The vast majority of us are prescribed a formula for life from the day we are born. Have great grades and study hard in school, try and get a scholarship from one of the best colleges so you can graduate and either go to graduate school or start working your typical salaried job in which you are paid hourly or with a salary for your time. This is the default life almost all of us have been shown as “the way”. In reality, in order to have a fulfilling life, you must live by design rather than the default process. You will be questioned, your ideas may be rejected by those around you as implausible, and there will be times where you feel like giving up and starting the default process by getting a “good job with good benefits”. Don’t give in and keep moving forward! Giving up on your dreams looks something like what I will describe in the following paragraph, and we’ve all seen many people around us suffer this fate due to their fear of rejection and lack of action. This is called the opportunity cost of taking no action which simply means you are inherently taking risk by not pursuing your dreams even if you think you are avoiding risk. Here is a story demonstrating why:
A story of conforming to the default process
Johnny was a hard worker but never excelled in school very much. He was more interested in sports and took a liking to baseball from a very young age. He worked harder than anyone else, always practicing hitting off a tee in his backyard from a young age, having a catch with his dad, or playing games with his friends at the park. In high school, Johnny still didn’t have much interest in school but was the best ball player on his baseball team. He routinely showed up to practice to warm up, stretch, and take batting practice way before anyone else even left the locker room. After practice, Johnny would go to work at his local sports store and work until after dinner so he could start saving his money young. He did this for all four years of high school and kept all of his money in his bank account. By the end of senior year, Johnny had a few offers to play baseball in college. He had decent enough grades that colleges looked past it and looked at him as more of a baseball player than a student.
In college, Johnny played well and worked just as hard. His major was business because he was told that was the easiest major to pass and all of the professors would cut him slack because he was the star of the baseball team. He knew that if given the opportunity he wanted to play at the next level as he was one of the best players on his team. Another strong passion of his was helping others get better at the game. He routinely coached his teammates on off-days on how to improve certain skills. He even began his own YouTube channel which grew to have a decent following by people of all ages learning from Johnny’s tips and advice. Johnny’s coaching became more and more popular to the point where hundreds of people started to ask him for tips and advice directly through texts, DMs, and YouTube comments. Johnny compiled all of his general teachings into his YouTube channel and referred people there to look for answers to common questions and techniques. Rather quickly, he began to realize he may have a business opportunity here and he loved the idea of it! Soon he began to take zoom coaching calls and have lesson bookings from people in his hometown. He knew he could grow the business if he gave it the time and effort it needed. At the same time, Johnny was getting ready to declare for the MLB draft. During a big game towards the end of the season, Johnny made a huge diving catch that resulted in him twisting and buckling his knee. Johnny writhed in pain on the floor as the medical staff rushed over to him. The doctors determined that he had suffered a terrible knee injury and could never play baseball again. Johnny was devastated.
It was at this point that he had two choices. He could pursue his passion of coaching baseball players, growing his brand, and making a name for himself in the field he loved so much, or he could get a good job with good benefits. Johnny had a lot of money saved up from all his years of working from high school as well as his continued work in college, but not enough to feel safe in taking what was perceived by himself and those around him to be the huge risk of pursuing his coaching platform full-time. At this point Johnny was almost 23 years old and his parents encouraged him to start looking for a good job with good benefits so he didn’t have to worry as much about money, insurance, or anything like that. With pressure surmounting from his parents, he found a union job that paid over 50k a year with great health benefits and took it. He swore to himself he would never let the dream of growing his baseball coaching business go and continuously said to himself he just needed a little bit more money to feel secure enough to pursue his dream. 5 years went by and then another 5. In what felt like 100 years of monotony, Johnny was now in his mid-thirties making close to the same money and no closer to his dreams. The harder he worked the more miserable he became and his dream started to feel like a distant memory. His attitude began to shift from ambitious and charismatic to bitter and resentful. Johnny hated his life and his decisions, and lived with the regret of his inaction for the rest of his life.
Sound familiar?
While a little extreme, this story demonstrates what most people go through in their lives. They have aspirations to do great things but yet let fear and pressure force them to make a decision that feels safe but costs them dearly in the end. The sad truth is that most people have similar stories to Johnny in that they have dreams, let people around them tell them that their dreams are too big, get kicked around by life a little, and then give up and conform. Johnny’s injury was a metaphor for life’s uncontrollable but inevitable setbacks that will cause you to recalibrate and reach your dreams a different way.
After Johnny’s injury, if he had simply asked himself “How can I grow my coaching business?”, rather than let everyone else tell him he can’t grow it he would have found a way to succeed. With the money Johnny had saved up from working hard throughout high school and college, he could have simply Googled ways to earn more money. He inevitably would have stumbled across things like the stock market and real estate investing, as well as side hustles and literally hundreds of other things he could’ve used to grow his wealth to stabilize himself financially while at the same time grow his coaching business. Johnny let everyone around him get him hyper focused on instant money and benefits so much so that he completely forgot his true purpose, dreams, and aspirations in life. With a few years of hard work, smart investing, side hustling, and networking, Johnny could have successfully grown his coaching business in any way he would have wanted to. He could have expanded and promoted his YouTube channel, started a website, opened up coaching and training locations, and hired people to do many of the day-to-day and administrative tasks for him so he could simply focus on teaching baseball which is what he loved.
By not having an open mind and not pursuing multiple paths to reach your goals, you will likely end up being like Johnny. Always ask yourself “How can I do this?” whenever you are presented with something that seems insurmountable at surface level. If you conform to a default life set for you by societal norms, you are inherently taking the biggest risk of all which is to live a life full of misery, resentment, and regret. Go out and do something awesome! Everyone is capable of achieving their dreams and it all starts with mindset. How will you design your life and what will you do to get yourself there?