How To Live Your Dream While Still Fulfilling Your Responsibilities

“One life. Just one. Why aren’t we running like we are on fire towards our wildest dreams?”

So you lead an acceptable life. It may even be good, maybe even better than good. Yet somehow you are feeling trapped, stuck doing something that you really don’t want to do. You probably get the feeling that you are in some kind of prison cell, waiting for the day when you will be set free. You’re resigned to doing something that you have no passion for, but circumstances dictate that you have got to just push through day in and day out. Believe me when I say I know the feeling.

Maybe you are stuck in a job or a career that your heart is just not into anymore, but you have got to pay the bills. Or you are caught up in some situation that you can’t just change or walk away from. That is a reality for the majority of the world’s population.

I ask myself this constantly: Will I ever get to do what I truly love? I know that I would definitely be more productive. In the pursuit of happiness, optimism is key, together with finding the pathway to a fulfilling life. Why, then, is it so challenging to be optimistic and to find fulfilment? Happiness is supposed to be about the journey, not the destination. Yet it is tremendously difficult to enjoy the journey when you have to do things that are a means to an end, day in and day out.

If you pay your dues, work towards your responsibilities, and do what you need to do to keep life going, will time reward you eventually? Will you then be able to live your dream and do the things that you are passionate about?

All I know is that by just biding your time, fulfilling your responsibilities, working that 9-to-5 job that brings you so little satisfaction, and hoping that eventually you will get to follow your passion may not be ideal. Time passes by in the blink of an eye.

The reality is that your responsibilities most often take precedence over your dreams and passions. The situation that you are in right now, at this very moment, affords you financial stability and all the perks that come with it. So you settle, but do you really want to settle? Do you truly want to live a half life until the end of time?

Do what you have to do to fulfil your responsibilities, but also, in tandem, work towards making a way for you to live your passion, to enjoy your journey in the pursuit of happiness. I know, it can be so difficult to get to that space, to actually take that extra bit of time to make a way to do what you love. But you must remember that, if you don’t want to continue living your life as part of the status quo, then you have to start somewhere, one baby step at a time. Remember, time waits for no one.