Hi, my name is Philip Volna.
If you’re reading this, then you are one of those people who did not choose to be born. You didn’t choose your name, family, school, college, or work.
Depression that leads to suicide has always been in close correlation with the purpose of life of an individual. The integrity of life consists of 3 simple rules:
- Know what you want
- Know why you want it
- Know how to get it
How simple, huh? And yet, it seems so out of reach.
My mission has always been to figure out all three.
My goal is to teach you what I learned so that by adjusting my example to your reality, you can define your life path and live a successful, fulfilling life without regrets.
Life to Make is about understanding what you want from life, figuring out why it matters to you, and learning how to achieve what you want.
Daring to ask
I love to dream. I have always been a dreamer. What attracted me was asking open-ended questions no one in my surrounding dared to ask.
Soon enough I noticed that people do not like these questions. People hate them. They make you question your reality and why you do what you do.
I could hear people lower their tone when they desperately tried to come up with an answer. Very often no reply would follow.
“You know how the things are going. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Wait and see.”
They were scared, disappointed, doubtful, frustrated. They could see no hope and future for themselves. I may not have heard the answer but I could definitely feel it. Deep in my heart I felt what these people were going through, why they do it and how they do it.
The harsh reality
As time passed, I learned to understand it. Everybody has enough live cases to see it, feel it and understand it. You don’t need to be a psychologist, Ph.D., or any other expert. You just need to be brave. And I was.
“What are your goals?”, “What are you planning to achieve next year?”, “Have you thought about your life/job/relationships? How do you see it?”, – were some of the questions I asked.
I loved to let my imagination do its job and I could come up with some, indeed, perfect scenarios of my life. It was a fun thing to do. My friends did it as well, we would do it together. As we dreamed we could feel this magic in the air, all the joy and happiness of what could be achieved if we had superpowers.
And then… The reality would hit us straight in the face.
Only later on I noticed that there is something wrong with the reality. My dreams were perfect. I was okay with them. When we would gather our young consilium again to be seduced by the world of dreams, I noticed that we ended our conversation differently. Thinking differently.
“Ah, well, if only it was possible”, “In your dreams, Philip, in your dreams”, “Dreaming is not harmful”, – were the phrases I heard.
I admit, I had some fancy rose-colored glasses that I wore every day. And each time such a phrase would leave a crack in those glasses. Everybody would tell me that it was high time I had taken them off. “The world is black-and-white”, – my relatives, friends and other people would say. Be realistic. Grow up.
Learning the mindset
And I’ve grown. When I lost my father at the age of 14, finished school and went to the uni at the age of 17, found my first, second, third job, failed my first relationships and entered the new ones, was scammed trying to rent a flat and after many other events I’ve become more realistic. Glasses?
My rose-colored glasses broke. And I was incredibly impressed by what I saw. The world was neither pink nor black-and-white. It is actually colorful. The color palette is so diverse that it cries for you to take the brush and start drawing.
When you take a brush to draw, there are several things that matter:
Why you took the tool
Is it because you have been visualizing, dreaming and now you have a more or less clear picture in your head of what you’re willing to start drawing right now?
Or you took the brush because you’ve got nothing else to do and you just need to kill the time scribbling pointlessly?
What you are planning to achieve
Do you want to make some money? Share your picture with friends? Or simply being proud and happy when you look at it?
Or maybe you pursue no goal and after you’ve done you will throw the scribblings into a trash bucket?
When you are planning to achieve it
Do you feel this picture is just a start and you want to be consistent with it because you simply enjoy the journey? Do you want to finish this picture today, in a month or a year so that you can move on?
Or maybe you don’t stick to a particular timeline and, fairly speaking, you don’t care?
Where you plan to draw
Do you have a piece of paper to make your image come alive? Or maybe you don’t, but you’re so determined to find a way to do it? And if there is no way, will you take a rock to carve your story on it and thus making the way?
Or maybe you’ll abandon the idea of drawing and go watch thousands of stupid Youtube videos instead?
You need to have the courage to make the life that you want
Like I said, you do not need to be an expert. If you have ever dreamed, if you dared to ask questions or, at least, you had them pop up in your head from time to time, you can make a significant positive change in every aspect of your life.
I was never happy with what my parents, friends, society or system dictated me to do. It required enormous effort to disconnect from them and stay a curious boy that has never been and will never be broken. They tried to teach me how to live their lives but I simply wanted to live my own life.
Like Keir McLaren said [paraphrased], “The world doesn’t need other them it needs you.”
Big things start small. If you’re already questioning your lifestyle, relationships that you’re unhappy with, your job or anything else you’ve planted a seed. Let it grow. And as it grows, be the gardener, the landscape designer, the artist.