The path to success:
School > Uni > Job > Work 50 years > Retire
Ever since you were a kid, that’s what’s been told to you. You have to follow this path to be successful in life.
If you’re reading this blog, then you’re a snowboarder, which means you know how the general public tends to look at us snow bums. We’re looked at as lazy slackers.
“You can’t snowboard forever.”
“Snowboarding? Don’t you want to be successful?”
It kills me every time I see someone telling some kid that they can’t do something that they enjoy, especially when it comes to something close to me like snowboarding.
Why 9 out of 10 of those ‘successful’ people are full of it
The next time someone wants to put you down for being a snowboard bum, I want you to do one thing for me.
Pause, look them in the eye and ask them this:
“How’s your life? Are you really happy? Do you love life?”
The plain fact is that most of them aren’t happy. They might not be unhappy, but I guarantee you that 9 out of 10 of those people are not living happy lives.
Am I the only one that thinks it’s ridiculous when this ‘ideal route’ in life doesn’t seem to make people happy, but yet we keep advising everyone to keep following that same route?
These people plan to be happy. They think that working towards this idea of ‘success’ is going to make them really happy one day. Well screw that.
If you love snowboarding then who says you can’t find a way to snowboard a lot, work hard and be happy doing it? There’s many paths to success and the path that these people want you to take isn’t the only one… heck, their path doesn’t seem to work for them anyway.
The thing those ‘successful’ people don’t tell you
They don’t want you to succeed following any alternate paths.
You know what happens if you don’t follow their path and you end up happier and therefore more successful than them? It means they were wrong and everything they’ve been doing in their life was the wrong choice.
People want other people to choose the same route as them because they want to feel like they made the smart choice. If other people follow them, then it must mean they picked the right route to success, even if they aren’t happy.
Sorry, but I don’t look at someone with a high paying job, nice car and house and think “wow they’re so successful!” I look at whether they’re happy and whether they had to sacrifice 50 years of their life to live 5 years of actual happiness.
Some may look at that snowboard bum washing dishes at night for $12 an hour as an unsuccessful slacker, but I bet that snowboard bum is 100 times happier than most people out there. That makes him far more successful in my book.
Heck, you don’t even have to stay the stereotypical, poor snowboard bum who can’t afford nice things. There’s plenty of guys out there snowboarding, loving life and making a comfortable living while doing what they love.
The perfect route to a successful life:
Do you know what makes you happy? You should go do that and if you can’t do that right now, then you know what you need to be working on.
That’s it. That should be your path in life, not some ridiculous pre-planned path that so called successful and unhappy people keep telling you to follow.
Know what? I’m happy. I love my life. I don’t have to wait until I’m 60 to be happy either. That’s more than I can say for 99% of the people who put down snowboard bums as nothing but lazy slackers.
I hope that you love your life too. If not, make a change.
- Jed
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