A few months ago I posted under my old handle of Fazedlol a post more or less just bitching about my life situation. A helpful, and tough-love-esque response by @Runum was posted. His response made sense at the time. It makes even more now. Thanks again, Runum. I was struggling with the decision of whether or not to move to San Francisco from my hometown (a suburb of Dallas, Texas). Long story short, I moved home with my parents, quit my job, ended my contract work, cancelled an accepted apartment application, and moved to San Francisco. I had a family friend who offered to sublet his one-bedroom apartment to me in the city, and stated he was living with his girlfriend. I took him up on the offer. I learned several hard truths about myself, and my life in general over the next several weeks. After about 6 weeks, I ended up moving back to DFW.
Here’s some lessons I’ve learned about my life in the past few months. They are, of course, things I find true for myself. I hope some of you can relate. I hope these points help others avoid mistakes I’ve made.
1) It’s easy to get addicted to advice. I see many posts on this forum asking things like, “What kind of business should I start?” or “How can I make $1,000 by tomorrow?” or, my question, basically “Should I move cities or not?” I have asked, still ask, and see people ask for advice on how to choose between two or more choices in life, business, relationships, etc… big and small (on this forum and in life). I found myself asking almost everybody close to me for advice on what to choose. I would spend hours Googling things like, “Should I move to San Francisco?” or “Should I quit my job to start a business?” or “I feel stuck in life. What should I do next?” While I never felt like I found exactly what I was looking for, because I was looking outward instead of inward, I would find arguments, ideas, and suggestions that would typically lead me to a course of action.
There are consequences with placing so much of your decision-making on advice of other people, whether or not they are friends, family, acquaintances, business associates, etc... For example: personal responsibility. When I would take the advice of others and act, and things worked out well for me, I would think, “Man, I’m so glad I took their advice!” When something would go wrong, I would think, “Damn, they were wrong!” and absolve myself from at least some of the personal responsibility of my reality, which was that I made that choice myself. Also, and most importantly, no matter how detailed a picture of your situation you paint, nobody knows every detail, emotion, and variable of the circumstance that you are in better than you.
2) There is no replacement for due diligence. When I moved to San Francisco I found out the living situation had been severely misrepresented to me. My friend was not in fact living with his girlfriend, would only occasionally spend the night at her apartment, and the two of us would share the one-bedroom most nights of the week. The place looked and smelled as if it had not been cleaned in a few years. I also didn’t take a realistic view of the cost of living. I knew it was more expensive, but I underestimated by how much. Navigating around the city was cumbersome by car, time-consuming by public transportation, and expensive by taxi/Lyft/Uber. All things that I found out I did NOT want to deal with in the place I live. I could have found out about all of these truths by simply taking a trip there, and asking questions more relentlessly, before uprooting my DFW life.
3) Saying “No” to things/people/relationships/advice is often the best course of action. Up until recently, I’ve had surmountable difficulty saying “no”. A friend or family member calls me up and wants me to do something I really don’t want to do? Yes! Offered one last drink? Yes! That girl who’s logically not good for my health that wants to hook up? Yes! That piece of advice someone gave me with incomplete knowledge about making huge, sweeping personal changes? Yes! After all, I want to be liked. I want to be respected. And then I found my self esteem was too closely tied to how “nice” people think I am, at the sacrifice of my personal wellbeing.
It wasn’t until I started saying “no” to things that I started learning the meaning of the phrase “opportunity cost”. James Altucher said something similar to, “Whenever you say yes to something, you are invariably saying no to something else.” I wholeheartedly agree. Last week I found myself awake before dawn on Monday morning in San Francisco. I had second round interviews on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, each with a different company (some very well known). It was a nice feeling to know I could easily find work (I’m a software engineer) but something was eating at me. It had been eating at me for the past several weeks, and I decided to listen to it intently that morning. I saw the direction my life was going. I had moved to SF with lofty and unrealistic dreams of plopping right into the entrepreneurial culture, having amazing things happen, and coming out on top. With no real plan, and taking zero action, I found myself right back on the path of the Slowlane. I would have the job, the commute, all of the things I disliked about my previous job. Only with an insane cost of living, and with one serious thing lacking: my family. Sure, I was in a beautiful city with beautiful weather, but I was homesick. I asked myself, “Is this what I really want? To just trade my location for my family?” The answer was a resounding “No!” So, I immediately took action. I called and cancelled all my interviews. I packed up all of my things. I loaded my car up. I left. I caught myself smiling for the first time in weeks.
