Beware of Good Advice

       I was 17 yrs. old, and like most teenagers my parents were always trying to get me to get a “real job.” I had worked as a kid delivering newspapers, mowing lawns, pulling weeds and whatever odd jobs that I could find, but up to that point I had never had what was considered a “real job.” So, I decided to get one. I ended up finding a job fighting forest fires. It was a hard job to get and paid $22 an hour … to start! Now keep in mind, this was more than most of my adult family members were making. In the mid 80’s, this was a good paying job and one you should “kill” to keep.

 As you can imagine, I was excited to start. I ran around bragging that I would be fighting forest fires and, of course, strutted around town acting as if I was the coolest kid on the planet.

 As it turned out, upon arriving to my first day on the job … at 4 AM … I found out that I wasn’t going to actually fight the fires. To my dismay, I was the guy who walked around after the fire was out and made sure that the smoldering stumps didn’t re-ignite and cause a new fire. This job was the worst. It was at the “bottom of the totem pole” and there was nothing cool about it! They had me carrying around a big ole’ heavy-ass bag of water on my back (which was referred to as a “piss bag”), up steep-ass hills … both ways … trying to find stumps that had embers. It was miserable, to say the least. After the bag was empty, which seemed like every ten minutes, I had to go back down the hill to refill it and go right back out and do it again.

 After a few days, I noticed that my left arm was extremely itchy and irritated, and by very quickly, I realized that I had Poison Oak. If you’ve ever had it you would know that it’s NOT something you want to get, let alone when you have to traipse all over a mountain filled with ash, smoke, and all kinds of debris.

 Anyway, I was miserable. I went to the foreman and told him that I wasn’t going to be able to work for a while due to what appeared to be leprosy growing on my arm. He started laughing, pulled off his shirt and revealed that his entire upper body was covered with poison oak. He said, “ You only have a little spot of it! Its part of the job, now get back out there and get to work!” Now, I wanted to “be tough” and stick it out. I wanted to see it through, show some grit and persevere. I wanted to follow all of the advice that I’d been given about never giving up, seeing things through and all the other platitudes we hear growing up, but I didn’t. I quit right on the spot. Knowing full well that I would disappoint everyone I cared about, there was zero chance that I was going to continue working a job that made me unhappy. Thankfully I did. If I hadn’t, I would’ve never learned “good advice” is only good for you when it aligns with your goals and dreams.

When it comes to all of the advice out there that tells you to never quit, work hard and try not to let down the people you love … I say, while that may be great advice in some cases, when it goes against your soul and it causes you to be unhappy, don’t listen to it. This life is too short and too full of incredible opportunities to let “good advice” ruin it for you.

 Find something you love and have passion for. That’s my advice.