Do your fears get in the way of your dreams?

Photo by Andrew McGill

Jason Alba, from JibberJobber,  has a tendency to make me think. His thought-provoking blog posts are what got me started reading blogs years ago. I’ve also always be introspective and many of his topics make me think about my own choices.

Jason’s recent post “Paul Buchheit on Wealth, Jobs, and Dreams” made me think again. Jason was quoting a post by Paul Buchheit – What to do with your millions.

Jason tells you who Paul Buchheit is in his post, I didn’t know either, and you might be surprised, so go read.

But the part he was emphasizing is this quote from Paul and that’s what got me thinking:

From Jason’s post:

What I wanted to quote was a part about jobs:

“Many people with jobs have a fantasy about all the amazing things they would do if they didn’t need to work. In reality, if they had the drive and commitment to do actually do those things, they wouldn’t let a job get in the way.” – Paul Buchheit

I know we need to have income, and many people let their jobs give them life-purpose, but sit back and think about this today… is your job (or even your job search) getting in the way of all the amazin things you really want to do?

I know money plays a role in this.  Perhaps, though, the lack of enough money is our biggest non-legit excuse for not really pursuing our passions…

I answered Jason on his blog:

Honestly, Jason, I think fear gets in the way even more than lack of money. Fear and procrastination. People are afraid that they will lose their current lifestyle, belongings, assets, whatever… so they put up with a job that they hate. If they lose the job they hate, many scurry around trying to find the next one and never ever test the waters on being an entrepreneur.

Now I can say all of this without sounding arrogant because even though I have been an entrepreneur for most of my adult life, I too struggled with fear and even more so lack of motivation to take the steps that I knew were logical. This year has been different. I can’t tell you that 2010 has been paved with gold but I can tell you that I am loving focusing only on my business and not all the distractions that come from trying to balance roles as a non-profit operations manager and run my business.

So if you are not happy where you are or you are scrambling to find your next position, what’s stopping you from testing the waters with a sound business plan and an equally sound marketing plan? Or what’s stopping you from finding the career of your dreams working for someone else rather than just the next “job?”