Wow. That’s worth a re-read (or four).
I don’t know about you, but “the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage” have been the incidents that have shaped the life I have now.
Where to begin?
How about when I dropped out of law school after a semester at 23? Oh. And I ended a 5-year relationship in the same week. I was spinning for months. Moved back in to my mom’s house to her great delight. (Um. Not so much.)
At the time, I simply couldn’t figure out how I was possibly going to create a life within what I saw as very limited options. I like to say that I felt a bit like a fire hydrant with all this energy but there was this glass wall 6 inches in front of me—bouncing the water right back on my face and nearly drowning me. Entertained way too many different creative ways I could end it all.
Eek.
Here’s the interesting part: the ONLY thing I knew I wanted to do when I dropped out of law school was to coach a Little League Baseball® team. (Well, first I burned my resume…) So, that’s what I did. I volunteered to help a neighbor friend coach his son’s 9 and 10 year-old team, the Angels.
We were the Bad News Bears. I think we lost our first 5 games. But I learned something. I learned that the quality of a kid’s experience in youth sports was shaped, in part, by the quality of the coaching he received. My neighbor friend and I had no idea what we were doing and it showed—not just in the standings but in the morale of the team.
Before law school, I was a consultant with Arthur Andersen and learned a few things about technology and databases. And, I had an idea: what if I could create an online system (the web was in its toddler stage at that point in early 1998) that could bring these teams and leagues online and create a community where new coaches like me could learn how to run a practice from the expert coaches (you know, the ones with the headbands and clipboards who kick everyone’s butts!)? And wouldn’t it be cool if I could make it easy to put a picture of Johnny sliding into home that his grandparents could check out if they missed the game?
Out of this idea, I created my first company: eteamz.com. My genius 22 year-old partner and I (I was 24 then) cracked open our piggy banks, invested $5k each and, from our living rooms, within 8 months we built a suite of tools that served thousands of teams from around the world. We won the business plan competition at UCLA’s Anderson School of Business, raised $1m from angel investors, grew from 2 ½ employees to 45 in less than a year, raised another $4m+, hired the CEO of Adidas to replace me as the CEO (we also hired the eventual winner of the Apprentice II), and then saw the market bottom out in 2000.
That’s when I first REALLY got into self-development. A woman who worked for me said I would love Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior. I read it. It lived up to its sub-title A book that changes lives.
Long story a little shorter: we wound up selling eteamz (it now profitably serves 3 million teams and Little League Baseball uses the technology we built). I got enough cash to take a few years off to figure out what I’m here to do. I became a philosopher, immersed myself in the universal truths, became friends with Dan Millman, created my next business Zaadz, sold that and here we are.
Guess what?
It all started because I followed what TINY bliss I felt at the darkest point in my life. I followed that little voice within that said, “You don’t want to be a lawyer. It’s time to leave this path. You’d dig coaching kids. Do that while you figure everything out.”
And, out of the wreckage, I learned to trust the words of another favorite teacher, Wayne Dyer, who tells us: “In my world, nothing ever goes wrong.”
As Nietzsche says: “What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.”
I say we learn to love our fate.
As Campbell says: “Whatever the hell happens, say, ‘This is what I need.’”
And, most importantly, follow your bliss.
