My Reaction To Others’ Reactions

Well, Deseret News published a story about me today. You can check it out by going here: http://tinyurl.com/ygh2h9k. That’s the first press attention that I’ve gotten, and I anticipate getting more press as I continue on my journey. However, I thought it was very interesting to read some of the comments and reactions to my trip.

Most of all, I was surprised by the negative comments that were posted. I’m not sure why, but I never really expected those types of reactions. I mean, it makes complete sense to me that some people would look down on my trip and my idea to do it. I guess I just realized today that I’m going to have some people who really don’t like what I’m doing. Just like the comments, people might think that I’m a spoiled brat who is hard to please. People might think that I’m a mooch just living off of others’ kindness and generosity. There will also be those who think I have this feeling of self-entitlement, and that I should be grateful for what I have.

I guess it’s good for me to realize right now that I’m going to have some negative feedback. I’ve actually struggled in my life always being open about my goals and plans, because I never want to sound over-ambitious. I know sometimes when people have huge goals, that others like to tear them down so they feel justified in their own mediocrity. So, I a lot of times am not open with my ideas because I don’t want to open them up to the criticism and negativity of others.

This trip will help me out, because I’m being extremely open with everything I do. There will be naysayers and critics for what I’m trying to accomplish, no matter what I do. I need to get used to that and not back down from what it is I really want out of life.

I think what really bothers me about negative reactions isn’t the fact that people disagree with me. I just don’t like the feeling of being misunderstood. It was the same as a missionary. My biggest pet peave was ignorance. a lot of people were ignorantly opposed to something they knew nothing about. That’s the same way I feel about any negativity people have toward me and this trip. About the article, people were making these assumptions about the type of person I am, based upon my actions reported. In reality, they have no idea what type of person I really am, and so they are ignorantly opposed to what I’m trying to accomplish.

Well, it’s a good reminder to me to never be quick to judge others’ intentions or actions. The great thing about going through this trip is that it’s going to teach me a lot about people. Some people are going to love what I’m doing and are going to support me wholeheartedly. Others are not going to like it, but, you can’t make everyone happy. That’s why you gotta just not care and do what you feel is the right thing for you.

Want to know how?

As I’ve been telling people about my trip, I continually get asked how I plan on doing things. People ask me how I’m going to find places to sleep every night. How am I going to find rides and get where I need to go? What am I going to do if I can’t find rides or places to sleep, etc. So, I intend to answer those questions in this post.

In reality, I do have some ideas about how I’ll accomplish my goals. I’m of the opinion that as I meet and talk with different people and I tell them about what I’m doing, they will want to help me with my journey. The more people I can get to follow my blog, and the more people I meet, the larger my network will be to pull from. Every person I stay with, will probably know somebody else that might let me stay at their place, an so forth. However, I don’t intend to plan every single thing out about my trip.

Sometimes, you just have to act, and things will work out. If I waited until I had everything figured out about how to survive on this trip, I might never go. There is absolutely no way I’ll be able to plan everything that is going to happen. I know it will be hard at times, but I just plan and expect things to work out.

I see this trip a lot like I view entrepreneurship. I mean, a lot of people will talk about their good ideas and talk about how they want to start businesses, but then they don’t do anything about it. Really, you’ll never learn until you get out and start DOING stuff and learning from your mistakes. Too often, people are held back by their fears of the unknown or not having everything figured out.

That is what has bothered me about trying to figure out what to do with my life. I’ve had a variety of different jobs, but in addition to my jobs, I’ve also taken personality profiles, read different career assessments, and looked at job profiles online. But, we learn so much more through our experiences than we do sitting on a computer. I feel like the best way to learn what kind of things I might enjoy doing is to get out and DO stuff. The more people I meet, the more opportunities I’ll find. I can also learn from all of the different people I’ve talked to. I’m sure a bunch of people have gone through my same situation, and unless I get out and talk to them, it’s hard to learn from them.

So, no, I don’t know exactly how I’ll do everything on my trip. But, I think that if I just go out and do the trip, I’ll learn a ton from it. There will be so many cool experiences that I can’t foresee at this time. That’s the great thing about action. Just do stuff, and things will eventually work out.

Now or Later?

The other day at work, I was talking with a guy who had signed up for coaching. Now, when people sign up with a coaching company, they usually make goals for why they want to make extra income. This guy had a goal to go golfing in all 50 states. I thought it was a cool goal, so I talked to him about it. The interesting part is how he thinks his goal is contingent upon making extra money so that he can afford to do it.

