I saw a quote the other day that basically said that the ultimate goal of the devil was to take away your hopes, ambitions, and goals, and in their place give you a happy, safe, secure, life of superficial pleasures until you die, comfortably. This caused me to step back and think about what I’m doing with my life. I really think that whether you’re religious or not, this quote still has a powerful impact.

I had an interesting conversation with an entrepreneurial professor a couple years back in which he asked me what I really wanted to do with my life. What were my passions and dreams? He told me that he had seen too many of his friends wake up one day in their 40s, several kids, a nice house and a comfortable job. They would suddenly become aware that they’d given up on their hopes and dreams and often then quit their job to pursue their passions. The professor, Jim, told me that I should work on this the other way around.

Take a pause here and think about your life. Graduating from college, so many of my friends and I had big, bright dreams. The world was ours, and we were going out to conquer it. But then most of us got a nice job and bam! We all had bills to pay and very little time outside of our full-time jobs. We found ourselves playing harder with more expensive toys because many of us disliked our jobs, which in return necessitated that we keep working hard to support these hobbies. Before we knew it, we are thinking about buying a house or climbing the corporate ladder. Our dreams became more of an afterthought.

We only have one life to live. Do you really want to work your whole life, having spent way too much time at your job, so you can end up with a nice retirement one day, just to then die, feeling you’ve wasted your life while your kids fight over their inheritance? A bit extreme, but hopefully the point comes across. I’ve seen this firsthand both from older people in my family and in my own self. Upon graduating, I had big hopes of succeeding in my own business. I took my current job “just to pay the bills until my real business takes off.” After a couple of failures, I found myself giving up. “Perhaps I’ll stay at my current job a bit longer; perhaps I’ll even become a manager one day.” I was falling into the lure of the middle class.

Don’t waste your one, precious life. After reading this article (and telling your friends to read it too!), sit down and do some thinking. What do you really want to accomplish in this life? I truly believe that if you want it bad enough, you can achieve it. All it’ll take is some hard work and persistence. I’m not saying you need to quit your job tomorrow to go out and attempt to accomplish your dreams. That’d be foolish; we all do have bills to pay. I’m saying that you should come up with a realistic plan to achieve your dreams. I started this blog after I discovered my passion to help teach others to become financially literate. Creating a blog was a simple way for me to get going on my goal.

What’s it going to be for you? Go back to school part-time to get that degree? Think about doing unpaid work at that dream job in order to get experience. Consider baking cupcakes and giving them away to help your dream cake business. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow–start planning your dream future today and making it happen. I’m not going to have regrets when I get older, I’ll have given it my best shot. I’m going to make my dreams become a reality, what about you?

“Fortune favors the bold” – Old Latin proverb.