Creating Opportunities by Defining What It Isn’t

For the last few years that I’ve been exploring “What’s Next?” I’ve been very successful at learning what it isn’t.

As I test, explore, research, and play with ideas I’ve built a very long laundry list of things I don’t want to do. This includes everything from the fact that I don’t want to go into work somewhere, it has to be done from my home office, to that I must be done whatever it is I’m doing by 3pm when my kids get home from school.

There’s a whole long list I’ve come up with of things I don’t want to do. I don’t want to build social media. I don’t want to measure metrics of followers or Likes. I want to use technology but not be used by it. This removes many popular current trends from my list of options.

I’ve hustled a ton in my life, I know how to work hard and know what it is to beat the pavement to make things happen, but this time I’m trying to not do it that way. It can’t be a slog. Not this time.

At first I thought I was painting myself further and further into a corner. Limiting myself more and more with every new non-starter of an idea that goes on my list.

Completing my book last year taught me with the right project it really can be fun and easy. It was a tremendous amount of work, but it felt like nothing. That’s what I need more of.

And then something happened. I was forced to answer “If it’s not any of those things, then what else could it be?” and new ideas began to pop in my head.

If I’m not going to use or be beholden to social media, and take all those off the table, what else is out there that will serve me? I began to find new options.

I also realized that if part of what it is is to live a decelerated life, then I have to allow more time. This won’t be a finger snap solution. I gave myself permission to slow down even more. Take even more time.

I’ve written over 100 blog articles for my website here over the last couple of years. Good shit that I’ve held nothing back on. It doesn’t matter that they don’t get a million eyeballs when they are published, they will be available for anyone to read at anytime.

The metaphor of my current life, of the canoe down the river, with the bend ahead and the unknown of what lies beyond applies more than ever.

As the list grows of what it isn’t, more and more new ideas and options present themselves, and that is exciting.

In your own life, I’d be curious to learn when what it is presented itself for you after you ruled out what it isn’t?