Happiness is a Decision Not a Destination

Lately I’ve been wondering, what if I get everything I’ve been working for and it doesn’t make me happy?

I always remember this question from Inky Johnson, “what’s more important on a mission: what you get or who you become?”…Even tho I know the process is more important than the destination, I can’t help but wonder how I’m gonna feel about the end results.

Will it be fulfilling? Will it be worth the time I sacrificed with my sons? Will it be worth the financial mazes I put myself in over in over again? The stress of watching other ppl’s lives on social media and knowing I could have consistent tropical vacations and a high-rise apartment if I wasn’t trying to build a media company…. Sometimes I’m surprised I still have hair 😂

I also wonder if I'm fooling myself by thinking that there is an “end result” or that “the end” actually exists. I’ve hit many goals in life and it never stops. These days I expand my goals as soon as I get remotely close to reaching them. Maybe I don’t feel challenged enough. Maybe I’m afraid to reach the finish line. Maybe I know that when I’m done running this race I won’t have anything left to distract me from myself. Maybe I’ve been running from myself for so long that I’ve convinced myself that I’m chasing something.

I don’t have the answers but I need to tell myself something to stay grounded. So I’ll roll with this:

The present moment is all I truly have. Tomorrow is a fantasy that I may plan for but I can’t control. If I can’t enjoy this moment, with all I’ve overcame and accomplished in life, I probably won’t enjoy the next. We’ve been conditioned to associated happiness with love and the completion of a journey. Graduating, buying a home, getting a job.

The diploma or degree is great but the focus it took to obtain the degree is more impressive. The house is great and the dedication and ability to sacrifice and more impressive. The job is great and the metal fortitude to keep applying after all the decline letters and failed interviews is more impressive. Even if I don’t get the “thing” at the end, I’ve still became a better person thru the process. That’s the part that should be celebrated. That’s the part no one can take. So that’s the part I should find happiness in. The process. Embracing everything that comes with every moment and not looking to the finish line.

Happiness is a decision, not a destination.

Don’t Look Up

Self-belief vs self-doubt.

The desire to continue vs the urge to give up.

That’s the daily struggle after you decide to chase greatness. 

Waking up everyday and going to work was so simple. I damn near miss it. Not having to overthink my daily tasks. Not having to make a million decisions everyday. Not wondering what my life would become. It was simple. Now, everyday, I wonder if I’m making the right choice by deciding to chase my dream. It feels so far away. There’s no way to measure the distance between here and the finish line. People around me believe in me but it’s easy for them to believe because they don’t see the vision that I have for myself. Nobody realizes how high up I want to go but me. Everybody is applauding my progress because I made it farther than THEY thought I could. They think I’m winning the race and I’m not even at the start line yet. Not for my vision.

Imagine running a marathon for the first time. 26 miles. You hear the number and maybe you can even imagine it but running it for the first itme is diffrent. You start and everything is going great. People don’t expect much of you because it’s your first time so they’ll cheer for you no matter how far you go. You just keep your head down and run. You don’t think about how far you’ve ran, how far you have to go or how much time has passed. You start getting tired and to tun your headphones up to distract yourself from the fatigue. You think about your favorite movie to distract yourself from the pain in your legs. You try to think about anything you can to keep yourself from checking your distance…until you can’t. You run out of things to think about. No more distractions, just pain and fatigue. Then you look up. And you realize you’ve made it nowhere. Majority to the race is still ahead of you. That’s when the self-doubt creeps in. The people are still cheering. But no one has to run that race but you. And you don’t know if you can.

My advice to anybody chasing a dream:

Keeping yourself with planning, doing and celebrating. Keep your head down and work until you cross that finish line. But whatever you do, don’t look up.

“You’ve been searching for the key for years, But the door was never locked.”

Before we are born, society already has a plan carved out for us. They point us in the direction they’ve chosen before asking us what we want to be. And then when they do ask us what we want to be, around 1st grade, they make us wait another twelve years to pursue our dreams. Not to mention the $60k in student loans attached to them. 

