21DJC Day 2 – If You Are To Do Something For Free For the Rest of Your Life, What Would It Be?

This is Day 2 of the 21-Day Journaling Challenge held in Nov 2011. The challenge is now over but you can do the tasks in your own time. Visit the overview page for all the challenge tasks.

Hi everyone – Welcome to Day 2 of 21DJC! :)

Yesterday’s question was an age-old question – “What would you do if you have one million dollars?” Many of you had interesting responses. Some of you wanted to buy a nice, large house. Some of you wanted to use it to invest and grow more money. Some of you wanted to renovate your current home. Some of you wanted to start up a charity / NGO / organization that supports a humanitarian cause of your choice. Some of you wanted to travel around the world. Some of you wanted to give a portion to your family and friends, to enable them in their goals.

Whatever it is that you wrote, know that they represent inner wishes that you’ve been wanting to fulfill, but have yet to do so. Yesterday’s question was actually to draw out these innermost desires and bring them to your awareness.

And the interesting thing is, you don’t have to till you have $1 million before you can fulfill these desires.

What do I mean?

Goals represent your inner desires. One way to satisfy these desires is to achieve the actual goals themselves. However, you can only do that when you have $1 million in your arsenal (since it takes time to manifest). By having a goal that has to be deferred (i.e. you can’t work on your $1 million goals yet because you haven’t achieved $1 million), it’ll only disempower you and prevent you from living in the now.

The more empowering way is to (a) distill to those very desires and (b) find ways to realize them this very moment.

Look at what you wrote for yesterday’s $1 million question. Ask yourself – (a) What desires do these goals represent? (b) How can I realize these desires, right away today?

For example, say one of your $1 million goals is to travel around the world. In reality, you may not be able to travel to any country that you want now because of financial reasons.

However, remember that this isn’t the point. If you look at the desire this goal represents, it possibly reflects a desire to break free and take a breather, due to a prolonged period of not resting. The answer to realizing that then, would be to start taking breaks, even short vacations or just having the weekend off (see Habit #2 of 8 Habits of Highly Effective People). It may reflect a desire to be exposed to new cultures and grow from the multitude of experiences, of which you can already start doing now by getting out there to meet people of other backgrounds.

Another example – Say one of your goals is to allocate $X to your parents, as gratitude for bringing you up. You can already realize that now by sharing $Y every month, where $Y is a smaller amount than $X, adjusted to reflect how much you can spare for this purpose. You can be more generous towards them in your daily life. You can treat them to lunch/dinner/vacations, more so than you’re already doing now. Or if money isn’t a commodity at your disposal, you can do other things like prepare meals for them, write a card, spend more time to them, as acts of gratitude.

And so on and so forth the other $1 million goals.

There’s no need to put life on hold till [X event] happens. That’ll be to put off living. Think about how you can make your desires happen now. This is what it means to live in the now.

3 Important Things To Note Before Continuing

#1. Sign Up First Before You Proceed

Here’s a quick shout out – We now have over 570 official participants!! *whistles and claps* :clap: That’s over 140 new participants registered in the past 24 hours!! To all new participants – Welcome on board!! :D

For those who have not signed up yet, it’s not too late – you *can* still sign up now. Simply hop over to the announcement post, complete the 3 steps to sign-up, and you’ll be added to the list in 24 hours:

Please make sure you’re signed up before you proceed. The comments area for each day’s post is designated only for those who have signed up for the challenge.

#2. Post Your Entries in the Right Thread

Some of you have been erroneously posting your journal entries in the wrong thread. For example, posting your replies to the questions for Day 1 and Day 2 in the announcement post, and so on.

Note that the announcement post is only for sign up registration, while Day 1’s post is for posting your Day 1’s journal entries; Day 2’s post is for Day 2’s journal entries, and so on. I’ll be deleting the entries that are posted in the wrong thread from now on, as it makes it confusing for other readers. Please kindly cooperate and follow the instructions for the benefit of the community – thank you!

#3. Get Your Gravatar

You may have noticed some participants have a nice profile picture displayed with their comments. Most of you have the default PE logo (maroon red with white text), because you have not created your gravatar account.

To set your custom profile picture, visit Gravatar, register your account (Important: Make sure it’s the same email as the one you use in your blog comments) and upload your profile picture. Your picture will automatically be reflected in all your blog comments where you had filled out the same email address as the one in your Gravatar account. This is a great way to spruce up the comments section and individualize yourself! :D

Let’s now move on to the question for Day 2 of 21DJC! ;)

21DJC Day 2

Day’s 2 question is one of my personal favorites:

If You Are To Do Something For Free For the Rest of Your Life, What Would It Be?

Would you sleep and do nothing? Would you pursue a certain passion? What would that passion be? Would you be pursuing a particular craft? What would that be? Would you be traveling around the world? Would you be blogging? What about? Would you want to pursue a humanitarian cause? What would it be? Would you be writing? What about?

Update: Some readers seem to have some confusion over how to interpret the question. Is the question supposed to mean what you would willingly do without receiving money for? Or is it suppose to mean what you would want to do because it does not cost anything?
My answer? The former. If I were to rephrase the question: “What would you want to do for the rest of your life if you are never paid for this work?” In other words, your life passion. Your life purpose. Hope that helps!

Your Task Today:

Reflect and answer today’s question. There’s no word limit – whether minimum or maximum. Write as few or as many words as you want. It’s all up to what you want to express!
Share your answer. After you are done writing, copy and paste your answer in the comments area and post it there.
Check out other participants’ answers. Other participants will be sharing their answers too, so feel free to read and reply to their answers. This is a group course, so let’s support each other in these 21 days.

Look forward to reading your answers! :D

((Images: Empty book for journaling, Man with arms outstretched))