The piece of advice I try and give to people who need it, is that you need to pursue what ever it is that makes you happy. Everyone I know has always had this one idea/dream/passion, that they just kind of let it sit there. I am one of those people.
But why though? I never really went after my passions before because I knew the road ahead was gonna be tough, and I had the typical want of having instant gratification. And let’s face it, that only happens to a few and I just told myself that my time would come and every thing would come back to me in the end. A few years goes by, and I begin to think that my rational is very, very flawed. I could wait for a thousand years and nothing would ever come about. That’s not what I want. I want to be happy, not wait around for it to come to me.
If you want success, you have to work your ass off. You have to do things you aren’t normally willing to do, and I think this is where I (and many others) balk at the idea of chasing our passion. I’m sure Thomas Edison sacrificed a lot in chase of his thousands of patents, not to mention probably got shocked to hell a few times. But you think that would deter him what he ultimately wanted to do? Pfft no.
Since I bought Nikon D40 two years ago, I have toyed with the idea of opening up my own studio. I have always had this intense passion for photography, and everywhere I go I always have a camera on me. Hell, sometimes I get the feeling I annoy a lot of people I work with when I talk about photography. But it’s what I love, I know if I could have my own studio, and just use a camera all day, I’d be happy.
During my deployment, I bought some studio equipment. I asked around, and I eventually settled on some pretty decent stuff. I was getting pretty stoked. I was prepping for what I really wanted to do. I also began to read about different photography techniques I was interested in, and I even began to collect photos I wanted to recreate in my own fashion. I kept reading, and toying. I wanted to do this, I wanted to do it right, and most of all, I wanted to be happy.
I balked for a while after that. I doubted myself, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to compete on the stage I ultimately wanted to get too. So I slowed down the tone of which I was going. I often wonder if this was such a good idea, but I doubt I’ll ever know. I also didn’t know if I wanted to reenlist in the Air Force, something I’ve been debating for over the past year. It took a text message conversation with someone who I regard as my Spiritual Advisor, for me to realize what I really needed to do. So I picked up the pace a bit, still a bit hesitant about it. I was and am still seeking active advise, but I’m not gonna let my pace slow down any more than it is.
Then.
I started to read/listen to a book by someone I follow on Twitter. His name is Gary Vaynerchuk. If you don’t know who he is, then I suggest you visit his website, www.garyvaynerchuk.com. The man is good at what he does, from his website:
Gary Vaynerchuk has captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine. As his viewership swelled to over 80,000 a day, doors opened to a book deal, several national TV appearances, and a flurry of speaking engagements around the world. Gary’s dual identity as both business guru and wine guy has made him the “Social Media Sommelier.” His impact on the wine world has been commemorated via his inclusion in the 2009 Decanter Power List, an index of the 50 most influential figures in the industry.
To say the man loves wine is a bit of an understatement. To hear him talk about wine, you can just grasp his passion for it. You know this is what he wants to do, and you also know that he wants to be on top of the world with it. As you can tell from the blurb above, he used different ‘social media tools’ (God I hate that phrase), to let his passion be known through out the world. And in a way, I want to do the same thing.
So I started to read Gary’s book, Crush It!. I didn’t really take it in at first, because I had the notion it was some dopey self-help book that’ll help you get the instant gratification that we all wanted. So I put down the book and got the audiobook version where he was the one reading it. It was then that it just started popping together. The same passion he does with his WineLibrary TV stream, he does with the audiobook, and I really started to get what he was saying. And he kept it real. He repeated what I said above, you’re gonna have to work your ass off. It’s a little different hearing the advice you know and tell yourself from someone who a few years ago was pretty much in the same pot as you.
And even though I’m only half way through the book, I’m pretty stoked again about what I wanna do, what’s gonna make me happy. It’s not gonna be easy, it’s gonna suck for a while, but I’m sure I’ll have what I need in place to get the job done, done right, and let me keep my passion afire. I already have some ideas what I’m gonna do, and how I’m going to do it. Hell, I already have some in place.
I wanna Crush It!
(First Chase Lisbon, now Gary Vaynerchuk. Who’s gonna be next on my list of pure awesome?)
