“It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.” -Honore de Balzac
It’s the idea of living with regrets. Waking up each morning knowing that your schedule for the day is exactly the same as the day before. Having fantasies of great accomplishments that you’ll never achieve.
It’s getting old. That’s the fear that we have.
I’ve always wondered if I was the only one terrified to grow older. Each day lived represents one day closer to the end. As your timeline shrinks, so do the possibilities.
Imagine walking backwards into a tunnel. The first couple of steps are just fine. Your entire field of vision is an open view into the bright world.
Then, as you walk backwards further into the tunnel, your field of vision begins to shrink and the light begins to fade.
That’s terrifying.
Gradually, we all become time fighters. Some people get surgeries to stretch their face tighter around their skull. Others will dress as if they are thirty years younger than they actually are. And some will surround themselves with younger people so they have the feeling that they themselves are also younger.
None of that works. Deep down inside, the youthful illusion that we all try to create for ourselves is just that – an illusion.
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Have you ever seen a video of a bullet going through a balloon? Do you know how they make those kinds of super slow-motion videos?
It’s actually quite simple, but seems a bit counter-intuitive.
In order to capture extremely quick actions and then slow them down for our human eyes to view, video must be taken using an extremely high frame rate. Or, in other words, when videoing very fast actions, you must also set the camera to a very fast frame per second setting.
That’s because when you capture more frames per second, you can actually record more video in a shorter amount of time. Then, when you play back the video at normal speed, it looks as if everything is in slow-motion.
The standard recording setting for most video cameras is 24 frames per second. That means when you are watching a movie, every second that passes by is comprised of 24 separate individual images. When they are played together in sequence, you end up seeing a moving image.
For slow motion cameras, the frame per second setting can be set extremely high. Some cameras can record at over 10,000 frames per second. When you play back the video at normal speed of 24 frames per second, everything appears to be moving extremely slowly.
Packing more frames in per second results in the appearance of everything moving very slowly.
Think about that.
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A recent study, conducted by the University of Kent and Tufts University, found that one third of Americans are thinking about leaving the US to live abroad. That’s over 100 million people who want to move out of their home country.
The reason for wanting to move is not what you think. It has nothing to do with safety, climate, taxes, or even politics. In fact, whether a person identifies as liberal or conservative politically had no correlation to their hopes of moving overseas.
The reason why one third of Americans want to leave the US is because they want to explore. They are curious about what is outside of their bubble and they have a deep seated yearning to take a look around the next corner.
Of those 100 million people who want to move, how many do you think will actually take the plunge?
Exactly.
Just a bunch of broken dreams.
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Why do people fail in life?
Is it the actual act of failing? As in, “I started a company, raised a bunch of money, then lost it all, and now I have to file bankruptcy.” Is that an example of failure?
Sure. That’s an example of failing with a company. But, is that failing in life?
Absolutely not.
The true failures in life are the ones who sit in the bleachers of society pointing out the faults of those taking risks.
The true failures are those who are not taking action.
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For me, December is the month in which there is a culmination of facts and emotions. December represents my birthday, holidays with family members, the end of a year, and the strange accounting of the previous 12 months.
In December, a mental tally sheet begins to appear. Score keeping for business ventures, personal relationships, and health goals start to add up. Did I accomplish what I wanted?
Did you?
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In the end, it’s all about experiences, accomplishments, and memories. And all of those are created by taking action.
So what are you going to get done next?
Or, put in a more urgent way…
What do you want to get done, that you actually will never achieve because you’re too afraid to take action?
