From childhood we’re typically taught to follow the path.

The Value of the Road Less Traveled

From childhood we’re typically taught to follow the path. I’m sure everyone reading this is familiar with it: go to college, get good grades, get a job. We’re generally taught that this path unequivocally leads to success and with it, happiness. For many it does, but the path is well-worn and often blows past necessary stops when on the path to self-actualization. That is after-all, what we’re all really after: self-actualization. I’d make the argument that you can’t have true success without it, but that often gets ignored. Without self-actualization there is no fulfillment, and without fulfillment there is no true success because there is no true happiness.

The reason the path most of us pursue doesn’t necessarily lead to that is because we make the benchmarks of college, graduation, and then being given a job as a greater priority to ourselves. That sounds absurd, right? People will often put there own health and wellness (this doesn’t just mean fitness or physical health, but also emotional, spiritual, etc) as an after-thought to getting a degree or maintaining a career. We do this largely because that’s what we think we’re supposed to do. As a result we sometimes find ourselves later in life really regretting opportunities we let slip by us and that’s tragic. After all, time is one of the very few things we will never get more of, so why waste it doing something that doesn’t fulfill you?

What people don’t tell you is that the path is as I said, well-worn. It doesn’t leave much room for creativity and innovation. How could it? We’re still using an educational model that the Germans used in the 19th century to train factory workers. Our education system is more about indoctrination than true education. Honestly all it really gets you in many instances is a piece of paper that serves as a screening process for someone on the other side of a Crag’s List job posting and often all they’re really looking for is a sign that you’re disciplined and can learn but there are other methods of showing that through personal branding (technology has really facilitated a lot of that). There are of course exceptions to this since formal education is a requirement for many jobs that require licensing.

What inspired me to write about this today was simply taking personal inventory on where I am in life and how I got there. I’m currently a personal trainer and MMA coach. I own my business and am doing quite well with it. I can also safely say I got to where I am not because of any schooling, but if anything, in spite of it.

When I graduated high school I had absolutely zero idea what I wanted to do, and to be honest, didn’t really care much about anything. Soon after when I started training in MMA, my life suddenly seemed to actually begin. That was the first time I discovered something that I was truly passionate about. At the time, I should note that I weighed nearly 300lbs (I fight at 170 and 155 now), and I had a lot of work to do before I could do anything with my newfound passion. There I was though, finally pursuing a passion, though my parents thought I was crazy and my friends couldn’t believe I was actually doing it. It was kind of a 180 for me, but I took pride in knowing I was finally creating my own path, even if it was probably the path of most resistance.

Training MMA soon led to me becoming a personal trainer because I wanted to be in the gym as much as possible. Once I became a trainer I tried following the conventional path there: go to a commercial gym, get a job, get clients, be successful. That way is actually remarkably hard for trainers though, as gyms frequently take a huge chunk of whatever money is earned. If I wanted to truly make any money, I would need to find a new way. I’m very fortunate though that along my path I had mentored under and worked with some truly great people and eventually began collaborating with an old fighter friend of mine who is also a trainer on how we could best become successful in our careers, without the conventional gym setting. It was a risky move for me because I actually had been doing quite well at the gym I was at. I just was working insane hours and wasn’t fulfilled there. Through in-home, on-site, and online training, I very quickly grew a successful business.

My reasoning for writing all of this is that I realized that everything I have in life, I owe to going against the grain and forging my own path. Had I done what was always recommended to me, my life would look very differently, and I simply wouldn’t have ever been truly happy. I would’ve had a safe and secure life, which many mistake for happiness, but it wouldn’t have been a happy one. Life is meant to be lived. My advice to people would be to take a moment and really meditate on who you are and what you really want out of life. If you find you’re not where you want to be, then it’ll be scary, but you owe it to yourself to figure out a way to do it. There’s always a way, too, it just requires a bit of creativity and innovation.

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