The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

April 25Your Unfinished Work

So long as we love life for itself, we seldom dread the losing it. When we desire life for the attainment of an object, we recognize the frailty of its texture. But, side by side with this sense of insecurity, there is a vital faith in our invulnerability to the shaft of death while engaged in any task that seems assigned by Providence as our proper thing to do, and which the world would have cause to mourn for should we leave it unaccomplished.

Nathaniel Hawthorne—“The Artist of the Beautiful” (1844)

Do you ever wonder if the world would mourn your loss because you did not complete what was your “proper thing” to do?

That's a lot of pressure, isn't it? But maybe that's the kind of leverage we need to get over our fear, bad habits, or lack of motivation.

If you don't fully commit to your dream, what will you leave incomplete in this world? Whose life will you not enrich because you were afraid to put yourself fully into the work you were meant to do?

This is not a call to embrace your mortality. You may be in your twenties and have it all figured out, or you may be in your sixties and wondering, “Is this all there is?” Or you may be somewhere in between wondering why your boat didn't come with much bigger paddles.

No matter; today you can choose to love life for itself. Either embrace your unfinished work of art or settle for living with the results defined by the dream of nobody in particular.

Challenge Question

1. What would make today amazing? ...