It is easy to feel stuck with the status quo. “That’s how things work here” and all that. Our natural reaction to that is a powerful emotion – discontent. When you feel that sense of discontent and annoyance at the status quo, don’t just swallow it and walk away.
It is worth remembering that everything that exists today, i.e. the status quo, was created by human beings just like you and me. They weren’t necessarily smarter or better – they just channelled their discontent to build things.
Choosing to build what you care about doesn’t mean success is assured. If anything, the odds of failure are extremely high. But, the odds of becoming wiser are really high too. It might not work. And, if it doesn’t, you’ll extract valuable learnings from it anyway.
A bunch of friends and I were discontented with the options available for charitable giving. We wanted something more long term, more sustainable. So, we’ve created our own. And, boy, are we struggling! I think we might have made every misstep in the book so far – we took too long to decide a name, we took too long to get our act together and get ourselves registered, we didn’t realize our first potential partner didn’t have legal authorization until the last minute, etc., etc. We’re making so many mistakes that I intend to create a series around the challenges of building a charitable organization as soon as our revamped website is up (coming very soon). But, it promises to be a very interesting journey. We wake up knowing we’re in complete control of having the sort of impact we want to have in the lives of those who were born with far less than us. And, it is quite a challenge to build a 100 year project – which is what we aspire to do.
So, if you’re feeling stuck and discontented, channel that emotion. Build what matters to you. You’ll scream a bit, learn a lot, grow, and have fun in the process. And, most importantly, you’ll realize that everything we see around us is all invented by people just like us.. about time we got to some inventing as well.
A Learning a Day 