What’s Your Jam?
It’s that thing you do when you can do anything. Several years ago a very wise man posed a question to me that caught me by surprise.
He asked me.. “Imagine you had won all the money that you could ever need, and you’d been everywhere you wanted to go, and bought everything you want to buy. How then would you spend your time?”
And I realized I didn’t have a great answer.
His wonderful question helped me realize that my time is a commodity that I get to spend every minute of the day, with the understanding that I can never get a refund.
That alone made me more determined to live each minute with intention. But he wasn’t asking for an accounting of my temporal finances, rather he was asking me to decide how I would spend a lifetime if I could do anything I wanted.
Which is a greater, deeper and more thoughtful question than I’d ever been asked before.
So I put a LOT of thought into it. What really makes me happy, beyond anything else? In some ways the answer to that question has been different over the years, yet all those answers had the same core concept, the same basic meaning to me. Other than being with my family, both immediate and extended, there’s one thing that gets me excited like nothing else.
Helping people solve the problems inside their heads.
I know that sounds pretty boring, but for me…it’s the greatest thing in the world. Watching that moment where someone ‘gets’ it, watching the way they pull back for a moment, and their whole reality shifts into a different configuration that allows them to see things in a new light, through a new lens.
That, for me, is the greatest rush, the biggest thrill.
And boy if it isn’t seriously addictive.
So now I’m hooked on this thing of helping people. It’s hard sometimes, because despite my desire to help everyone I have to realize that it has to be what they want, on their timetable, within their comfort zone.
The hardest moments are when I can see how things can be changed so easily… and I have to respect that that person isn’t ok with that level of engagement right now.
And giving other people the right to choose their life is the greatest way I can respect who they are.
Yet once you truly find your jam, once you figure out what it is that drives you like nothing else, you start to want to do that, and only that. It’s like everything else falls away, and the pathway opens up ahead of you.
It might be long, it might be dark, and it might be full of twists and turns, but once you realize that nothing else is going to ever be enough…
You’ll use everything you have to get to where you want to be.
That’s how motivation is born, that’s how movements are
started, that’s how lives are changed. You just have to figure out your jam, and become crystal clear on why it moves you.
And then, you start moving.
So now I’m curious… What’s your jam?
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings