My Reality Check Bounced!: The Gen-Y Guide to Cashing In On Your Real-World Dreams - Softcover

Dorsey, Jason Ryan

 
9780767921831: My Reality Check Bounced!: The Gen-Y Guide to Cashing In On Your Real-World Dreams
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0767921836 ISBN 13: 9780767921831
Verlag: Harmony, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

It’s time to cash your reality check and re-create your life on your own terms.

In your twenties you expect to finally live life on your own terms. But it can seem like the world won’t cooperate. Roommates drive you crazy (but you can’t afford to lose them), entry-level jobs frustrate you (“Four hundred double-sided copies before lunch,”), and even a dream job can take over your nights and weekends, leaving you feeling like you are running hard but going nowhere.

Jason Ryan Dorsey helps you turn this coming-of-age crisis into opportunity. He shows you the big secret of the real world—that you don’t realize how much control you have over your life until you use it. In My Reality Check Bounced! Jason shows you how to:

Find the courage to climb out of your real-world rut
Create a Future Picture that gets you off your “buts”
Uncover opportunity and build a tag team to make the most of it
Live like you mean it, and finally cash your reality check.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Twenty-seven-year-old Jason Ryan Dorsey wrote Graduate to Your Perfect Job when he was just eighteen, and it went on to sell 200,000 copies. He has since spoken to more than 500,000 young adults and those who educate and employ them. Winner of the Austin Under 40 Entrepreneur of the Year Award at age twenty-six, Dorsey has appeared on Today and The View and in Teen People. He lives in Austin, Texas.

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1
STAND UP FOR YOUR LIFE!

We are all born unable to take care of ourselves. Living with meaning and purpose is a learned behavior.

Reality–Check Moment—
THIS ISN'T WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR!

Tiffany, twenty–four, arrived distracted and anxious at the tiny coffee shop where we had agreed to meet. Despite her stylish business suit and expensive haircut and makeup, Tiffany had the look. I have seen it so often among twentysomethings in her situation. She was frustrated and disillusioned, wondering why her life just didn’t feel right.

Tiffany thought she’d done everything she was supposed to. She made dean’s list at her college and, after graduating, landed a great job. Now she was supposed to be spreading her wings, dating her true love, enjoying her career, and going on exciting adventures. Instead, the long hours and short tempers made her feel constantly on edge and insecure. She was asking herself the question about her place in life that haunts so many talented people in our generation: “Is this it?”

She felt trapped, stuck and confused. That’s why she called me. She heard from a mutual friend that I helped people like her find their way again.

Tiffany ordered a double latte, then she cautiously confessed: She wasn’t getting enough sleep. She didn’t have time for her friends, family, or love life. She’d stopped working out. She was smoking too much. She wanted more freedom and sense of purpose. Despite working in a busy office six and sometimes seven days a week, she felt alone and lost. At twenty–four years old, Tiffany felt she was running hard but going nowhere.

“I never imagined I’d be in this position,” she told me. “Maybe I was just young and naive, but I thought everything would fall into place and I’d love my life. It hasn’t and I’m not. I’m stressed out all the time. I don’t want to go to work; some days I don't even want to get out of bed. It’s depressing. And I don’t know what to do about it. I feel so confused. Nothing in college prepared me for this. Now I keep asking myself, Is this what I worked so hard for?”

Tiffany's reality check had bounced.


WELCOME TO THE REAL WHIRLED

Tiffany’s not the only twentysomething who hasn’t cashed in on her real–world dreams. Are you no longer a kid, but still unsure where you’re headed or what your life’s all about? Do you constantly find yourself settling for the safe path, rather than chasing what you most want? Are you spending hours downloading music or surfing the Web, chatting with friends on your cell phone, or watching late–night cable TV rather than living in the moment?

Are you helplessly watching your credit–card debt get bigger and bigger, while your relationships get shorter and shorter? Are you a victim of a bad economy, a mountain of college loans, or an egotistical boss? Are you living back in the house in which you grew up, sleeping in your old bedroom, pleading for gas money? Or do you find yourself trying to share one bathroom with five roommates? Do you still not have the love life you want, the friendships you want, the adventures you want, the home you want, the body you want, the career you want, the respect you want, and the clear sense of purpose you want?

To make matters more frustrating, you know you deserve better. You’re smart. You can work hard when it matters. You know how to push yourself when you need to. You also were raised to think this was supposed to be one of the best times of your life, but it doesn't seem all that euphoric right now.

All these factors make your situation only more frustrating and, in some cases, depressing. Friends can see it on your face no matter how you try to hide it. They can hear it in your voice. You sense it as soon as you wake up in the morning. Your annoyance with your situation shows through in everything you do. You, too, might even have the look.

I know because I went through this soul–searching turmoil myself. And it’s becoming an anthem for twentysomethings around the world. I hear it from recent college grads to twenty–nine–year–old corporate executives: How can doing everything right end up feeling wrong?

While you might long for a sense of purpose, direction, love, or belonging, someone else your age salivates over a 7 Series BMW or a job in New York City; but one thing you share with all twentysomethings is a determination to create success on your own terms.

That’s what differentiates you from previous generations. You don’t want to play by someone else’s rules. You’ve seen what punching the clock nine to nine every day, sitting in an airless cubicle, playing the corporate schmooze game, and worshiping things at the expense of more meaningful dreams can do to a person’s spirit, and you want no part of that. But what do you want?


Success on your own terms:

• To be free to enjoy sunny afternoons with friends, dance when no one is looking, and laugh out loud

• To be able to travel the world and learn about other cultures, ideas, and beliefs

• To pursue a clear and meaningful purpose

• To work with people you like, learn from, and respect

• To feel healthy, loved, and in love

• To make a difference in the world

• To use your talents, energy, and creativity

• To live in a place that feels like home

• To be respected

• To feel like your life means something


That’s all part of filling the reality check void, and that’s what this book is all about.

The challenge for you is that your vision of a meaningful, fulfilling life can conflict with an impersonal real world that does not want to accommodate your needs, ambition, personality, background, and perspective. It expects you to accommodate it! This creates an adversarial relationship that can make you feel powerless and grow into frustration, second guessing, confusion, and restlessness.


BREAKFAST WITH TIFFANY


Back at the coffee shop, I asked Tiffany what she could do to make her life more the way she wanted. I’ve found that most people who feel stuck like Tiffany know what they need to do. They just haven’t done it. Tiffany answered, “I need a job where I’m happy. That would be the biggest thing. I want to look forward to what I spend most of my day doing.”

We talked about this for a while and came to the obvious conclusion that she needed either to somehow change her current work situation or to consider getting a different job. The only advice I gave her was something she had simply lost sight of in her frustration: She was still in control of her life—not her boss, best friend, roommates, or mom. Her life would start getting better the moment she stood up for herself.

Three weeks later, Tiffany and I met again at the tiny coffee shop. I was half expecting her to share some excuses as to why she hadn't done anything. Instead, the look was gone.

Tiffany was so excited to tell me what happened since our last conversation that I had to get her to slow down so I could get the story straight: Tiffany had decided that she was sick and tired of being overworked and underappreciated, so she told her boss exactly what was on her mind. At first he was flustered and insulted. Then he blamed her for the situation. “At the end of the week I was ready to quit,” she said. “When suddenly my boss walks into my office,...

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Verlag
Harmony
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0767921836
ISBN 13 
9780767921831
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
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Deutschland