This is a story about me in the past and a continuous post from Three Things to Know before Embracing an Entrepreneurial Life. I was lost among skills and certificates I collected along my school time. I wish I asked these questions earlier than before because these below questions are “the life shaper” for me. I am today is the result of my success to answer all these questions. I started by questioning:

(1) ‘What do I want?‘ it would surely shorten the process in zigzagging. And when you need to zigzag along the way, you will be zigzagging within the zone. I would suggest making a list of ‘What do I want in life?‘ on a piece of paper. List them all down. My list was mentioning these: “success, independent, rich, help others, travelling, learn new languages, …“. Although I had no clear idea what a success really means at that time, it was my number one on the long list. Next step is to ask again:

(2) ‘What exactly do I want if I am only allowed picking just one from the list?’. I remember I could not answer this directly because, in fact, I didn’t know what I truly want in life. I simply want to be happy. And to me, happy means financially free. Free to travel. Free to help others. Free to set my schedule. Instead of answering that question. I came up with another question:

(3) “How can I free myself to get to my happiness?“ It took me years to answer this simple questions with many pauses in between. When I marked the words from the list above, I could see a valid message to what I want. It is actually F R E E D O M. A freedom to set my routine. A freedom to monetize out of my passion. A freedom to a money source so I can help others with ease. And the question didn’t stop there. I came up with another one:

(4) “What passion do I have or What do I like to do for life?”. Again, I had no clue how to answer this because I was set to be a generic human. I like many things but I didn’t dare to commit to one passion. I like the title ‘Multi-skilled person’  attached to my portfolio so I could apply for any job I liked.

I failed to commit to one passion. And that made me zigzagging even more. I kept doing corporate jobs. From one office to another. I keep my ‘multi-skilled‘ pride just to earn a good monthly income with benefits like fully-covered insurance etcetera. So, by being capable of many things, I might have added extra value to most colleagues at work and I wowed my boss for a future promotion. I was once a short-minded person.

If you want to earn your freedom and fulfilment, there is no better way than start asking yourself those above questions. The sooner the better.

Image Credits: Beatriz Pérez Moya