What Are You Waiting For?

This Week's Summary:

Learned: Take action, now

Planning: Assumptions

Business idea: Trades

Vet Opp: Veteran Farmers and Ranchers

I met: Fuel Inc.

Stoic Quote of the Week

Your principles can't be extinguished unless you snuff out the thoughts that feed them, for it's continually in your power to reignite new ones. . . . It's possible to start living again! See things anew as you once did? that is how to restart life!

-Marcus Aurelius

What I learned this week:

We all lose our way in life. Sometimes, it is because we are changing our lives by leaving the military after 20+ years. Sometimes, it is because something tragic or traumatic has occurred in our lives. In other cases, we just have a moment of clarity that says; this isn’t who I want to be or what I want to do. All have the same result: I don’t know what I want to do now. I help my clients work through this, generally when we start working together. It isn’t an easy process because the root of discovering what you want to do is deciding what you want to become. It is an extremely difficult action for most of the people I work with because they all have an attitude of service and giving. Each of them thinks of this task as self-satisfying or selfish. I was the same way when I decided to live life differently. The shift from being whatever happens and doing whatever materializes to taking charge of what you want is a hard shift to make. One of the reasons is the imposter syndrome. A deep-set belief that we don’t deserve success. Another reason is that once you strike out on your own path, there is no one else to blame for failures and blocks but yourself. Those are two very heavy burdens to carry each and every day. How do I do it? How can you do it? You have to take a step into that direction. Movement toward what you want is always better than waiting for something to appear. The longer you wait, the longer it takes. I don’t mean there is a correlation between waiting three years from now to start it will take you nine years to get there. Now, it is no different than setting your GPS for a destination and then sitting in the parking lot. The arrival time keeps on ticking away. The time to get there remains constant. As soon. As you begin movement, you step closer to having what you want. “But, Otis, I don’t know what I want!” OK. Then, pick something and move towards it. Would you rather spend your life waiting for something to happen to you? Or would you rather spend the rest of your life moving towards something you think you want today? Movement always trumps waiting. So, move.

Planning thought of the week:

No plan can be perfect because every plan looks into the future, and when you look into the future, you have to make some guesses about what will happen. You make assumptions every day and in every action that you are taking, even if it is going to Walmart for some bananas. You are assuming your car will start, that the road is open, that Walmart is open, and so on. Assumptions are nothing more than a guess; yes, some guesses are much less risky than others, such as whether Walmart is open. When you start to put together your plan, make sure you keep a list of the assumptions that you and your team are making. A hint before you list out everything like I did: an assumption should be something that directly affects achieving the outcome of the plan, and it must be true for your plan to work.

Business idea I heard about or thought of:

Look out, all you academia; the trades are making a comeback. We are quickly starting to realize that we can’t get to our office if our car doesn’t work or that our servers will melt down if there isn’t air conditioning to keep the room cool. These types of things don’t just happen. There is some dude bending sheet metal, spot welding vents in place, or any number of things that go well beyond the typing code or designing the next A/C system. Someone has to build that stuff. You can’t assume it away with 3-D printing and robots. We need people who can bend metal and weld or pull wires for at least the next two generations or more. Tools are getting better to make these actions more efficient, but they aren’t replacing the dude building it. I looked into using a 3-D printer for part of my pocket litter(pat pend). It simply isn’t scalable. I still need to have a guy that welds the pieces together. Don’t kick the trades to the curb any time soon.

Veteran opportunity of the week:

This event is right in line with what I talked about above for a business idea, Veteran Farmers and Ranchers. It’s a full day workshop that starts today. I know by the time you read this, you will likely have missed most of the online conference. That’s OK. Go register and get on their list. Talk to someone who is involved and begin to move forward. Here’s the link, Veteran Farmers and Ranchers.

Someone I met this week:

My buddy Jason introduced me to Alex a couple of weeks ago, and Alex and I were able to jump on a couple of calls this week. Yep, you read that right—a couple of calls in the same day, in fact. That’s because Alex has a similar attitude towards education that I do. It isn’t about memorization; it’s about application or, as Alex put it, performance. That’s why Alex started his new company, Fuel. Fuel is about educating people to perform at their best, not just memorizing. Check out Fuel, Inc. here. Let me know what you think. If you are a veteran, you will be able to get access to the training for free.

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Confidence & Chasing Titles - Dr. Robin Desmore | 10x Your Team with Cam & Otis Ep.?#373.

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