EPT
OPEN DOORS GOOD, CLOSED DOORS BAD
In life we expect that things are good when everything seems like it is ordained or destined to happen. You get into the school you want, you get to sit beside that cute girl this year or you just happen to just catch the bus. I don't think I need to elaborate further on that point, it just make sense when things just fall into place.
When you get past university and get past your first job and then have a family, you really want to 'run good' because you have this responsibility on your shoulders that you didn't have before. I've been always fearless, always able to figure things out, but in the past year I finally felt something I didn't know I could feel, fear.
JUST DO IT?
When you're a kid, you are afraid of things you don't know or haven't experienced, but as you get older, you realize that if you just try, you'll figure things out eventually or that you can live your live to avoid things that really make you uneasy. But the kind of fear that I'm talking about is when you look at your wife and kids and you wonder if you can really take care of them, provide for them them they way you wanted to.
I made choices in my life about me, and the litmus test was, 'if I didn't do this now, would I forever regret it'; and I'm not a thrill seeker, I'm a pretty conservative guy, but I enjoy having fun and I'm competitive when I think it is worth it; but more than that, I'm acutely aware of 2 things: 1. anything that is worth achieving takes small consistent steps, focus and time; and 2. you only live once. While I was quite the geek growing up and it look a long time before I had any sense of maturity or focus, but once it kicked it, that was it. When I look back at when I was 35, I realized that in 5 years I was going to be 40 and would this be the sum of my career? By any metric, I was 'successful', respected, powerful and feared in my industry (or hated ^^), but I couldn't see this being everything.
I didn't resign my position with anything set or massive savings, but enough to get things started. I had enough of a professional reputation that had enough investment money being offered, not the usual norm.
So the doors opened, destiny, I was courageous, the secret envy of my peers who didn't have the balls to do what I did.
And I walked through as arrogantly as you could be and expected that all my other successes would simply carry over, because I was that good, that bad ass.
I JUST DID IT...FML...
Then I was on no path and I tell you, when you feel like you're in a void, the only thing you can do is simply press on to wherever you think is light, you have to make yourself self delusional to do this, people call it visionary, but I'm more incline to describe it as a self preservation mechanism, cause when no one thinks you're right and you can't see the end game clearly based on any real metric or value, then your belief or 'vision' is all you have to keep walk towards, otherwise, if you stop for one second you'll like, FML, what the fuck did I just do????
THE MORE YOU KNOW...
When you're young, like 21 or so, you fall in love, and you think, 'damn, this is the girl I want to marry' and you think marriage is no big thing. So if you're really dumb, as a guy, you get married early and you just deal with all the crap that happens in begin married and get divorced when you're 40 when you hit your mid life crisis and start dating 30 year olds. But the older you get, the more you understand what marriage really entails and in doing so, you actually are more prepared to have a successful marriage, but when you're 28-30 and unmarried, marriage is like the plague, 'hell no, why would I want to get married, there is all this crap involved etc.' Ironically, it when you really don't want to get married is when you are most prepared to be married and for most men, save George Clooney, we get married, unless we wait until we're 45 and married a trophy wife.
I bring this up because when I was younger, and I had a tough decision to make, my usual reply was 'fuck it, lets do it'; which because I usually was not aware of the consequences and thus, shit didn't turn out all that right. But, lol, no regrets. But when you're like 35 and still alive and married, you've pretty much entered in the world of understanding most the consequences of your actions and you are able to make the hard choices in life, even when you know it can suck ass, but you take like a man and get shit done. Much like getting married when you understand the real negatives and also the real positives and it's not just sunshine with rainbows and my little ponies dancing around.
OPEN A DOOR DAMNIT
So I knew there were going to be tough days and hard times, but I never knew how much fear I would feel when I looked at my two baby boys and thought, fuck, if this shit don't work out I've fucked their lives. It was extremely painful to only be focused on my one start-up, even though I knew it was what I supposed to be doing and what was necessary, but, nothing I could make sense of the results I was getting. When I realized I didn't have the ability to simply work things out just blanked out most of my rational thinking capabilities. I forgot that companies take months to simply get traction, I forgot that I needed to train my staff more intensely, I forgot so many basic business truths that I became this washed up executive who had choked on some humble pie and was looking for a way out.
