We’ve found a lot of people are having trouble growing up. Some people never grow up. People who aren’t growing up are blaming the outside world for their problems, not taking responsibility for themselves, have low expectations of what they can achieve, and are generally just living mediocre lives. Growing up is the most important thing you can do in your life – but how do you do it?

So we decided to write an ebook to help young adults (and anyone else) grow up more effectively. I have spent years consuming content voraciously and producing nothing. I’ve been soaking up knowledge like a sponge and have not been applying it as well as I could. I considered starting a blog before it was cool and brushed it off because “I didn’t know what to write about”. Guess what? It doesn’t matter. Start something anyway. Get feedback and adapt.

Here’s my commitment to you – faithful readers:
We will release our ebook about growing up in 3 months – by February 15th 2010
We’ll keep you updated as we go along.

What about growing up do you need help with or would like to know more about? (leave a comment below)

Say you live in a dead end town in Iowa with your girlfriend. You have no job and no skills to speak of. She is working as a waitress. You play computer games all day dreaming about how awesome you could be. Do you:

A: Look hard for a crappy job in the dead end town.

B: Move across the country to live with some friends who are making their lives awesome and are willing to help you do the same

C: Keep leaching off of your girlfriend and dreaming about being awesome.

Which of those things do you think I did?

If you answered B – you are correct. You win a prize. As a result of my doing that, I learned I actually did have some skills that were valuable (playing with Linux since early teens turns out to be useful), started my career in the tech business and got my first (real) job paying $20 / hour (many times more than I expected to earn back in dead-end ville). I worked with some really awesome developers for 2 years I think. Then I decided I wanted to go freelance (the company was unfortunately going down in flames.) So I moved again (back home – near dead end ville geographically) and learned how to work remotely.  I refused to get a ‘regular job’. I completely failed miserably for a good year and a half. I think I earned less than $10,000 in 2007. Then something amazing happened. I started earning more money than I knew what to do with.

I can honestly say that all of this happened because I burned the ships that led to mediocrity. So lets work on you now: What are you going to do to eliminate the mediocre path from your life?

You probably have some thing you WANT to do. Do you want to live in a new city? (Get in your car and go.) Do you want to get a new job? (Quit your current job… miraculously, you now have 8 more hours every day to find that perfect new job.)

Note: This takes serious gumption. (That word rules.)

What would happen if you did that? You would either:

A: Figure it out and survive, or:

B: Die.

Here’s the thing: if you don’t do it, you will also die. It will just take longer and be more painful.

If you don’t do it now, at least set a deadline for when you will do it. Then you can fret about it all you want, dilly dally, and waste your time and your life for the next X days / weeks / months, but when the day comes, you know you have to do it. Or you will die.

Don’t set yourself up for total failure,  but don’t soften the reality. If something is draining your life, you need to eliminate it from your life. Move. Get new friends. Think about what a person who has already achieved what you want would be doing in their life.

I need to do this too. I love my job(s) in general, but I need to cut some of them off because they aren’t as fulfilling as others. I need to focus on what I want, and let the rest fall by the wayside. Let’s do it together.

Here are the steps you need to do, once more:

1. Find something you are doing that is pulling you towards mediocrity.
2. Create a rough plan in less than 30 minutes to eradicate it from your life.
3. Kill off the weak mediocre activity in your life.
4. Enjoy your awesomeness for a little while (but not too long) and:
5. Start at 1 and repeat the entire process again.

Coming Thursday: How I’ve actually done this recently in several areas of my life, and what I’m doing to keep the momentum going.