4) Honesty and integrity are key, but don't forget tact and gratitude. I had several intense, and uncomfortable conversations with my parents shortly after reading TMF . I wanted to share my newfound knowledge with them. Subsequent conversations that included advice such as 401k investing, IRA accounts, avoiding risk, etc… were met with some variant of “NO. OMG. TERRIBLE ADVICE.” (Really, not as abrasively, but more or less). I failed at using tact for the situation and recognizing the viewpoint of my parents. Here I was neglecting to focus on gratitude for my life situation. Debt-free. A paid-off car. A degree in software engineering. A good job. My financial independence. Most importantly, two parents who adopted me, raised me, and loved me as their own. I failed to recognize, consider, and respect their lives, their experiences, and their perspectives. I’m not a religious person, but there’s a great prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I practice at recognizing the difference between these three every day.
5) You can’t run from yourself. What I found when I got to San Francisco was every personal problem I had want to “fix” was multiplied times ten. Had I moved there for clear-cut, and well defined goals, it might have been different. But since I moved because I was “stuck” with no game plan, I found myself stuck out there as well. I had anxiety in DFW about going out and meeting new people. About going to meetups. About letting go of dis-empowering relationships. About simple, day-to-day activities to take care of my health. It was much harder for me out there with a limited support network. Out there, I learned how important my family is to me. I’m adopted, and have a close relationship with my biological mother, my half sisters, and to a lesser extent that side of my family. I have a fairly large, nontraditional immediate family, and an even larger extended. The friends I could do without, and wanted to move on from anyway. But the family I could not replace. In my attempt to "fix" myself, I lost sight of what truly mattered to me.
6) Use your head. I made three weighted average decision matrices over the span of a few weeks. They included several cities I was considering moving to, including staying in DFW. The first was a dead tie. The second two, DFW won heavily both times. Upon studying my whiteboard just a few minutes ago, which has the last one I made, I noticed that DFW was highest, and each subsequent city that was farther away or harder to access from DFW scored lower. Instead of using my head, I let my emotions control my decisions, and left.
I recognize I still have much to learn about entrepreneurship, happiness, acceptance, gratitude, wealth (as opposed to just financial abundance) and life in general, but feel I’ve made some large personal strides over the past few months. I came back to DFW with a heightened sense of gratitude, peace, acceptance, and knowledge of how I want to live my life. I wanted to share my experience, and hopefully some of you out there can avoid some of my pitfalls, and/or gain some sort of value from my experiences.
Thanks for reading.
-All In
Here’s some lessons I’ve learned about my life in the past few months. They are, of course, things I find true for myself. I hope some of you can relate. I hope these points help others avoid mistakes I’ve made.
1) It’s easy to get addicted to advice. I see many posts on this forum asking things like, “What kind of business should I start?” or “How can I make $1,000 by tomorrow?” or, my question, basically “Should I move cities or not?” I have asked, still ask, and see people ask for advice on how to choose between two or more choices in life, business, relationships, etc… big and small (on this forum and in life). I found myself asking almost everybody close to me for advice on what to choose. I would spend hours Googling things like, “Should I move to San Francisco?” or “Should I quit my job to start a business?” or “I feel stuck in life. What should I do next?” While I never felt like I found exactly what I was looking for, because I was looking outward instead of inward, I would find arguments, ideas, and suggestions that would typically lead me to a course of action.
There are consequences with placing so much of your decision-making on advice of other people, whether or not they are friends, family, acquaintances, business associates, etc... For example: personal responsibility. When I would take the advice of others and act, and things worked out well for me, I would think, “Man, I’m so glad I took their advice!” When something would go wrong, I would think, “Damn, they were wrong!” and absolve myself from at least some of the personal responsibility of my reality, which was that I made that choice myself. Also, and most importantly, no matter how detailed a picture of your situation you paint, nobody knows every detail, emotion, and variable of the circumstance that you are in better than you.
2) There is no replacement for due diligence. When I moved to San Francisco I found out the living situation had been severely misrepresented to me. My friend was not in fact living with his girlfriend, would only occasionally spend the night at her apartment, and the two of us would share the one-bedroom most nights of the week. The place looked and smelled as if it had not been cleaned in a few years. I also didn’t take a realistic view of the cost of living. I knew it was more expensive, but I underestimated by how much. Navigating around the city was cumbersome by car, time-consuming by public transportation, and expensive by taxi/Lyft/Uber. All things that I found out I did NOT want to deal with in the place I live. I could have found out about all of these truths by simply taking a trip there, and asking questions more relentlessly, before uprooting my DFW life.
