OFI 1026: Bumper Bowling And Plan “B” For The Life You Are Dreaming About

Mike Rowe says to “never follow your passion, but bring it with you”.  He says a lot of other things on this topic as well, and he is correct.  In today’s episode I want to take what he has said, what I have done and what I have learned and see if we can’t help you to figure out how to put together the puzzle that is the life you are looking for.

Have you ever gone “bumper bowling”?  These things didn’t exist when I was a kid, and by the time I was in high school my pride would not allow me to bumper bow.  But years later, when I became a parent and we would go bowling with other parents and all of our kids I was cajoled into this activity because the bumpers were up on the lane for the kids.

Of course the bumpers on a bowling lane are there so the kids can actually have fun by getting their bowling balls all the way to the end of the lane without going into the gutter.  That way they can actually reach the end and hit some pins.  A lot of people see this as nothing more than some Saturday evening fun, but I see it as a metaphor for life.

To go back to what Mike Rowe said, he believes in practicality.  He wants you to do something that is practical, bring your passion and work ethic with you and turn this practicality into something that carries you to the life you are looking for.  I want you to do this as well, but let’s talk about how this gets done and how it relates to bumper bowling.

I am very fortunate in what I do.  I have a front row seat to the journey that hundreds of students in the FFA are right in the middle of.  And year after year, month after month and week after week I profile these stories.  Pretty soon, patterns begin to emerge and I find myself seeing things that you can only really spot by diving into this world.

When I come across an FFA student, usually in their senior year, who has been really fired up about their journey and the FFA for all four years of high school or, in some cases, high school and middle school, I get to see how your true passion can be identified.

These students have tried it all.  They have milked out every drop of activity and opportunity from their time in the FFA.  Along the way they have succeeded and they have failed.  Generally, by the time they have done something that draws my attention to them for an interview, they have found something that they really love, and now they are really succeeding.

However, it would be a mistake to look at these students and think that they are they lucky ones who “just knew” what their passion was.  They are not.  But they have used those failures like the bumpers on the bowling alley.  As they have traveled down the lane of life, they have tried something and failed, tried something and failed, tried something and failed and finally tried something and succeeded.  The failures are the bumpers that push them away from the gutter of devoting themselves to something that is the wrong fit for them.  Ultimately they reach the end of the lane and strike a pin, and that pin is their passion.  And then they excel, because if you are truly working in your passion you can’t help but become so good that you succeed.

Too many people think that if you just do some deep reflecting on the things you like and the activities that give you pleasure that you will discover your passion.  I know, because I was one of these people.  When I decided to become an entrepreneur I spent about two years, helplessly trying to determine what my passion was, only to be left frustrated and somewhat depressed, thinking one did not exist for me.

Eventually, I gave up and did what Mike Rowe suggests, I tried something practical.  My first business was pocket gopher extermination.  This was definitely not on the radar of being my passion.  However, this got me into entrepreneurship and then the pathway to becoming a full-time, agricultural broadcaster laid out in front of me.  One thing built on another until I discovered what it is that I really enjoy doing, and the way to make my living from it appeared in front of me.

Finding your passion is more like solving a criminal case than it is searching for self-enlightenment.  Of course, from my previous career as a police detective I am biased in the way that I look at this, but bear with me for a moment.  Often times when a detective is assigned a case and starts to trying to solve the “who done it”, they are looking for that one clue that will lead to enlightenment and a clear suspect.  However, that only happens so often.

So, what is that detective to do if that magic clue does not appear?  A good detective will start eliminating other possibilities.  Basically, the detective will brainstorm all of the different ways this crime could have happened and who could have done it.  Then they will start investigating all of those possibilities, eliminating all of them, one by one, until there is only one left.  The one that is left is the suspect, and it is the method.

You see the case did not get solved by some brilliance or epiphany.  It was solved by hard work, looking at all possible outcomes and eliminating possibilities when they are determined to be non-viable.  This is just how the the motivated FFA student finds their passion. They try everything, at least once.  And when they fail and don’t really want to do one of those activities again, they cross it off of their list.  It is no longer viable.  Pretty soon, they are left with just one thing, the thing that they want to continue doing and that they are having success with.

People look at this and think that the passion just appeared one day.  Of course it didn’t happen this way, but they can’t see all of the failures that acted as the bowling bumpers to keep the student heading down the lane until they finally struck a pin.

I would be remiss if I didn’t bring debt and lifestyle into this discussion at this point.  When you ultimately find your passion you will reach a point that you can live a lifestyle much greater than you have right now.  However, if you put lifestyle first you are all but eliminating your chance of ever truly finding your passion and thus, achieving the lifestyle you are truly looking for.

Last week I had the chance to speak with a young man working in a trade that he did not like.  Work was a grind for him, but he had done well enough to promote to a level that he was making what I would call “okay money”.  However, “okay money” is really just a trap.  He had enhanced his lifestyle with a lot of spending and debt partially because he had the money to make bigger payments and partially because he was unhappy in his current job and buying stuff acts to kind of numb the pain of spending 40 hours per week in a job that is the wrong fit.

For him to try another trade or to try his own business and stay out of the metaphorical gutter of a job that he hates, he would have to take a pay cut.  He might not start right at the bottom, but he definitely wouldn’t start over in an entirely new industry at the same level he had achieved in his current industry.  This is fine for a person who has lived below their means and saved, avoiding consumer debt.  But the person who has put lifestyle first cannot afford the pay cut.  The pay cut will not allow them to make the payments that they currently have, and the misery of the job that is the wrong fit will not allow them to have the faith that cutting down on their lifestyle to move to something better will pay off in the long run.

I have seen countless friends, co-workers and acquaintances get trapped in this very spot.  A quote from one of my friends that I will never forget came in a conversation when he told me that he hated his job.  I asked why he didn’t go do something else, and he responded “I don’t know where else I would make this much money”.

This mindset and the debt that comes along with it will keep you from experimenting with your own business or with new types of work.  If you cannot experiment like our fired up FFA student does while they are in high school, you cannot bounce off of the bumpers and stay in the lane until you hit a pin.  Debt and lifestyle will pull down those bumpers and allow you to roll into the gutter, trapping you in a spot that you cannot get out of.

So please, put an incredible lifestyle at the top of your priority list and keep your currently lifestyle in check so that you can have the freedom to go explore and find what makes you happy.  Waking up in the morning happy because you get to go do what you want to do is among the greatest gifts that you will ever be given.  Don’t put yourself in a position that eliminates this as a possibility for yourself.

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