Do you ever feel like quitting your job? Starting a business? Fleeing the country? If you have felt these urges (and chances are good that you have), it is very likely you’ve also felt fear and trepedation about acting on them. In my experience, there is no escaping these feelings of anxiousness or paralysis. I have discovered ways to curb your energy and inspire yourself to get past them and break through the ice that keeps you from fulfilling your desires. Let me explain:
Quitting your job, starting a business, or fleeing the country (all of which I have successfully done) all require “leaps of faith”, or gambles, that threaten to upheave your entire life. Statistics and popular culture tell us that being unemployed can render you homeless; most small-businesses fail within the first five years of being in business; and leaving the country will render you penniless in a less-than-hygenic foreign jail.
Life has told me different. I know that if I am truly committed to making something work, barring the interference of higher forces, it will invariably work out.
It is not that there is no positive reinforcement to counter the reports of doom and gloom, quite the opposite. We have Tim Ferris on TV, giving us a blueprint for success. We have Stephen Covey giving us justification to become the effective people who rule the business world. The self-help section is filled with positive messages of how you can do it…
So why isn’t it being done? Why aren’t the office buildings empty, deserted by entrepreneurial employees? Why aren’t the hotels and hostels filled to the brim with travelers seeing the world?
The leap is too daunting to justify. The mental distance we are required to span to achieve our independent intelligence is greater than our minds are trained to map out.
My experiences of the effects of these situational frustrations, when presented with them, is total peralysis: The employee’s will and reasons for leaving are put aside after a particularly stressful meeting with a passive aggressive manager. The business plans are put aside completely when a friend or family member starts pointing out its flaws. Dreams of a trip are put off until an ambiguous date in the future after a bomb explodes in a socially unstable country. In one single blow, all of the motivations are deflated…
I experienced these frustrations firsthand. I was intimidated by bosses, talked out of quitting jobs by coworkers, and told by many how my plans were unrealistic. So I posed the question: How can we break out of these habits of cowardness and justification and allow enough space in our heads to actually complete a plan we’ve laid out so carefully?
I wish there was a quick-fix discovery to share with you, or a two-week system I could lay out for you in an audiobook, but alas I have not yet found one. I do, however have some words of wisdom (as many words of wisdom as one can gather by their seventeenth year in the world) that hopefully will encourage those who have not yet made their leap, to pick up the bat and swing.
To illustrate my most important point, I would like to tell you a tale from before I left my home town, and before I began doing what I love to support myself…
When I was living in Pukalani on the island of Maui, at the age of fifteen, I made the decision to move out of my parent’s home and find my own apartment.
I was already working at a television station, had a stable paycheck (the only stable paycheck I’ve ever had), and was feeling very grown-up and adult. I knew I had to do it some time, and though I could have milked my parent’s generosity for a few more years, I was ready to become fully independent.
After letting a few key people know what I was looking for, I was, within a few days, offered an affordable apartment up in a neighborhood called “Wailuku Heights”.
I need to specify, at this juncture, that I did not own a car. In fact, I didn’t even have a driver’s license. I was fifteen years old and spent much of my time receiving transportation from others, and/or walking to my destination.
My work was in Kahului, about a fifteen mile distance from “Wailuku Heights”. It was a bit of a stretch, as I wasn’t used to walking those distances each day. What made the situation worse, was the slant of the climb to the neighborhood. The angle of the hill looked to be killer on the calves, and impossible in the heat.
After a quick drive-by of the apartment, I declined. There was no way I would ever be able to live in this neighborhood if I was going to stay car-free. The hill looked impossible to take on without a good pair of motorized wheels. That was that.
I ended up finding another place, with half the space, at double the price…but it was closer to work. I spent over a year in that apartment, and stayed even after I vacated employment at the television station.
Soon, destiny took hold and I met the love of my life, her name was Julie. She inspired me like nothing or no one had before, and it was not long after meeting her that I decided to take my trip around the world.
I eventually gave my notice at my long-time apartment, and we decided I would move into her apartment until our departure date. Her apartment was in a beautiful neighborhood known as…wouldn’t you know…”Wailuku Heights”. Once again I was faced with the daunting hill and sloping assfault. Once again I was rendered immobile, unable to take on the challenge.
One day…my fiance was at the apartment when I wasn’t. I was seventeen by now, but still had no car, and no plans to get one. I was faced with a choice: Hike up the frighteningly steep hill, or stay where I was and possibly sleep in the park across the street.
I decided to go for it.
I grudgingly purchased a bottle of water from the last convenience store on the road before the sloping of the hill begins to form, and put my headphones in my ears. “This is going to be the worst hour of my life”, I mutter to myself.
By the time I reach Julie’s apartment, I am dripping. Sweat covers my shorts, my tank top, even my shoes have somehow gotten soaked. She comes out to meet me, a loving expression on her face. “You made it!” she says encouragingly. I am smiling from ear to ear, it was the best I had felt in a long time.
Though the road was long, and the sun was hot, and it had all been worth it.
The day before I left on my whirlewind adventure, I took another walk down and up the hill. This obstacle had, at one time, intimidated me to the point of displacing my schedule. I chuckled to myself as I reached the top again. The entire trip had been enjoyable and quick. It took a mere thirty minutes to reach the bottom, and another thirty to climb to the top again.
The time spent doing the task was the same, but the perceived speed and effort was different. Each time I had made the climb back up the hill, it seemed a little shorter than the last. It seemed a little easier than the trip before it. Each time I made the journey, I discovered new ways of making the trip more enjoyable.
The underlying principle of that experience, serves as a scalable encouragment device. It sounds cliché, but wit this in my toolox, each time I come across one of the bigger leaps, it helps to compare it to my smaller choices and efforts that have ended up positive, and they are never as difficult as the brain initially calculates them to be.
The second principle I learned from this experience, is the general idea that the more times I take the leap, the more positive outcomes I can use to motivate myself to the next step, and therefore the more likely I am to take that frightening leap and, ultimately, succeed.
This article is not meant to provide answers regarding the ways to handle success, or, respectively, failure. It is only meant to act as a nudge of encouragement and to provide a starting point on the way to taking that first leap, and making that challenging decision.
My hope is that it encourages the reader to take a look at the more daunting situations in their life (like the ones mentioned in the beginning) and compare them to smaller, already completed tasks, to realize that the fundemental fears are the same. And remember, once you’ve made your decision…don’t look back.
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Found this website via your Flickr profile some time ago. I enjoy following your travels. Just remember: you DO have an audience, living vicariously (for the moment) through your adventures. Stay safe, and keep writing!
You’re a pretty wise man for 17…I’m 10 years older, and trying to find the nerve to make the decision. Every day is one step closer, but I’m starting to realize that I need to follow my heart and react to things as they come along
Solid post – thanks for making it
Nice! Thanks for telling me about this. I really enjoyed it, particularly your description of that killer hill. You seem like a really neat guy, and it makes me happy to see Julie so happy, so keep up the good work! I’m jealous of your travels.
Your 17!? You got to tell the story of how you graduated (or dropped out) early and decided to avoid college.
I agree with the above poster, I would really like to see how you were able to grow so much in the short amount of time you had on this earth. I am also 17 and long to be doing what you are doing now but I am stuck wrestling my last few months of high school, wondering how I could make money while doing what you are doing. Long before I had stumbled upon your site I was busy getting away of all the stuff I don’t need and now my room is pretty blank and I like it.
Any ideas about how I could make money while on the road from any of the people on this great site would be much much appreciated. Fair travels.