What makes a perfect life anyway?

Do you see yourself with a picture-perfect family? 3 beautiful kids, a cuddly dog, a nice house in the suburbs, a Disney vacation twice a year? Or do you rather want to be super-rich living in a mansion with a nanny and lots of other employees who take care of your chores for you? There are many variations of a perfect life and many people think they can only be happy if their life is perfect. As a result these people will never be really happy because their so-called perfect life does not exist and even if it would, it would really make them happy because something is missing.

Let’s talk about what can wrong

What can go wrong in your life? And what do you do when things do not work out as anticipated? Literally anything can go wrong. You could be born into a very poor family. You could be born into a family where the parents’ divorce after a while. You could be born with disabilities and be handicapped. You could lose a loved-one through illness or accident. You could lose your job every other year. You could never make more than $7 per hour. You could lose your house due to being unable to pay your mortgage. The list can go on and on, but it’s not really what can go wrong in your life that this list is about. It’s about what you can learn from a failure in your life and what you make out of it.

If Life hands you Lemons, make Lemonade

Just last night I watched the movie about Bethany Hamilton, the surfer girl that lost her left arm to a shark attack while surfing. The movie and her story are very interesting. First it (the movie) shows how terrifying and shocking the event was. Then it shows how Bethany is trying to overcome the challenges and initially everything looks great, but then she experiences failure and she is ready to simply give up. She travels to a different part of the world and experiences what it really means to have bad luck and being poor. When she comes home from that trip her father has built a new surfboard that allows her to go surfing again – even with just one arm. Bethany overcomes her own personal doubts and fear and actually then even competes in a national surf championship competition. The movie is very inspiring and really hits the tone right about experiencing failure and getting up again just to hit failure again and then to get up again.

Here is my Story

When I was young life often seemed dark and miserable for me. My dad was an alcoholic and the family had to suffer a lot under his behavior. My parents eventually got divorced and things got a little better. My brother did in a freak car accident when I was 15. What else had life in store for me? The one thing that I missed back then was some guidance in my life. My Mom was not able to provide any as she was struggling with life herself. I drifted through those teenage years a little bit, did some crazy stuff, too. I graduated from High School and eventually went to college and majored in finance and economics. That’s where I found my first calling. Finance and economics lead me to interest entrepreneurship and I started reading a lot of books about this topic. I read biographies of people like Donald Trump or Lee Iacocca or the McDonald’s story. These books helped me a lot and deep inside a dream developed. By the way – I still have those books on my shelf and of course many more have joined them since then.

I got a little older, but still had not really found my own way. I grew up in Germany (West-Germany back then) and I had strong, positive feelings for the United States of America. My dad hated America for whatever reason and that had fueled my interest in America  I watched every documentary. I bought every travel magazine with articles about the USA. It was always my dream to go there and to see everything that I had seen on TV or read about in real life. The Grand Canyon, California, Las Vegas, New York City, and so on. In 1988 – right after college – I had saved a little money from working – I bought a cheap airplane ticket to Canada. I could not afford a ticket to the US as they were a little more expensive. In Canada I bought a $99 CAN-Dollar Greyhound Bus ticket. The ticket was for a bus trip with unlimited stops from Toronto to Vancouver. I had planned to backpack/tramp and to stay for 6 weeks. This is where my life was changed. I stayed 10 weeks instead of six. I almost lost my plane ticket due to airline regulations about how often you can re-schedule your flight. As an example during that trip I spent a night in a park behind a bush with a million mosquitos in Banff (Alberta) because I had to be careful with how I spend my money. I spent a night out on the streets sleeping out there like the homeless people in downtown Vancouver. Again, I needed to be careful conservative how I would spend my money to make it through my trip with the funds I had. The trip got a little crazier and somehow I ended up driving across Canada in a 15 year old Chevrolet with some newly made friends. The trip went from Calgary all the way to Montreal, Quebec City, Newfoundland, Boston, New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Vancouver, and back to Calgary. From there I took the Greyhound Bus back to Toronto and eventually I made it back to Germany.

In Germany I had to join the army because it was mandatory back then. I felt stuck and out of place. The last 10 weeks had started a fire I could not put out again. I wanted to see more of America. Being a soldier in Germany back then earned me a little of over five bucks per day. I started saving my money again. While everyone else in the barracks got drunk nightly I read books and worked on making a new dream come true. When I finally left the army I found a temporary job working for a trash removal company in a recycling plant. 10-12 hours of hard work standing at a conveyor belt separating recyclable trash from normal, stinking and rotten trash. I made good money in a few months and in early spring of 1990 a friend of mine and I went onto a roughly 6 month long trip across the United States and Canada. It was the trip of my life and from that time on I wanted to live in the United States. But as you might expect it is not that easy to get a green card and to make that move. I did not want to live a life as an illegal immigrant and a Green Card was the only way for me to make it into the United States. 8 years after the trip of my life, I legally moved to America and in 2003 I became a naturalized US Citizen. How I got there is a different story with different challenges and I’ll save that for later.

Step out of your Comfort Zone

I know I am very blessed and fortunate with how things have turned out for me. But there are quite a few things that are not just luck or blessings. You know – Hard work and determination can go long ways. There are always people that say “I would not do that.” or “You risk everything you have.” or “This is impossible to do.” or “You will fail.” and if I would have listened to those people I would still be in Germany living a normal, boring life with a predetermined path. If I would have listened to those people I would have never started my own business. If I would have listened to those people I would have never published several books on both sides of the Atlantic. If I would have listened to those people you would not be reading this posting right now. There are always more “Nay Sayers” than people who motivate you to step out of the box and to risk something. Leaving the comfort zone and taking a risk looks daunting the very first time you do it. But the more often you do it, the more comfortable you get with it. Not every risk that you take will pay off. You will fall down more often than having success, but if you never try (to avoid failure), you will never be able to experience that sweet success. If you never take a risk, you will never find out what you are really capable of.

Learn from your Failures

You will experience failures as mentioned. But get up and do it better the next time! Learn from the mistakes or issues you experienced and do it better the next time. What separates those people that give up from those that have success? Getting up when you fall down and to do it again. Thomas Edison did not have 9,999 failures before finally finding the best way to make a light bulb. He found 9,999 ways not to do it a certain way. He kept saying this to himself and to others when being asked why he had so many failures and why he would not give up. When he finally succeeded he revolutionized the world with his invention. The McDonald’s brothers never saw the potential that Ray Crok saw in their restaurant. It was Ray Crok who turned a single burger shop into the world’s largest Fast Food Company.

As mentioned – your life does not have to be perfect. If life hands you Lemons, go and make Lemonade. Step out of the comfort zone and risk something. Life is too short to settle for normal or failure. Get up and just do it!