I play the game, so I feel I know a thing or two about it. The game is self-deception. Case in point, there are too many mornings I have woken up and gone to work at a job that I say I “love,” but I really don’t. The work can be enjoyable, and the people I work with are good folks, but the job itself is not. I mean, it’s not the type of job that gets my blood pumping and my mind excited. At one point, it may have, when I first started working there but not anymore. Now, the days all run together, the work is often intolerable, and I do not enjoy the work anymore.

The game is that I continue doing it because I have convinced myself that because I am good at it and have been doing it successfully for so long, it must be what I was meant to do. This is self-deception. Just because you’re good at something or you have been successful at it for a long time does not mean it was you were put on this planet to do. Maybe doing that thing, whatever it is, can be a means to an end or a way to make connections. Often, these jobs are just ones we fall into because we were “in the right place at the right time,” or we were conditioned to think it’s what we were best at, or we knew someone who knew someone.

Well, welcome to the self-deception game, and it’s a crappy game that you will never win. The only way to win is not to play. The idea that just because you’re good at something or successful at something means you were meant to do that thing for your entire life is hogwash. Think about it. We all learn we grow, we find new things we like, and many times things we used to love we just don’t anymore.

Self-deception is a game that always leads to unhappiness and unfulfillment. You have to get out of your own headspace, get out of the game, and get real with yourself to understand that passion is what should drive you. It should always start with passion. Find those things that you are passionate about, and try them all. The ones you are good at and passionate about are the formulae for happiness and success on a whole other level.

I am doing this right now by hammering out these blog posts. I had gotten sucked into the self-deception game for a long time and put writing on the back burner because I was in a job I thought I was supposed to be doing. I am good at my job, really good, and have been successful at it for 20 years, but I have concluded that I do not want to end my life doing that job. I have no passion for it. I do it now to maintain my current lifestyle and work on my writing, but my writing is becoming my passion.

In reality, I want to share my thoughts and ideas with the people of the world that might like to hear them. That is the end game I am passionate about these days, so that is where I am going. Writing is my revitalized passion. I am a writer, and a writer is what I want to be. So look out, world, here I come.