I went to school to get a job..just to get a job so I can pay for school

-Brandon Alexander Williams

It’s a trap. In school, they spend more time teaching us what to think than how to think. Then one day you wake up. You realize that you shouldn’t have to wait until you're 65 to live the life you want and die at 85. Bussing your ass at a job for 40 years to live freely for 20 doesn’t sit right with you. But you don’t really see another way. You get a check every two weeks. You know your time and effort is worth more and most likely you work harder than your boss to make half the money. But...it’s the most money you’ve ever made in your life. It’s enough to cover all your bills, kick it on weekends and maybe travel a few times a year. It’s enough. Why give “enough” up for the unknown? The world trained you, just like they trained me, to believe the door is locked. 

So many of us fear the unknown. We tell ourselves that if we take this risk and start this business, it might fail. Many ppl will tell us to block those thoughts out and think “but what if it works...what if everything goes right?” Easier said than done. But how about this, keep those unsettling thoughts about the unknown. But also think about the known. One thing we know for sure is that if you don’t take that risk, it’s 100% guaranteed that it won’t happen. Taking the risk with the unknown at least gives you a chance. You might make it, you might not. But not trying guarantees the failure of an idea. Now what’s more scary: the known or the unknown?

Let’s break down some more known factors in our lives. Let’s say you have a job making $70k a year, $60k after taxes. $60k brings you $5k a month and  $2500 on your check every two weeks. If you work Monday thru Friday, that's a 10 day pay period. Meaning you make $250 a day. Let’s imagine instead of getting paid bi-weekly, you were paid daily. So every day you clock out, your boss is waiting to present you with $250. Great day at work? $250. Bad day at work? $250. Slacked off all day? $250. Bussed your ass like never before? Still…$250. No matter how hard you work, you’ll be paid the same. In what world does that make sense? What makes even less sense is that you’re trading your time, usually 8 hours a day for this $250. It’s an unfair trade. In fair trades, the items are of equal value to the parties involved. So if someone has a change of heart, a cancellation of the trade can be negotiated and items can be returned to the original owner. But if you give that $250 back, your boss can’t give your 8 hours back. He couldn't give it back for a million dollars. Hell, Jeff Bezos couldn’t even buy your 8 hours back. It’s gone forever and most likely that $250 is already gone too. Your gas bill or car note has it accounted for. My point is, time is your most valuable asset, why sell it for a finite amount of money? 

Now let's explore the unknown, if you were to sell something, anything, do you think you could make $250 in 8 hours. I sell hoodies for $50. If I sell 5 hoodies a day, I’ll make $60k a year. If you can think of a product you can sell or a skill you can monetize to produce $250 a day there’s no reason you should still be going to work. The best part is there’s no cap on how much money you can make. The harder you work, the more money you’ll make. $250 isn't a huge number. You don’t have to start a huge company to make the living you're currently making at work. 

While buying inventory for her store, my friend Denise met a Asain immigrant woman who owned a wholesale clothing store. The woman brought clothes from China for about $10 per item and upcharges $3 on each item. Denise would buy the items at $13 and resell them in her store for $35 or more. I was surprised that the wholesaler didn't charge more. I also assumed the wholesaler was doing well but wasn’t making a ton of money. Until one day my friend went in the store to buy some corsets that just came in. Denise bought the last 50 corsets at 11am and the woman complained that she didn't bring in enough corsets and they had sold so fast. The store had just opened for the day 2 hours ago. Denise asked how many the woman ordered, she said 1,000. When Denise told me that my mind started racing. I couldn’t believe this lady had sold 1,000 corsets in 4 hours. With her $3 upcharge, she had profited $3000 in a few hours, off of just one item. No telling how much she made from the other items in the store. I was wrong, she was making a ton of money. Does what she’s doing require a college degree? Student loan debt? An elite business mind? No. This was simple supply and demand. 

The thing about it is immigrant business owners were not trained by the same society Americans are. They can easily recognize opportunities that we would never see. The same way people from Chicago move down south and make a living selling Chicago’s famous Harold’s Chicken. Or Americans export cars to other countries that don’t manufacture their own cars. It’s easier to see opportunity in a foreign land by just noticing differences between your society and the one you're becoming accustomed to. Meanwhile, poor people from that land can’t understand how people from foreign places just seem to show up and get rich. The truth is when we wake up from the financial coma we’ve been in for generations, we wreck our brains thinking of master plans to get rich. Searching for keys to an unlocked door. 

“There’s something inside you that is greater than any obstacle.”