I didn't want the start-up to be my only project, so I reached out with every network and connection I had to set up something that could give me the best of both worlds, a start-up under way and a massive corporate position to give my family security and happiness. VP of Marketing for a massive new casino; head of audits for a massive conglomerate over a 2B project, head of a major online company; negotiating the private sale of a couple of casinos, COO of a massive joint venture. Now this is over the course of two years and each one of these positions or projects would have basically made my life easy street again. But every single time I got so close to closing a deal or a position, it would fall through, not through any fault of mine, but either there was an internal political issue, or a gov't approval didn't go through or the process got stuck on financing or the project got delayed to the point where they felt that they didn't want me involved until there was more progress as I am damn expensive. I exerted every possible angle and, for me, this was crushing as every time I thought, wow, now I can fly when I need to and not worry about every little bit of finances, I felt, like I was going to take this deep breath and just float above the void and then hire some mercenary angel staff to take care of the void below while I floated above it all.
ONE TIME!
But no, I was grounded, the doors were closed and I had zero choice but to continue to press on, to make the company work better when I really couldn't see any signs of results and I was feeling as through I was throwing pebbles at the waves trying to make a splash.
You gotta understand, I am a trained professional business negotiator, lawyers are my foot slaves and I crush contracts, I make magic and love between joint ventures and bring global peace to warring firms. And here I was, getting crushed, realizing that no matter how good and capable I am, if no one takes me on, then I'm like a painter without any canvas. And whenever these doors would close, I would be like, FML, but I would also know, 'this company ain't going to work unless I really am totally focused and this is a good thing' but I was so frustrated because I thought I was focused and I had worked harder than I had ever worked in my corporate career and it just didn't seem to make sense, nothing, the results didn't add up.
THE DOORS THAT CLOSE
About a month ago, I had one of those thoughts as I was just about to wake up and suddenly I was reciting some lines from Psalm 23, you know the Psalm written by David when he is being hunted like an animal the first king of Israel, Saul, and David writes to effect, '...as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, your rod and your staff comfort me...' thing is, I never bother to memorize it and it came to me in bits and pieces, and I thought, wow, that is strange, why would I think of that, and for the first time, I realized that I was feeling wasn't stress or frustration, but really fear that things wouldn't work out. That I didn't have any expectations any more, I was just trying to get by day by day. As soon I realized that I had this fear that I never had, I realized that yes, I'm not the superstar corporate mofo that I use to be, but I am the CEO of my start up, this is the company that I'm heading, I'm the ship's captain and this is everything I ever wanted to a chance to do in my professional career.
This is the company that I head, and it is worth all the crap, the sacrifice and everything in between; it is something that my kids will be proud that I did, it is what I will never have to regret not having gone for when I had everything to lose. This is my major leagues, this is the star league for me and because I didn't understand that I had this fear that was just blinding me to this position and everything good about it, that I had let myself be striped of everything that could make me great.
As soon as I finally got past my own ego and arrogance in having the 'courage' to do this and started to see the company as my dream rather than nightmare, and allowed myself to be a noob again and not beat myself up over it, then I could start to put the results in perspective. I saw the magic again, the frameworks, the structures; but this time not as corporate fat cat looking just for the immediate return on investment, but as the CEO who had this one single beautiful blade of steel, that maybe didn't look like a killing machine, but was this magnificent creation that I could see was going to start elegantly slicing through the competition.
It took all those closed doors to keep me from abandoning the one door that opened and fully realizing that this was exactly where I supposed to be in, a seemingly hell, but really this own pocket where I had the chance to create something that can compete and be a player in the market. It wasn't going to happen over night and it wasn't going to be a pretty process, but on so many cliche levels, family changes you, kids change you, age softens you, but if I come out of this still the hard man that I always was while able to embrace this fear and not feel it as burden, but as something of a beautiful thing, then maybe I've finally become the real business professional I've always strived to be and not some despotic corporate cocksucker that I was.
DOORS THAT OPEN AND CLOSE
The doors that open push you through the path, the doors that close keep you on it.
Rejection and acceptance are both equally good as they serve the same function to challenge and progress you. Open doors make you feel as those your are destined, but closed doors make you worthy of your destiny. No one's value is determined by another, it's only a question, are you hard enough, humble enough, honest enough and hungry enough and that is what every rejection, every failed attempt and every closed that door that forces you to press on give you.
We are so used to thinking that if things don't work it out when we did all we could, its bad, bad we didn't get into that school or bad that the project didn't work out like we planned or bad we didn't get the job we applied for, when it fact it is does what nothing else can do. Give you a worth that is only determined by you. And when that door opens, you know to go in gun blazing.
I am MightyAtom, and I am The Machine.
Happy 2012, may every door that closes on you, every rejection and set-back, make you know that some paths are only made by being a conqueror.
