GETTING = BECOMING
Here is my view on that:
Getting. I guess I don’t have to tell you much about getting. The wealth generation (how I like to call us) is obsessed with getting. When we were small, we wanted candy – and we got it because our parents thought we were so special and shouldn’t lack of anything. We got candy, we got toys, we got video games, we got flatscreen TVs, we got convertibles. We are used to getting.
Point is, getting made us want to get even more. My former psychology teacher Mr Hughes explained Freud’s model like this: „The id says ‚I want it! And I want it now!’“ I have the impression that no generation before us was so id-driven like us. We want everything and we want it now. We want sports cars and penthouses and beautiful spouses and intelligent children and espresso machines and manager salaries.
Second problem: We don’t strive for what we want. We are used to get things immediately. So, what we get is instant coffee, instant music and instant fame. We think we can get famous by posting boring details of our instant lives on Blogger. We’ll get rich by being discovered by a model scout. We’ll get happy by running into the love of our lives in the supermarket. In short: we think we’ll get anything because we believe in it.
Becoming. Let’s take a look back. The previous generation was different. There was no wealth. There was no getting. All there was is work. So people were used to work. People had to work because otherwise they couldn’t make a living for their families. Today, we don’t have such responsibilities. We are committed to nothing but our own pleasure.
Because people didn’t get, they had to work hard for things. They had to set long-time goals because the world was not instantaneous then. Our parents knew that they wouldn’t get anything from nobody. This is significant. People had to discipline themselves. They had endurance. They had a long breath. They stood up if they fell to the ground and tried another way to achieve their goals. What people had was certainly one important thing: Passion.
So, let me reveal it:
GETTING ≠ BECOMING
The biggest difference is that becoming is not immediate – it’s a process. The problem is that getting often is mistaken for becoming. We define ourselves rather by the clothes we wear, the car we drive and the things we own, than by what we do. We think we are the sum of the things we get. That in mind, we think we can become anything we want to be right now.
Instead, we should look back and see what way we’ve actually come so far. We should look more on what we DID than on what we bought. And when we set ourselves the next goals we hope to achieve in a week or two, we should keep in mind that we are not what we get but what we do.
Set up something that you want to become – not something you want to possess.
And keep in mind:
BECOMING IS NOT AN INSTANT PRODUCT.