I believe that we are all able to solve our own problems, remove negativity from our lives and rebuild our realities to our liking. As a child, I always heard people say “be patient, God has a plan for you.” I hated it. Maybe because I’m impatient. Maybe because it made me feel powerless. Either way, I had no plans on waiting for God or anything else to get what I wanted out of life. When I got a little older, a mentor told me:

“You are the personification of God and the power of God lives in you. If you’re in need of anything in life, look inward, not outward.”

That thing inside you that is greater than any obstacle is God. The key to conquering obstacles and changing the things around you is conquering and changing yourself. I know how cliche that sounds so I’ll give my own practical example. I want to be a successful entrepreneur and I want to be surrounded by successful and/or ambitious people. So, a few months ago, I went to work on myself. I started with a morning routine because the morning is the most important part of the day. It sets the pace for the rest of the day. I know that if I can “win the morning”, the rest of the day would come a lot easier. Everyday I wake up at 6am, down a bottle of water, turn on an audiobook, start boiling 2 eggs and eat some spinach. While I’m eating I might scroll social media, but only if my brain is functioning well enough to listen to the audiobook and scroll at the same time. If not, I close the social media apps and just listen and eat my spinach. At 6:45 I begin my morning workout while still listening to my book. I finish my workout at 7:30, eat the 2 boiled eggs and jump in the shower, still listening to my audiobook. By 8:20 I’m starting my work for the day. At this point I turn my audiobook off and start listening to music. I only listen to audiobooks about financial literacy, entrepreneurship or intrinsic motivation. Again, I want to be a successful entrepreneur so my input has to match my desired output. By filling my brain with this type of information as soon as I wake up, my mindset is focused for the day. When I start listening to music on my morning drive or at my desk, all I want to hear is Nipsey Hussle, Rick Ross, Jay Z, Nas and any other artist that’s talking about wealth and success. When I get on the phone I want to talk about my new ideas or how to maximize my current moves. My mind is consumed with success and there’s becoming less and less room for doubt. I’m transforming. Now, the people around have to adapt to what I’m becoming. Some distant friends with similar mindsets are starting to become close friends because our conversations are meaningful. Some close friends are becoming distant because our conversations are lacking substance. I don’t care to talk about celebrity gossip or even gossip in our own lives. And they don’t have the desire to carry the type of conversations I want to have. Some friends fell off completely. My friends changed. There was a natural separation building between me and the girl I was dating. She would wake up at 11am trying to cook me breakfast and have a morning convo while eating. At this point, I’m halfway through my work day and not trying to slow down. She couldn’t adapt to the new me. Now, I won’t date anyone who isn't a morning person or who doesn’t have the same drive and vision I do. It’s an easy transition because my mind won’t allow me to give any real consideration to a woman who isn’t on the same page as me. I’m only dating women who want what I want. 

Waking up early and being more intentional with my time made me more productive and the results were abundant. Plus, I changed everything around me by making everything adapt to me. I’ve successfully used my inner power to change myself and the people around me, and I didn’t have to wait on God. God was waiting on me. 

"Applause is added motivation for strong minds and the finish line for weak ones."

If we wanna be successful, we gotta be willing to work harder than we ever worked and for no applause. Our parents praised us for scribble scrabble in coloring books. We desired the applause so much that we would run to them with every half done project, just for the validation. We cared about the applause more than the project itself.

Now as adults we’ve matured but some of those tendencies are still there. We fall in love with outcomes and don’t embrace the process. We don’t embrace the process because the fanfare is at the finish line. Everyone is there to like and comment on your before and after picture. No one shows up to the gym to clap for you while you workout. Applause waits on success.

While I was building my website I noticed that I kept sending it to ppl well before it was done, asking what they thought. The truth is I knew the website was dope af lol I just wanted to hear some praise from other ppl. But building a website is a small step in a much larger plan. And no one will be there to clap for me through every step of my marathon. Most of my friends are running their own. And just like a marathon, after running so many miles and reaching a certain point, there will be ppl waiting with applause and supporting words that serve as the water or fuel that keeps you going. But after that, you’ll be running alone again until you reach the next level. Learn to grind without the applause. Learn to clap for yourself on the inside. Ppl say never look back but I do. Because nothing makes me more confident with how far I have to go, than looking back at how far I’ve come.