You captain a vessel.
It’s your vessel, nobody else’s.
You’re responsible for it.
This is true whether you realize it or not, whether you believe it or not, and whether or not you take the responsibility for said vessel or not.
The less you’re cognizant of it, in belief of it, and take responsibility for it – the smaller, less capable, and less equipped your vessel is.
The more you’re aware of it, the more you understand it, and the more you take command – the more capable, fluid, swift, and equipped your vessel is.
Taking the Helm
Spiderman’s most over-used quote seems to be true – “With great power comes great responsibility”.
But what isn’t immediately clear about this quote is that attaining great power requires taking on and owning great responsibility.
In real life, you as Peter Parker don’t get bitten by a spider, get superpowers, and just need to remember to use them for good.
Instead, you find yourself in situations which require decisively taking action and being both responsible and accountable, and you step up.
It is only at that point and subsequent repetition that great power arrives.
You might say that, not only with great power comes great responsibility – but with great responsibility comes great power as well.
This applies to every facet of life, as far as I can tell.
Your Vessel
If you’ve never taken on much responsibility towards your desired goals before – you’re likely to be easily frustrated by a lack of rapid progress.
Make no mistake either, taking responsibility in one area of life does not automatically translate to another.
Becoming a parent doesn’t mean you’re going to magically be more responsible at job searching, paying your bills, being a manager, or a great employee – for example.
But, over time, you can build up multiple areas – and they can and will feed into each other well if you focus on and recognize opportunities to cross-train.
Imagine this – you captain a vessel of some sort. Imagine it. It can be a ship that sails the stars, the skies, or the seas – the type of your metaphorical vessel only matters inasmuch as you’re excited by it.
But you start out with a dinghy. Perhaps even, a raft. Something barely capable of crossing mildly turbulent currents. It’s small, difficult to pilot and requires a lot of effort for someone inexperienced. But, over time, you improve.
In fact, when you improve enough – you find yourself capable of being responsible and growing in other areas of your life. As such, you build more onto your vessel.
Given enough time, you go from piloting a raft, to building that raft into a battleship of some kind. Along the way, you gain crew (trusted colleagues and relationships), and you grow and gain trust with each mission and interaction you undertake.
You decide what the ship looks like, what the ship is capable of, what it does, and what type of ammunition it has.
Everything – everything – is completely up to you.
Your Choice
In the western world – these ideas and metaphors are not trained into us from childhood.
You are instead raised in a system that attempts to train your brain that you will be taken care of, provided for, and everything will operate smoothly so long as you do exactly as you’re instructed.
Go to school, get good grades, don’t do anything bad or socially unacceptable, get a degree, get an advanced degree, get a job. Have income, buy a house, get married, have kids, get old, you’ll have enough savings and help from your kids/the government to find yourself in a cushy home.
It doesn’t work that way.
It doesn’t work either of those ways. At least, not without a lot of work and luck.
In my case, an act of God prevented the white picket fence future – it happens, you can’t plan for it.
What you can do instead, is begin to pilot your vessel. Get more proficient at piloting it daily. When you become capable with your current vessel, build in some new capabilities and grow your ship.
If you have no idea what to do to take the first step in becoming the captain of yourself, the captain of your vessel – there’s only one question you need to ask yourself.
What do you need to do today, right now, that you want to do the least?
That thing that you’re procrastinating on right now by reading this – doing that is step #1. Step #2 is the thing that you don’t want to do after Step #1 is done.
So on, and so on, forever.
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