You Need Two Resources To Change Your Destiny. Fortunately, You Already Have Them
Make the choice to use what you already have, and you will redefine your life
I met a man yesterday who succeeded where my father had failed.
As I was walking the properties I have under contract, the owner took me on a tour of his workshop. He was a precision machinist, like my father was.
Inside his workshop, I was taken back to my own childhood by the familiar smells of machine oil and sights of various tools.
But alongside those artifacts, he had a computer setup, along with 3D scanners and all the other modernizations. I listened to this 72 year old as he discussed his CAD/CAM software and explained his workflow.
He succeeded where my father never could. He figured out how to adapt to a changing world.
My father was also a machinist by trade. He would make parts and investment casting molds for companies unable to do it themselves.
And he did pretty well for himself through the 1960s and 70s. He moved to the growing suburb of Thousand Oaks, CA. For a while, he even had his own airplane. And he did this all without a college degree.
But when the 1980s hit, the world started to change. His entire industry became computerized. It was cheaper and easier for companies to simply program in the parts and the machines would take care of the rest.
My father couldn’t figure that out. And so he withered. As his business slowly started drying up, he took lower paying jobs, then eventually signed on with manufacturing companies doing low level tasks — whatever he could do with his limited skill set.
Our family struggled. We had no discretionary funds. Our cars aged out and left puddles of oil wherever they were parked. There were no vacations for us. There was no “future.” It was not going to get better.
My father would come home and spend the evening in front of the TV, the living room floor covered with newspapers he read but never bothered to throw out. Junk piled up around the house.
And there he sat, seemingly content in his kingdom of decrepitude.
I’d ask him every now and then why he didn’t adapt to modern times and learn how to utilize this new technology.
“I don’t know how” was his answer. And that was that.
I watched as other people figured it out and took steps to modernize. Then I’d look back at him as he distracted himself night after night watching TV.
“That’s it?” I thought. “He’s content with that answer of not knowing how?”
It took me a long time to reach the awareness and honesty to realize my father’s problem had nothing to do with not knowing how.
He had the same amount of time everyone else had.
He knew other people who figured out how to adapt. He could have learned from them. Maybe he could have made a profit sharing deal to have them help him retool his operation.
The resources were there, if he chose to use them.
Instead, he made the choice to languish. That was easier. Why think about a future which could never be?
His decisions inflicted tremendous damage on us. And they affected every aspect of my life — until I broke the cycle.
My life has taken a different direction since. I could not accept his excuses. I found a way, and I blasted through. And this very issue is the core of everything I will ever teach or write.
When the excuses don’t hold up, all you are left with are the choices you make. So ask yourself: What is it that you really want?
It’s OK to not know how to do something. But if you let that stop you from accomplishing something, that is a choice you make.
Own it or don’t, but it owns YOU. Run away from it, but it will follow. It’ll never go away. It will define your life — unless you take a stand and take control.
There is a pathway to get from here to there. And even if you can’t see that pathway, you have two very valuable resources to find it. You have TIME, and you have RELATIONSHIPS with others. If you bang the two of those resources together, eventually you will find the answers.
Change “I don’t know how” to “There is a way, and I will find it” and you will be unstoppable.