Picture this; you’re bored at your job and you’re imagining the life you desire and how it makes you feel happy when you fantasize about it. Now imagine how shitty you feel when your boss wakes you up from your daydreaming.
Many people are in a rut due to the fact that they have little control over their imagination. Imagine an 18-year-old who takes on student loans and thinks they can pay it back because they orgasmically think they’ll be a millionaire as soon as they graduate.
Imagining about the life you desire is good, but it’s bad when imagination overloads your ability to work for it. In other words you are living in your head, and not in real life. This is used to be my problem before I left for Vietnam. I was too in my mind. I was so in my mind to the point I failed out of college and ruined my relationships with those closest to me.
What causes people to live in their minds too much? Imagine a 10-year-old kid being bullied at school, and he begins to fantasize about how he would beat up the bullies, but he is so traumatized that his revenge is only in the mind and he’s TOO SCARED TO ACT ON HIS THOUGHTS. Merely the FANTASY of revenge is enough to satisfy him over the fact of actually getting his revenge in real life.
How do you begin to control the imagination?
I’ll give you an example. I fantasize about a life in South East Asia. Why am I fantasizing about this? The answer was watching so many travel documentaries on it (macro). Then I begin to fantasize about the life I will live there. Now, how good will my life there be vs how I think it will be? Will it be Anthony Bourdain’s level of utopia? No. Should I talk to normal expats living there now (micro)? Yes.
See the fantasy starts at a macro level, maybe you see it on TV or social media, but many people keep the fantasy to what they see on the media. You need to talk to regular folks who are there to get a realistic perspective of how life there will be. The idea is planted on the macro level, but thoughtful implementation is done on the micro-level. Never allow your imagination to be set on the macro, as that will give you false hopes and pitiful downfalls. The macro over exaggerates things to plant the seed clearly for your mind. Many 18 year-olds have this issue, they get $100,000 in student loans and then go into despair when their macro planted fantasies don’t play out.
The rule is this, always deduce the macro down to the micro. The macro is where everything starts. But if you keep it there the imagination will run rampant and you will be dearly disappointed if you don’t deduce it down to the micro and get a realistic perspective of what you’re imagining.
Doing vs Thinking.
For those of you who live in your heads, a question you ask yourself all the time is how do you implement the thought into action?
- Start with a realistic goal that you can afford within a SEEABLE timeframe. (less than six months)
- Ask yourself what you need to do to create this fantasy into a reality.
- How realistic will my fantasy be?
- How can I live out the fantasy I want?
- What must I SACRAFICE to turn this fantasy into real life?
- How will I prepare my mind to turn this fantasy into reality?
Now let’s take those steps and apply them to my life.
- Move to Vietnam in six months. (January 2018 – July 2018)
- I need to come up with three thousand USD to pay for my ticket and teaching class. $800 for plane ticket and visa, one thousand for the class, and one thousand for one month expense after researching living costs in Vietnam.
- Anthony Bourdain showed me the fantasy life of Vietnam (macro), but for me to get a realistic sense of what will happen there I must look at normal vloggers who live normal lives there (micro).
- I can live out the fantasy I want by making a minimum of 1500 USD per month being a teacher to live the South East Asia dream that they tell me about.
- I must sacrafice my relationships with freinds and family to work towards this goal. This means I must prioritize work and making money over my wanting to see freinds and family. I must also sacrafice my friends and family in the sense that they don’t want me to go and will be hurt if I do, I must sacrafice their feelings for my endgame.
- I will prepare my mind to turn this fantasy into a reality, by sticking with my plan of coming up with three thousand USD to make it happen.
Moving to Vietnam was a REALISTIC GOAL for me given my skills and abilities at that time. If you want to avoid disappointment you must be honest with yourself about what your skills and abilities at the time are and set a realistic goal as a result. Also, NEVER set a goal that you cannot accomplish within six months. Long-range planning (over six months) is an enslavement trap, but not if you’re a doctor or engineer: the two types of people benefit the most from long-term planning. But any plan that is less than a month in planning is also garbage as your mind cannot fully manifest it. remember the rule: DEDUCE THE MACRO DOWN TO THE MICRO it will save your life.