At some point, probably in my second marriage, I figured out that if you constantly feel like you are swimming upstream, and logs and debris are slamming into your face, knocking you back and threatening to drown you, you most likely are not on the right path for your life. This isn’t always an easy distinction to make. It is true that sometimes things are meant to be fought for, and the struggle is the precise experience we need for growth. But there are times when your plans just aren’t the plans that will bring you peace and prosperity (or whatever it is that you value most and are not getting.)
When I was running the nightmare otherwise known as my music store business some years ago, it was quite literally like swimming upstream against a fast moving river full of huge logs smashing me in the face. All day long. Every day. This went on for 3 years, but it felt like a lifetime. At times, it threatened to consume me, including landing me in the hospital for 4 days, only to get a diagnosis of anxiety and likely depression. It was terrible. But I had a dream, a big dream. I wanted to be the best, and build great custom guitars, and make a lot of money, and prove all of my detractors wrong. The worse it got, the more people talked shit, the more angrily I pushed forward to prove the world wrong. But I also honestly believed in myself and truly believed that this was the avenue I could use to change the quality of life for those that I loved. That was way more important than vengeance.
It was, in many ways, a great triumph. I had started a business literally from nothing. I rented a storefront with no money down in exchange for fixing the place up, and basically had a month to earn the first month’s rent. I turned that into a store with tens of thousands of dollars of inventory in just a year or two. That is not an easy feat and I am damn fucking proud of that. But, it just wasn’t to be. After 3 years of a little triumph and a lot more defeat, I made a decision to abandon ship and close it down. In the end, my heart truly was not in it. I didn’t really see myself getting a truly valued life out of it. The potential earning ceiling was low, and the effort would always be critically high.
Furthermore, it wasn’t a great contribution to the world that enriched my soul. I was simply performing service work for increasingly entitled, whiney musicians and other people with more money than musical drive. It was terribly unfulfilling work with often shitty customers and even shittier people as competition, which made the frustrations and hardships outweigh any real reason to pursue it. So, I changed gears, let it go down as pretty much an unenjoyable experience and I moved on. I sold part of the business to my tech and I was done.
Learn to drop it, let go, and put even more love into the next project
In order for me to grow, I stood right back up the very next day and filed the paperwork for the next business, which happens to be the one that I still successfully run several years later. I had done this a few times before, from my custom car shop to the fitness training business, for example. You just have to keep moving. You just can not quit.
The work that I do now is very fulfilling. Even with that, I know that the current configuration is not the ultimate goal. Hell, that’s why you are reading this blog, as I begin to experiment with new directions here. My current business (at the time of this writing) was founded upon teaching violence and educating people on the darker capabilities of humans. While that is a noble cause, it’s not what I want to spend the rest of my life thinking about. But it has been the best work experience of my life to date, and it is clearly opening more doors for me to pursue helping people in other ways outside of just fighting.
You will notice the difference immediately
Literally, it was an immediately noticeable difference when I changed streams. I went from constant struggle and turmoil, to no turmoil, by just changing business plans and verticals. I’m not saying it’s been “easy”. Of course, it’s a business and it has taken the unending hard work and sacrifice that any business takes to be successful. What’s missing are the logs smashing me in the face: the ungrateful customers, the nasty low-level competition, the constant financial deficit, and so on.
When you are on the right path, not only are you not getting smashed in the face everyday, but opportunities will open up and branch off of the path you are on. This can help in determining whether you are in that flow, or not.
As far back as I can remember, I have always wanted to be a writer and a speaker. I never quite understood how someone can make a living at that, until I had enough experiences to begin having interesting things to write and speak about. My training business morphed from teaching people how to fight, into speaking at seminars, and to writing a book, and now is transitioning into writing, teaching and speaking on more positive life subjects. The doors are opening as a direct result of the platform that I built for myself in the violence education vertical, which I built with the help of the experience I gained in the custom car business, the fitness training business, and the countless jobs I was an employee at.
I’m not trying to drive home a precise point with this article, just throwing a thought or two into my blog encouraging you to examine the turmoil you are experiencing and to follow your heart. Our plans don’t always end up looking like what we thought they would, but if you follow your heart, life can be good. Sometimes, it ends up way better than your best “plan” could ever be.
Barbell, Strength and Fitness Training: https://www.ctsmethod.com
Violence Training: https://www.patreon.com/ViolenceofMind
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