3) Saying “No” to things/people/relationships/advice is often the best course of action. Up until recently, I’ve had surmountable difficulty saying “no”. A friend or family member calls me up and wants me to do something I really don’t want to do? Yes! Offered one last drink? Yes! That girl who’s logically not good for my health that wants to hook up? Yes! That piece of advice someone gave me with incomplete knowledge about making huge, sweeping personal changes? Yes! After all, I want to be liked. I want to be respected. And then I found my self esteem was too closely tied to how “nice” people think I am, at the sacrifice of my personal wellbeing.
It wasn’t until I started saying “no” to things that I started learning the meaning of the phrase “opportunity cost”. James Altucher said something similar to, “Whenever you say yes to something, you are invariably saying no to something else.” I wholeheartedly agree. Last week I found myself awake before dawn on Monday morning in San Francisco. I had second round interviews on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, each with a different company (some very well known). It was a nice feeling to know I could easily find work (I’m a software engineer) but something was eating at me. It had been eating at me for the past several weeks, and I decided to listen to it intently that morning. I saw the direction my life was going. I had moved to SF with lofty and unrealistic dreams of plopping right into the entrepreneurial culture, having amazing things happen, and coming out on top. With no real plan, and taking zero action, I found myself right back on the path of the Slowlane. I would have the job, the commute, all of the things I disliked about my previous job. Only with an insane cost of living, and with one serious thing lacking: my family. Sure, I was in a beautiful city with beautiful weather, but I was homesick. I asked myself, “Is this what I really want? To just trade my location for my family?” The answer was a resounding “No!” So, I immediately took action. I called and cancelled all my interviews. I packed up all of my things. I loaded my car up. I left. I caught myself smiling for the first time in weeks.
4) Honesty and integrity are key, but don't forget tact and gratitude. I had several intense, and uncomfortable conversations with my parents shortly after reading TMF . I wanted to share my newfound knowledge with them. Subsequent conversations that included advice such as 401k investing, IRA accounts, avoiding risk, etc… were met with some variant of “NO. OMG. TERRIBLE ADVICE.” (Really, not as abrasively, but more or less). I failed at using tact for the situation and recognizing the viewpoint of my parents. Here I was neglecting to focus on gratitude for my life situation. Debt-free. A paid-off car. A degree in software engineering. A good job. My financial independence. Most importantly, two parents who adopted me, raised me, and loved me as their own. I failed to recognize, consider, and respect their lives, their experiences, and their perspectives. I’m not a religious person, but there’s a great prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I practice at recognizing the difference between these three every day.
5) You can’t run from yourself. What I found when I got to San Francisco was every personal problem I had want to “fix” was multiplied times ten. Had I moved there for clear-cut, and well defined goals, it might have been different. But since I moved because I was “stuck” with no game plan, I found myself stuck out there as well. I had anxiety in DFW about going out and meeting new people. About going to meetups. About letting go of dis-empowering relationships. About simple, day-to-day activities to take care of my health. It was much harder for me out there with a limited support network. Out there, I learned how important my family is to me. I’m adopted, and have a close relationship with my biological mother, my half sisters, and to a lesser extent that side of my family. I have a fairly large, nontraditional immediate family, and an even larger extended. The friends I could do without, and wanted to move on from anyway. But the family I could not replace. In my attempt to "fix" myself, I lost sight of what truly mattered to me.
6) Use your head. I made three weighted average decision matrices over the span of a few weeks. They included several cities I was considering moving to, including staying in DFW. The first was a dead tie. The second two, DFW won heavily both times. Upon studying my whiteboard just a few minutes ago, which has the last one I made, I noticed that DFW was highest, and each subsequent city that was farther away or harder to access from DFW scored lower. Instead of using my head, I let my emotions control my decisions, and left.
I recognize I still have much to learn about entrepreneurship, happiness, acceptance, gratitude, wealth (as opposed to just financial abundance) and life in general, but feel I’ve made some large personal strides over the past few months. I came back to DFW with a heightened sense of gratitude, peace, acceptance, and knowledge of how I want to live my life. I wanted to share my experience, and hopefully some of you out there can avoid some of my pitfalls, and/or gain some sort of value from my experiences.
Thanks for reading.
-All In
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