The Artist Unleashed: WHY DO YOU DO THAT THING YOU DO? by John Davy

Have you ever woken up and asked yourself the question Why?

If you are anything like me, then you will have asked the question, why do you do the thing you do?

I have to start by saying, that on the whole, I enjoy what I do and the challenges life throws at me. I love being in the company of others and at the same time am perfectly happy in my own space. I find working at home a pretty easy thing to do, and for the most part, end up doing too much rather than too little. I like the fact that I walk the dog at a time that suits me (as some of you know when you catch me on the phone, or see the pics on twitter).

It is equally a fact that it cant always be like this.

Life has this habit of not being ideal all the time and I believe you have to go through some rough times, to get to the good times.

I have spent periods of my life when I have been desperately unhappy. A trait of my personality (that I am grateful to have!) allows me to understand and visualise a time when I won't be be unhappy (even in the depths of despair), and to realise that all things in life are just a period of time.

The bad moments always come to an end.

The fundamental thought process here is as follows:

If you are still breathing, then you have a chance to make a difference.

So enough of this Maudlin around!

In my working life I have on more than one occasion not been happy with my lot.

On one of the more recent occasions this meant I got up off my butt and relocated back to my native county of Norfolk. Over the next 18 months a reinvention came about and the words that you read today are the very latest phase of that ongoing change.

To cut a long story short, I started to ask myself the question, “Why do you do that thing you do?”

The truth, I came to believe is that life is too short to do something you hate, and therefore something had to give. As things went on and I got to understand some of the tricks that makes this thing we call the internet work. I realised that the ability an individual has to publish content, really did give me an opportunity I could grab hold of on a number of levels.

And so what can I (and you) do?

I realised that when someone is metaphorically punching you in the face and then laughing when you bleed, that there is actually something you can do about it.

I also realised that I could write a book about how you might go about that.

A book that is designed to help you understand why a person begins to deeply think about “Why do you do that thing you do?”

Then from a perspective of personal experience, to start looking into the reasons why I, and therefore others, put off doing anything about it. There are a multitude of reasons that once you understand are fairly obvious. (They do need to be overcome and understanding them for what they are is a good first step!)

The next question I asked myself was, what does it take to actually start on a new path in life. The short answer to this is to take a step. Just one step, and then you will have made at least a start.

Others may comment on this next section, but I do consider myself to have an ounce or two of intelligence and understanding. Having said that I was not brilliant at school. For the longest period of time I held on to the idea that “I knew enough to get by”.

The last 18 months has proved that thought to be unwise. I have totally re evaluated my approach to opting in on the vast mass of information, tools and help that are freely available to improve that thing you do.

The next thing I looked into is the fine art of failure. Everybody fails. Not everybody goes public with the fact, but we all do fail. There is no shame in that.

At least you tried!

The importance of this part of your life is to work out how you are going to deal with failure and move on.

This can lead onto a feeling that life is a constant one step forward and a couple back. Chapter 6 in the book gets into the meat of this section and offers some examples of what can happen and how you might deal with the emotional set backs when they come … And they will!

Like any period of change you tend to go through a process of slow understanding of where you actually are in the world .

It does take time.

It can seem a bit of a dark period, certainly on getting a real comprehension of how things work out. Then one day, you start to see the light. That day for me was the realisation that I really wanted to publish for myself and others.

So here we are.

Make it your business to do exactly the thing that will make you happy

The rich rewards for this are varied, and not just money. In-fact there is no super easy way to get that bit, you really do have to hustle! (Sorry.)

Is the reward to be happy? Ask yourself that question?

If you can answer that question in a positive light, then you may well get some value from reading.

“Would your boss punch you in the face and then laugh when you bleed?” is a book about getting out of the dark and into the light. An idea or two on how to dig yourself out of a working hole and live a better life quality on your terms, starting today.
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Bio: John Davy lives in Norfolk which is just to the North East of London, in Great Britain. He is a blogger and hopefully by the time you read this will be self-publishing a magazine. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.