Change the plan not the dream

Something I wrote yesterday got me thinking. A lot:

“Change the plan, not the dream.”

Plus what @d4m1n said about feeling sad about selling his time from freelancing, like it’s taking a step backwards:

Diversifying through freelancing is okay, but make it so you don’t lose what’s important to you: - energy to build - flexibility - love for your work/having fun… I struggled with this for days. In fact, this update almost was: I made $27.4k revenue and I’m depressed. It’s because 75% of it was from selling my time. Why did I think that’s bad? In December, more than 50% of my revenue was from my products. I viewed selling my time as a step backward, not a good short to medium term ROI. Why should I keep doing that? Do I not believe in my own products? I just realized, it doesn’t matter. If I just named my freelancing gig APIHUSTLE and treated is as a product, what would be the difference? None. It’s just revenue. This only makes a difference if it takes you out of the “success loop” above.

I realised, this is one of the ways we make it unnecessarily harder for ourselves. Little insidious bits of mindsets lurking in our everyday lives, influencing our thoughts, behaviours, actions, and making us unhappy.

But if I took a step back and see what Dan realised, that at the end of it all, here I am, still in the game, still having flexibility, fun and energy.

Most importantly, I still live and work on my own terms.

I still get to see my son to school every morning. Kiss my wife goodbye as she leaves for work. I get to care for my health and go for morning walk and exercise. I get to hang out with my kid, wife and family at home all day. I get to sit in the comfort of my chair and huge monitor to do work I enjoy. Sometimes I do work I don’t enjoy, but that’s not too many days in a row, it’s like 10% now, so it’s manageable.

That’s priceless.

So when things don’t work, change the mission, not the vision.

Retreat from a battle to win the war.

Don’t get hung up about “passion”, “focus”, “moonshots”, or being dogmatic about anything else… other than your dream.

You’ll win eventually if you stay in the game.

You can’t fail if you don’t quit.