit your ideas. Remember, it doesn't cost anything to let your imagination run wild, but if you choose puny dreams, you'll risk costing yourself a wonderful life if you had only set your sights bigger.

Think back when you were a kid and you could dream anything you wanted, from becoming the first astronaut on Mars to scoring the winning touchdown in the final seconds of the Super Bowl. Forget about being “practical” or “realistic.” Dream big, and don't settle for a watered down, diluted version of your dream. If you knew you absolutely could not fail, what would you want to do? You may never achieve your wildest dreams, but by making an effort, you'll go much farther than if you had never done anything at all.

You can never get anywhere by just reading this book, so now's the time to take action. For the next four days, spend at least 10 minutes a day writing down one or more big ideas that you'd like to accomplish in your lifetime. For each day, make your ideas bigger and more outlandish than the previous day's ideas. This will force you to keep expanding your mind on what's possible so you don't limit yourself unnecessarily.

On the fifth day, rearrange your ideas from the one you like the most to the one you like the least. Don't judge your ideas by how much you think you can achieve them. Judge your ideas by how much you really want them. If your ideas don't scare or embarrass you by their audacity, you're not dreaming big enough.

On the sixth day, look over your ideas and ask yourself what type of training and skills you'd need to achieve each dream. Then ask yourself if you'd be willing to take the time and effort needed to achieve that dream.

For example, many people dream about becoming a movie star. Now ask yourself, would you be willing to take the time to take acting classes and practice acting in your spare time, even if you never made any money at it? Would you be willing to go to countless auditions and face rejection at nearly all of them?

If you're not willing to do something for free for the rest of your life, that means you don't really want to do the work needed to achieve that dream. If you won't do the necessary work for free, you're only looking at the benefits and not the activity. That means you really don't want that dream after all.

Finally on the seventh day, find the one idea that you can't live without. If you can live without a particular idea, then it's just a pleasant fantasy. If you know in your heart that you can't live without a dream, then that's the one dream that you need to pursue the most.

Make sure the dream you pick is one that you want, not something your parents, friends, or relatives want for you. This is your life so you must decide what you truly want, not what you think you should do. It's easy to have a dream but it's much harder to find your passion.

Passion is what you're willing to do for free because you enjoy that particular activity.

Passion is what makes you happy.

Ultimately, passion is what makes life worth living.

Drain a life of passion and you really have no life at all. Tragically, people can go through their whole lives without ever finding their passion. Without passion, it's too easy to get distracted by superficial pleasures like drugs, sex, and alcohol that ultimately never brings lasting happiness. With passion, your life will have purpose, direction, and above all, a sense of meaning.

Ultimately, happiness comes from pursuing your passion. Until you find what you're passionate about, lasting happiness will likely elude you, creating a life of frustration and boredom. However, once you discover your life's passion, you can feel more in control of your world because you'll know what you want and have the courage to go out and get it no matter what obstacles may get in your way.

Passion is the spark of life. Finding what you are passionate about can change your life overnight.

Debbi Fields was only 20 years old when she started selling homemade chocolate cookies. She turned her love for cookies into a multimillion-dollar business as founder of Mrs. Fields Cookies.

Nick Woodman loved surfing, and while surfing along the coast of Australia, he got the idea to develop straps that could hold a camera that could record a surfer's best moments on the waves. Eventually, he decided to create his own wearable camera, and this turned into the GoPro camera that developed into a million-dollar business.

Walt Disney enjoyed drawing and created various animated characters with different animation companies. Although these early characters and animation companies failed, Walt Disney eventually succeeded when he created Mickey Mouse.

At age 15, Greta Thunberg started protesting outside the Swedish parliament to take action on climate change. Her action inspired other students to organize similar strikes for the climate. After addressing the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Greta soon became a popular environmental activist known throughout the planet.

These people aren't successful because they made a lot of money or became famous. They're successful because they pursued their passion, and their passion helped them overcome any fears, doubts, and obstacles in their way. How happy and successful would Debbi Fields be if she had tried to start an animation company while Walt Disney tried to bake cookies?