(For part 3 click here)

You can live a life of wonder every day, if you are willing and committed to it. Every little action you take will impact your life longer term. You might not realize it in the moment, but taking more and more little steps towards achieving your goals will compound (link to compounding effect) to a big impact over time. By constant learning, you are increasing your skills and knowledge a lot. Finishing school, high school, university or an apprenticeship is only a step in your learning, a big one, true, but still a step.

Even if you are not interested in learning new skills and habits, life will teach you lessons. So whether you like it or not, you are learning every day. However, you can take action to steer your learning and your life in the direction you desire: you can be in control.

And, like a child, have no fear, young Padawan! Or more precisely, learn to live with and leverage your fears.

List the fears that are preventing you from taking action: fear of failure, fear of looking like a fool, fear of not having enough time to learn, etc. Think about each of them. Analyse them, think of the consequences if one of your fears materializes. For example, what would happen if you end up looking like a fool? Estimate the risk that each of your fear might materialize.

A better understanding and a deep analysis of your fears will help you coping with them. Fears and apprehension will come back to you regularly over time. Don’t ignore them, acknowledge them and deal with them. Use them as energy to push you forward.

Finally, you should know what we tend to overestimate the consequences of our failures. We actually cope better with failure than we anticipate. Think back about previous failures you have had and how you coped with them over time. In some cases, you will probably find that failure brought you new opportunities which you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t tried and failed. Learn to embrace failure and the lessons that it teaches you, so that you can make adjustments and bounce back from your missteps.

Studies have shown consistently that when we look back on our lives the most common regrets are the ones of not taking action. In fact, regrets of inaction outnumber those of action by nearly two to one. So take action today!

And enjoy the journey!

I you want to take it further, I highly recommend reading Choose yourself by James Altucher (links below). James covers a lot of ground, but in particular shows how you can be many roles at the same time and decide for yourself what you want exactly.

Amazon US: 

Amazon UK: