Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams

by Barbara Sher

Insights, revelations, discoveries, glimpses that make me say, “I never knew that!”

Exercising intelligence because it feels good

Challenging myself, testing my limits, seeing how good I can be

Creating something that didn’t exist before, creating solutions to problems

So why have you been made to feel that you were anything less than that? Why have you been given such a hard time by those around you?

Because it dont pay da bills, Jack

Recently, I have been looking into starting a small business. My family thinks that I am going off on yet another wild fantasy.

Yeah...I have felt the shame of that

Or are you having a little trouble enjoying this good news because you can’t help wondering if all this fun and games leads anywhere?

Right???

Scanners always hear a clock ticking.

FREAKIN' YEEEESSSS!!! Always a ticking clock!

Aristotle would have liked you, but he’s not here right now and he can’t help you with the feeling of failure that’s plagued you for so long.

And he cant pay off my HELOC

Now, stand in front of that Calendar and think of every project you really long to do (not every one you can think of!). Figure out which ones you might be able to do soon and which ones can wait.

Ok. I think the idea behijnd this would be fun fokr me and it is good to plan. But there is no way h i would expose myself in this manner. Besides which that will look very messy to me posyed on the wall. thinking more on this: I also stumble upon ideas all the time; some dont develop, some do. I dont really understand how planning six years of projects would even work. I become interested as new things arise

Once your panic subsides and you begin working on each of your interests, one after another, you’ll let go of the dread that life will pass you by.

You have to get it right, because every career choice requires a huge investment of time and money.

This is close to my concern. Its not that I think I am only allowed one career. Its that something has to put bread on the table so I can continue to buy yarn and pens and books and France.

“But how do you pay the rent?” “Pick the one that makes a living and doesn’t take up too much time, and do the rest on your own time,” I suggested.

Teachers become public speakers and go on the lucrative lecture circuit—often as motivational speakers!

What kind of work will you actually do? 2.Is training really required? People usually sign up for school before they know these answers. Why?

This is frequently what people who earned a bachelor's (at least) think. But they do not understand that MANY doors are totally closed if you dont have at least a bachelors. If we're talking about earning,anywaay. IOW, her accountant and doctor and lawyer friends who become writers and scuba instructors all ready have the regard conferred by having a juris doctorate lor a CPA. Which COSTS a lot of money and time.

More realistically, you can talk to some people in the position and do a reality check. How do you find such people? Call anyone and everyone you know to ask if they personally know someone in the position you’re considering.

I feel as though this is coming from at least a moderately privileged position. Wealthier people in wealthier families are more likely to have coknnections of this type.

(I’ll naturally be very well paid for these services I’m rendering.) Step 4: Leave. On this day, I’ll have my farewell party, at which I’ll receive tearful good-byes and be given a severance package, which allows me to live for 1 year without working. I’ve arranged for this by showing the bosses how much money I’d be saving them.

Oh come on!

I haven’t kept this explanation 100 percent realistic,

Clearly!

A Scanner can use any decent job to support what she loves to do—and do it on her own time.

This is most likely what is necessary for me. Its why i am contemplating going back to legal secretary work even though i habe no intention of remaining there.

call it the GOOD ENOUGH JOB (see page 136). You’ll find it mentioned often in the pages to come.

It’s simple, but it can change your life: Just get every single thing you need for any project set up in advance and ready to go. Put it all together in one place. Then forget it until you have a little time. And I mean “little.” Take short, frequent visits to whatever you love. You

My inner neat freak resists this often.

One first-rate way to do this (but we rarely think of it) is right in the middle of your time with your family. I call this technique How to Paint a Masterpiece during Commercial Breaks. All you need is that same miraculous Setup and a small corner of time.

This Is what Kelly does with guitar, although his choice to run through his repertoire last night at 11:39pm did rankle.

Creativity and learning cure burnout.

True!!!

The one thing these people all had in common—aside from believing they wanted to do absolutely everything—was that they were doing practically nothing that interested them.

I do tend to be this way about travel. I want to go everywhere, so I go nowhere. (Not always, obviously. But often, especially as it applies to family trips.)

understand part of his dilemma. I have to stop myself from buying more books than anyone can possibly read.

Me, lol!

One is that no one really wants to do everything.

Scanners who sincerely want to spend years burrowing deeply into something go ahead and do it. They’re called Serial Specialists, and you can read about them in Part Two of this book.

There’s a book called 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. To a Scanner, doing is a lot more fun than merely seeing, so let’s adapt that idea and see how many things you can think of that you’d really love to do: the 1,000 things you believe you want to do before you die. I’d like you to write a more active list; not places you want to see but interests you’d like to explore: things you want to do, learn about, make, collect, create—you get the idea.

Ooh, FUN!!! (And FWIW, I love those books and lists!)

Incidentally, it’s not a bad idea to open up another page in your Scanner Daybook or keep that notepad with you and start a list of all the things you don’t want to do!

I did thhis. It was very awesome. I’m so relieved to realize I never want to breed bulldog or raise iguanas.

Scanners often think things take less time than they really do.

Guilty. I also remember Traci always making that mistake. She would decide Friday night that the perfect gift for her friend's birthday on Saturday was a scrapbook spanning twenty years of friendship.

They are convinced that it’s impossible to explore to their own satisfaction more than one or two areas—ever.

She harps on this point but I dont feel that.

choosing one of the once-unattainable items of your list and actually starting it. Today.

Each dream gets a line, and as I do them I put a check beside them. This allows me to go back and see what were once dreams and now have become a reality.

This is really cool.

All my dreams go into this journal, from something as simple as “own a teakettle” to something outlandish like “develop a space tourism business.”

I do like this dream journal idea.

20 or 30 THREE-RING BINDERS or as many as you have room for. If you haven’t used them in the past, you’re in for a delightful revelation when you create a different binder for every interest. Having lots of binders is part of the system.

That s pretty nutty

Leave the world you know and find a way to hang around in the world you’re interested

We’ve seen what happens when people get reckless, maybe even experienced it ourselves. So by keeping the risk levels high, we aren’t forcing ourselves into motion; we’re forcing ourselves to do nothing.

for many Scanners, daydreaming with a pencil in your hand is a way of life. In fact, it’s a way to avoid action when your dreams look impossible. Real planning, on the other hand, the kind with facts and appointments and deadlines, is totally different. That kind of list is an action in itself.

“Oh. I guess so,” she said hesitantly. Action. The very thought freezes many of us in our tracks.

I was thinking about how difficult it can be to move from thinking to taking action and how many reasons we can come up with to avoid doing it.

What if we could just do what we want to do without all the worry and emotional angst that’s holding us back?!

GOod question.

Used together, these three steps will transform you from a planner and list maker into an action hero.

This is my own version of a flowchart, which I designed while preparing to run my very first workshops in 1975. (It was one of the most popular parts of my first book, Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want, which is still selling well after 25 years, partly because of this flowchart. If you want a more detailed diagram, complete with little circles and lines, you can find the original Backward Planning Flowchart in that book.)

Look this up

setting up a goal and asking myself, “Could I achieve that goal right now? If not, what would I need first?” I kept drawing circles with goals written inside them and moving back to draw more circled goals—asking those same two questions each time—until I finally reached a step I could actually take immediately. And when I reached a goal I could do right away, I drew a big arrow pointing at it that said “Now!”

Thats pretty much brilliant

was actually too powerful. It forced action where everyone had been playing.

I showed them some ways to make their first action step so tiny and nonthreatening that they stopped being afraid.

If you want to lower your fear level, lower the danger level.

But I never forgot what I learned that day: Scheduling any kind of action is a change of universes from writing lists and making plans. It’s never a small matter. And it’s always a jolt to one’s system. To keep moving, you need many techniques and tools.

always have a target date for each part of your goal. A

Every time I see someone who cannot move, I find out he’s trying to pull the whole plan off all by himself.