I’ve been ‘marinating’ overnight on this question from James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter. “What should exist?” is a question from Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft.

Clear’s newsletter this week focuses on resilience, growth, and new opportunities. I find it most timely as I’ve been revisiting visualization—not in the data visualization sort of way—but more in the way of using one’s imagination to create the life one wants.

Actually, as I write this, I realize we are generating data as long as there is still breath in us, so can we visualize the ‘data’ we are creating in the best possible way?

In the same newsletter, Clear quotes Gail Sheehy who quotes Dostoevsky: “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” She goes on to say, “The real fear should be of the opposite course.”

“Taking a new step”… This takes me right back to my own life where I can see how change-inclined I am. The most recent is leaving my job that I’ve held for 11 years (but in various roles throughout the tenure) opting for an early retirement to create a more meaningful second-half of my life. It means I am using my skills, my time, to help people and organizations where it makes the most sense. My childhood ambition was to become a teacher or a librarian, and I could totally visualize myself becoming a teacher AND a librarian.

“Uttering a new word”… I realize I have been doing this for almost all my life, but more prevalent as I dedicated myself to self-learning Italian in 2012 and to this day Swedish. I’ve been uttering a new word every day as I learn a new foreign language at the different points of my life’s timeline. It’s scary and it’s uncomfortable and it’s awkward, but I couldn’t imagine myself not doing it.

So, what should exist? A recognized proficiency in Swedish and this means certification and passing the national exams. Thereafter, a qualification from a Swedish university in education and library science.

P/S: You might be wondering about the picture I chose for this post. What has a beautifully-tattooed fit woman lifting a barbell got to do with “what should exist”? Actually, a lot. For what I envision to happen, am I willing to do the heavy-lifting? (It also helps if I look visually appealing, i.e., gorgeous while achieving my goals—haha!)