See, there is a saying that comes from Robert Kiyosaki that I really like. He says that you should never say that you can’t afford something. Rather, you should ask the question, how can you afford it? By telling ourselves we can’t afford something, it requires no further work or thinking on our part. Whereas if we ask HOW can we afford something, it inspires creativity and forces our brain to work and think of solutions.

So many times in life, we find reasons as to why we can’t do the things we want to do. We often look forward to when we can “afford” the life we want to have. It’s easy for us to always look forward to the future when times or situations will (we hope) be better for us. Unfortunately, postponing actions usually leads to never accomplishing those tasks. We continue postponing them till the time is right, but the time is never going to be perfect. But, if we force our brains to try and think of how we can do what we want right now, we can often accomplish our goals without waiting for something that may never come.

That’s part of the reason for my trip. If I had a million dollars, there are two things I would do with my time. I would want to travel and experience different places, and I would want to build businesses. Before, I always thought I wanted to work hard to make enough money so that I could have the freedom to travel and do what I wanted. But, then I realized that this is the best time of my life do something like that, and that I should try to figure out a way that I can explore without having the financial means I thought were necessary.

Now, I know the path that I have chosen isn’t necessarily feasible for everybody, but the point is that if we use our brains, we can think of ways to do what we want to do now, rather than in the unforeseeable future. So, I guess the question that remains for all of us to answer is what things in our life do we keep postponing because of financial or other limitations, and how can we overcome those limitations to do what we’d like to do with our lives?

Looking Up

I’ve started reading the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” again, I forgot how amazing it is. Probably the best book I’ve ever read besides the scriptures.

I felt so good today, and I’m not exactly sure why. It could be the fact that it’s now lighter outside in the morning, and so it’s easier to get up and going. Also, I had to go and meet my friends at 9 so we could prepare to sing in stake conference. Some Sundays it takes me a little longer to get up and going. I feel so much better when I get up early and get out of the house. I think that might be something I should start trying to do. Instead of sitting in my room and being productive during the day, maybe I’ll start going to the local library or something. It just feels so much better to get out and about.

I made my weekly goals today and I’m really excited for this next week. I’m feeling a lot better about things now that I’ve made some definite decisions about what to do. I mean, they really aren’t definite, but I feel like I’ve learned a ton from all the jobs I’ve had, and I’m ready to move on. Although having all those jobs really kind of sucked, I’ve learned a lot from the experience. It has helped me to see the types of things that I really don’t enjoy, and I can see where I will be the most successful. I’m excited to apply for a bunch of different jobs and see where it takes me. I think before I would just move too quickly from one job to the other without doing a lot of research and evaluation of the jobs I was jumping into. I’m so glad that part of my life is over and done with and I can start moving on to bigger and better things. I’m excited for change, as well as having a job that I can commit to for a while. It’ll be nice to develop some sort of consistent daily schedule.

The Budgeted Nomad?

Well, I’m sick. I’m a little surprised by that, because I don’t remember the last time I was seriously sick. It was before my mission sometime. I think part of the reason I may be sick is because I haven’t been exercising as regularly as I usually do, and I’ve stopped being quite as diligent in my eating habits. I guess it could also be that I just got a virus. I guess I shouldn’t expect to never get sick no matter how healthy I keep myself.

I continue to mull around in my head the idea of this nomadic trip. I would really like to make a decision, but I just want to make sure I’m going to commit to whatever I decide to do. On Sunday I went to personal finance class that our Stake wants to be taught to every ward. I really enjoyed it, and I learned a lot. When I was listening to it, I realized that I really need to start saving and putting money away. I guess you could say, I need to start planning for my future and being financially prepared for it. That’s one of the bigger doubts that I’m having now. I mean, I’m almost 25, and I have nothing saved away. Nothing. A lot of people my age are in debt, but that’s not really an excuse.

So, if I go on this trip, it will probably only delay the amount of time until I start making money and putting it away for long-term plans and goals. See, there is one part of me that is starting to realize all the lessons that I’ve learned from my many different post-graduation jobs. The reason I kept getting new jobs is because I wanted to find something that I loved doing. I kept telling myself that the money isn’t important, and that if I find something I love, the money will follow. Well, I’m starting to realize that is true in a sense, but if doing what you love doesn’t pay enough to satisfy your daily wants and needs, then it taints the activity and you start not to enjoy it as much. I’ve been so concerned on finding exactly what I’d like to do, that I haven’t been consistent with anything. I think that a better plan is to find a job I enjoy that pays well, but that still gives me the time and freedom to explore other options at the same time. See, I could have had a part-time sales job during all of these different adventures I’ve had. Then, since I wouldn’t have financial necessity to worry about, I could more fully analyze how much I enjoy the different projects I get involved in.

