This thread is sort of a general place for us to place our ideas about how we can begin to move things forward in our lives to achieve a better sense of fulfillment. My comments are based on some research I've gathered as well as thinking about my own issues and how I can better address them. I hope you'll join the thread and give some of your own ideas.
I've decided after
Brokeback Mountain, the only way forward for me to achieve some sense of fulfillment, accomplishment, and success is that I have to start doing things that make me feel happy, fulfilled and successful. I have tended to help others solve their own problems in life, and for a lot of fragile people, the last thing in the world they need to see is the rock-like person they are relying on has some problems of his own! So I have to take some time out to focus on me and my own issues.
Are you a dreamer type? Do you have lots of interesting ideas that you talk about but never really seriously implement? I've noticed a lot of people are good talkers - they recognize and complain about their problems but take few concrete steps to actually do anything about them. It's actually easier to complain, dream about doing things differently, and then never actually do them out of a fear of failure. It also means you're actually committing to do something, and that can be scary as well.
This seems even more true if you've had things fall apart before. Ideas tried that never worked seems to reinforce the negative thinking that new ideas will never work either. For me, that has been true. Heck, it's true on a smale scale with this very site. Will it work? If it does, great. If it doesn't, is it considered a failure (negative thinking) or a learning experience (positive thinking) to help me learn how to launch a site about something else, or do something differently.
So step one seems to be identifying some actual goals you wish to accomplish to move things forward. I've elected personally to start with some simple goals and see if I can build on them. It's kind of nice to feel like you can pull something off with little risk and then consider that a success and then start building on that success with some bigger successes and harder challenges! Goal one is BetterMost.
I have discovered you have to write down these things - if you keep them in your head it's really easy to keep them around as what-if dreams and not actually implement them. If I write them down, that means it can stare back at me. If I edit what I have written and add to it, now it starts looking like some sort of plan or outline. Personally I wrote it down in a text file on the computer as sort of a generic message or post, just like this one. As the idea was worked through, I revised, edited, and added to it. Sometimes things dawned on me when I sent e-mail to friends or talked about the movie with them. Any new ideas got added to the text file.
The next step was to do research - just how am I going to accomplish this goal. That meant in this case researching what other people were already doing online, discovering this has been a niche not already covered. It meant figuring out where I was going to host this, what software I would use, and what format this was going to take. If you have friends or a partner who has skills you don't, use them! You don't have to be an expert in everything.
Then I began collecting some articles and writing some content. The resource section is just links I'm finding on other places. I want people to be able to find something to do on the site until the conversations get going. I'll probably keep looking for new stuff and keep the links there, but I also realize there are other sites doing some of this already, so I suspect it ultimately will become less of a priority over time. Maybe some people who believe in BetterMost and are excited by it will volunteer to become moderators of forums already here, or will want to run a forum of their own.
The next step was getting it all online and then writing the first message on the IMDB forum announcing it. Then you sort of hold your breath and hope people will actually register and start using the system. I suspect it's going to take time. I've been involved in the BBS/online community since 1986. Sometimes it takes time for people to invest in a system or forum that is starting with very low traffic. They want the excitement of a fast moving forum. I realize that and know the best shot I have here is trying to create something with more depth than the 1000 messages a day forums elsewhere out there. I have set a goal to try and have some serious content added at least five times a week. It's sort of my deadline. I know I need one so that I don't let myself say, "I'll do it tomorrow or next week." I also know I have to find a way to promote the site elsewhere, but do it in a way that isn't sleazy.
I thought of the idea. I wrote it down. I researched it. I implemented it. I am learning from the process. I am now weighing the impact. I am going to wait to measure the successes and failures of the idea until it's been up and running for awhile.
Step by step by step by step.
So now this formula can be applied to other goals. I want to lose some weight. I want a better job. I want a better relationship. I want to go and do something different. I want to understand myself better. Whatever it is, I think this first step forward would work for these.
No more Ennis-style excuses. No more hiding behind fear or work or whatever else one uses. Time to get busy.
