You’ve felt it—wanting more or feeling like something is missing. You followed the map you were given but haven’t ended up near where you think you should be.

The happiness and fulfillment you were promised have just been fleeting moments that pass you by.

Your life has become a cycle of wake-up, doing your day job, wasting your free time on entertainment (TV, internet, social media), then going to bed. If you’re single, you sprinkle in dates while searching for “your person,” but you never have much luck.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Everything seems so…. Boring. You’re a hamster on a wheel.

You survey your life, and what was once all bright hopes and dreams for big things has been replaced by dull, mundane, grey day-to-day living.

Once you get the wheel spinning, momentum takes over. It’s hard to stop. You keep telling yourself you will do something different, but you don’t. It’s too comfortable and known.

What if following conventional thinking doesn’t get you where you want to be? What if it just leads you to a life on cruise control? Is that living?

My Wakeup Call

From an early age, I was given the script to go to college, start a career, find a person to marry, have 2.5 kids, and buy a house. It was everywhere I looked. Adults and society at large helped enforce those ideas on me. It was taught to us in schools, TV shows, and movies.

The conventional thinking was that was how you had a “happy” and “successful” life. Having the idea planted in my head that there was a sure path to follow and specific acceptable ways to get to that life led me to self-limiting beliefs. It took much time and effort to reprogram myself.

After my divorce, I felt entitled to much more than what I had gotten out of my life.

I had followed the script, but the movie of my life turned into a low-budget, made-for-TV film that I didn’t want to watch. Not the high-budget, action-packed adventure I couldn’t take my eyes off.

That divorce shook me out of my slumber.

If we all follow the same script to the same destination, that makes it all average. Some people can excel in that pool of averageness and find the happiness and fulfillment they desire. Others, like myself, can’t.

Nothing is wrong with either group, but if you’re still reading, I guess just being comfortable isn’t enough for you.

The conventional way of doing things is usually the safe way. Many before you have tried and succeeded by doing things the traditional way so you can see their results. When you take a different path, the destination point becomes less clear.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction. — John F. Kennedy

Look, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing things the conventional way. It works. Obviously, but mistaking comfort for happiness has led to the creation of terms like “mid-life crisis” and “quarter-life crisis” and, more recently, the popularity of this thing called a “gap year” (taking a year to find yourself later on in your life).

There is a vast difference between being comfortable and being happy. A lot of us are settling for comfort. The conventional way has us trapped in our comfort zone. We use it as an excuse not to push the envelope.

We settle for less in our life, love, and career. All because we are comfortable, even though we feel something is missing.

While we all follow the pre-programmed script to reach a happy and successful life, we forget to LIVE. We aren’t doing what makes us feel alive. We aren’t doing what fills us up and brings us joy.

Even sadder, most people probably aren’t sure what brings them joy or makes them feel fulfilled. Do you?

A Turning Point For Me

Post-divorce, the conventional thinking for finding love again was bleak. I was told I would have to lower my standards and settle as I was now a mid-30s divorced single dad.

That sounded like the roadmap to an eventual second divorce. Thanks, but no thanks.

All my dating life, including with whom I married, I had stuck to a specific type. When I got to the point I was ready to date again, I continued doing more of the same, with the same failed results. It then occurred to me that it was time to try something different.

I decided I would be open to love however it came my way.

Unluckily, I met someone in another country a few weeks before COVID shut the world down. Luckily, everything was shut down, so we built a relationship while the world appeared to be collapsing.

She was my person; as of this writing, we’ve been happily married for a year and a half. Yes, I got all the speeches about me being stupid and her having ulterior motives about us rushing and not thinking. I even got asked why I wasn’t doing things the conventional way.

The traditional methods were not working for me. Sure, there was a risk, but playing it safe hadn’t gotten me anywhere. I was tired of sacrificing a shot at being happy for being comfortable and okay. The gamble more than paid off.

I’m not advising you to do something as drastic as I did. I’m just pointing out the importance of opening your mind. Look around you; the possibilities for anything today are just about endless. Just because other people can’t see what you do doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

It just means they have a narrow perspective. This goes for your life, love, career, you name it. There’s a way. Always.

You have people who understand what you’re doing right away, and you got people who won’t get it until everyone else does. That’s just the way it is. To succeed, you have to see how good you’re capable of becoming before anybody else sees it. — Keith Robinson to Kevin Hart

A Turning Point For You

Could you ask yourself an honest question? Has living the conventional way and following conventional thinking led you to where you wanted to be? Are you sticking with average because it’s comfortable? Is being comfortable enough for you?

If the answers to those questions have you reconsidering everything, it might be time to consider doing things unconventionally — at least unconventionally from how you do them. History is littered with people who bucked the conventional methods on their path to greatness.

I’m not just talking about people who did great things for the world.

I’m talking about people who did great things for themselves and their families that we don’t hear about. They created a new path to happiness and fulfillment. You have people like this and probably aren’t even aware.

Of course, there were bumps and bruises along the way, but nothing good will come easy. Is it better to overcome challenges on your way to what you want or not to try because conventional wisdom says it should be more straightforward?