I’m an entrepreneur by heart. I see opportunities, and I always get excited about trying something new. Although having money isn’t necessary to make businesses successful, it sure makes them a lot easier. There are some ideas that I’ve had that I just couldn’t pursue because I didn’t have the financial resources to pursue them.

For example, with RateMySummerSalesJob.com, I got sick of going through the website and trying to search for problems that needed to be fixed. If I could just hire someone to do the beta testing for me, I could be off and running on the project. So, although starting a business is a great and worthy goal, I need to have a job that pays well while I explore different business options. That way, I won’t even consider myself to be finicky. I’ll have a job that I do regularly, but I can just consider my different business adventures as hobbies. And that’s completely fine to me if I have lots of different hobbies.

Also, to me it’s not necessarily just the excitement of working on my own ideas that intrigues me about entrepreneurship. I think it’s the idea of taking nothing to something that sounds so fun, whether it be my idea or not. In the Utah Valley, there are a lot of startup companies, and I would love to get in on the ground floor of many of them. However, I need to have a specialty that I can bring to the table. Although I consider myself really good at fixing problems, being very organized, and having an eye for opportunity, those aren’t the kinds of skills you sell yourself on. I need to have a specialty that will make me a valuable asset to any company, especially startups. I think the best thing for me to become specialized in is sales. I like sales, and that’s the lifeblood of any company, especially startups.

So, I guess my concern is if I go on this trip, I’m just delaying making money and starting my life. However, I can still go on this trip, make money, and put it away like anything else. In fact, if I don’t have to pay for housing, my expenses will be lower, although my food expense will increase, and my travel expenses could increase as well. But, I could set up a very specific budget for my trip that I need to stay under, while still working and making money through my sales job. I’ve been feeling more and more how I need to set a very specific budget. I want to live for about $1000 a month as far as my living expenses are concerned. That seems like it would be rather easy to stay under while traveling on the road, and I could make a budget specific to my nomadic lifestyle. Once I want to return to a “normal life”, I can just readjust my budget to the different expenses that will be associated with how I live.

Core Values

While I was driving home from Vegas yesterday I was listening to this self-help book on CD. I did one of the exercises that is supposed to help you find your core values. Well, after doing the exercise, this is what I came up with as my four main core values:

Achieve
Influence
Learn
To Experience

I think those core values really show what’s most important to me. I love learning, and I’m happy when I continue to learn and progress. I also want a job or vocation where I can influence others for good. It isn’t just enough for me to make lots of money. I’d like to actually make a difference in this world. By being an entrepreneur, I feel like I can have an influence on society and others. Another thing that is important for me is achievement. When I look back at my life, I want to say that I’ve achieved my goals. I want to accomplish certain things, and a life full of achievement is a life well lived. The last core value is one that I’ve thought more and more about. I want to experience life. That means that I want to take full advantage of all the opportunities that I have, and I don’t ever want to regret my decisions or actions. This is the part of me that screams out at me to go after my dreams, no matter how silly or irrational they might sound. This is also the value that tells me to go explore and see the world while I’m young and single.

I just started my new job today with Spintek Marketing, and one of my fellow co-workers inspired me. Him and a friend decided to go on a trip and try to make it from USC, (The Colliseum) to the Colliseum in Rome, Italy without any money. Well, he said that his friend wimped out and went home, but he wanted to go through with it. He had a lot of different, random jobs along the way, but he was successful with it. He spent time in Spain, New York, and a bunch of other places.

While he was telling me that story, it re-awoke the desire in me to go travel and see the world while I still can. Ever since graduating I’ve had a desire to go places and do something, to experience life. I’ve thought of just packing everything up in my car and driving until I find a place that I would like to live. Then, I can live there for a while until I’m interested in moving on. Or, I can do what this friend did, his name is David, and just try to make it with no money or anything. See if I can survive and pay for my trip from getting random jobs along the way. I’m not sure exactly what I want to do, but I really think that I have to listen to this part of me that wants to go off on a trip. It’ll be hard for me to settle down and get serious about my life until I feel like I’ve done all that I want to do as a single guy. So, here are some of the places and things that I’d like to go and see.

Hawaii
New York
Washington D.C.
Florida beaches
Australia
Eiffel Tower
Niagara Falls
Northern Lights

Hmm, it’s actually really hard to decide where I would like to go. But, that’s the great thing about it, I don’t have to have my whole trip thought out. I only have to have one destination in mind as to where I would like to go. Then, once I make it there, I can start thinking about where else I would like to go. Really, I mostly want to see what this country has to offer. I have seen so little of my own country. I don’t have as big of a desire as some people to travel the world, because I really haven’t seen the cool places in this country. I think my first destination is Hawaii, and then once I get there, I can figure out where else I want to go.