Build your life like you’re building a house.
I like this metaphor, this way of looking at it.
I got inspired by seeing a Youtube series of a guy building a log cabin, mostly by himself, with some help, and he just filmed the process.
The log cabin building series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXk8bfcxoc0&list=PL4Mh08dMZMVwB0nhsI6mkfq7kYOb5Tu4T
Condensed single-video version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_6b_cwuB6A
And there’s something that just seems so good about being on that path.
It’s like you have a vision for what you’re building.
If you’re going to build a house, you have to have some kind of idea of what you want to build.
And then there’s this really long process of going through all the steps.
And you really have to get into the process and enjoy the process.
It’s so long.
But you can be building something and it’s not there yet, but still be enjoying every step along the way.
Like you are just happy to be working on this thing.
It doesn’t matter that this partially finished house, maybe this pile of logs, and all this basically junk- I mean, it has no value until it’s actually finished as a house.
But even long before it’s finished, just the feeling that every day you are going to work and getting closer to some kind of vision coming true.
I find that very satisfying.
So to build your house, you need to have some idea what you want it to be.
And this was difficult for me for a long time, because I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted.
I only had kind of a vague vision of what I wanted my life to be.
And still, I think some people go overboard in being overly focused on getting an exact goal.
Like “I want to have this very specific thing”, with numbers, and “I want to have this amount of money, and be living exactly like this.”
I think that can go too far.
Because we really don’t know what the future’s going to be.
But having some kind of a clear idea can help us have something to work towards.
Just with the idea that it can change.
So if building a life is like building a house, then it’s like we don’t really know how to build a house.
It’s not like we’re like a professional builder and this is our tenth house that we’re building.
This is like we are beginner builders who are building our first house and our only house.
And that’s life.
So it’s like we’re learning how to build in the middle of the building process.
And so if you’re somebody that doesn’t know how to build a house, you can’t have an exact vision of exactly what everything in your house will be like.
Because you have to learn all these things about structural integrity so it doesn’t fall down, and how to get proper plumbing, how to get the proper heating and electricity or whatever so it doesn’t burn down, and all the many little details that come with making a successful house.
Those are things we have to learn as we go.
We have to be open to learning more and changing our view, changing our vision.
But at the same time, we can’t build a house with absolutely no vision.
It’s like “Well, I’m just going to start piling stuff, making a pile, and see what happens.”
We have to have some idea of where we want our next step to be.
And so as long as we have some kind of vision like that, I think there’s something so satisfying about just each day knowing that you are working in that direction, and just enjoying the work along the way, that you are moving closer to the life that you want.
And that’s your job for today.
Your job for today is to get a little bit closer to the life that you want.
Maybe it’s cleaning up various problems that are interfering with the task.
Maybe it’s building out some component that will go together to make this vision.
Maybe it’s putting the grand pieces together, the overall structure of the vision.
All of these things.
And then there’s the weather.
Some days you have you have good weather: maybe you want to go out and do your outside work.
Some days, bad weather: maybe you want to do some indoor work on some small things.
You got to repair your tools, sharpen your tools.
And so this metaphor can be taken pretty far, I think.
And if you don’t want to build a house, you could make it a ship, too.
That’s a nice metaphor too.
But you have to build it.
The idea of building, I think, is very well connected to this idea of working.
Like, why are we working?
Why are you going to work?
Why are you putting in work at all?
You want to build something.
You want to, at the very least, move away from bad problems.
You want to avoid the worst problems, like having no money.
But then you also want to move towards something you want.
And in a way, I think we can see that, really, as building the future.
So I’d love to hear what you think of this, and especially if you have any other kind of metaphors.
What kind of house do you want to build?
Or what else could you imagine building?
And use that as a way to imagine building a future life.
#buildyourlife #lifebuilding #buildalife