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Doing What You Love and Finding Your Life Purpose

By on October 9, 2014

I wrote the article earlier this week about Step 1 of Setting Up a Web-Commuting Business. That step is basically choosing a niche for your business that you love. A few days after writing the article I found this post by Mark Manson:

“7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose”

It is an awesome article and I encourage everybody to use the link and read it.

I also figured that I would answer the 7 strange questions here.

1. What’s Your Favorite Flavor Of Shit Sandwich And Does It Come With An Olive?

The basic premise of this question is that there are always hard times no matter what you’re doing. There are always sacrifices to make, and things that you don’t want to do, but have to in order to accomplish your goals.

“What shit sandwich do you want to eat? Because we all get served one eventually.” – Mark Manson

I kind of have two answers – not that I want to eat 2 shit sandwiches. I just have one answer for sailing and one answer for the Sail Loot website.

A1: One that I’m eating at sea. So lets say something happens to the boat that I’m on. I’m hoping that this doesn’t mean that the boat is sinking because not everybody is served that shit sandwich. Even if it did happen, at least I was following my dreams, and I would hope that I’m smart enough to have working safety equipment.

But everybody has something happen to their boat. A halyard will break. An anchor will drag. An engine will fail.

“Only two sailors, in my experience, never ran aground. One never left port and the other was an atrocious liar.” – Don Bamford

A2: The bad reviews, and the trolls. They will come, and some of them will be true. Some of the bad reviews will be dead on accurate. Somebody will kindly say that I say, “Um” too much in my interviews. They will be correct, and I will just have to say that it is something that I have to work on. It is something that I have to keep in the podcasts, and not edit out, because that is a cop out. If I want to get better at the craft of interviewing and speaking, then I’ve just got to practice over and over again and not have an out like editing.

The internet trolls that hate everything we do, and leave terrible comments on all of our pages may also come.  They’ll listen to every podcast, and read every article, and follow us on every social media platform, but for some reason they’ll hate everything we do. I will just have to deal with that. In fact, I’ve heard many people say, “That’s how you know you’ve made it.”

Those would be my favorite flavors of shit sandwiches. And I know I’m going to get served one eventually. Yes, I’ll take one with an olive…obviously.

2. What is true about you today that would make your 8-year-old self cry?

A: I’m going to answer this the way Mark Manson did. If I told my 8-year-old self that I couldn’t go skiing, or that I couldn’t go SCUBA diving, or that I couldn’t take pictures of those activities, or that I couldn’t share those adventures with people, then that 8-year-old version of myself would’ve probably started crying.

No, I couldn’t SCUBA dive at 8-years-old, but I could ski. My mother also always called me a fish out of water. I always loved being in the water and putting on the snorkel mask whenever I got the chance to see what was down there. Some of the best parts about those adventures was either having a friend there with me to share the experience with, or telling stories of those adventures when you returned.

Can I still do these things? Absolutely. Do I still do these things? Not enough.

3. What makes you forget to eat and poop?

A: Sailing, skiing, SCUBA diving, playing music, and working on Sail Loot. Seriously.

We bring food with us for “dinner” to the Wednesday night sailing races on the lake. These aren’t lasers we’re racing on or anything. There’s a fleet of cruisers that race. But even though we have enough room on the boat, and enough time to eat – because we get on the water an hour early – we never actually remember to eat.

Instead of waiting in the long food lines, there’s always a ski lift open and another run to take.

It’s actually quite difficult to eat while SCUBA diving, and top time is usually consumed with switching tanks and briefing for the next dive.

I don’t play the guitar enough these days (that would make my 15-year-old self cry). When I do, time is generally lost.

I conducted the first Sail Loot interview the other day. It was awesome! You may have already listened to it. I was done talking to Brian and Karin around 10am, but I worked on extracting the audio, adding the audio to garageband for the podcast, and editing. I forgot to stop for lunch.

4. How can you better embarrass yourself?

“Before you are able to be good at something and do something important, you must first suck at something and have no clue what you’re doing.” – Mark Manson

A: I don’t know if I suck at interviewing for the Sail Loot podcast, and I wouldn’t say that I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing, but there are definitely things that I could do better. The intro music could probably be better. How many times did I say “Awesome” during the Delos interview?

It’s a little embarrassing to hit the publish button and put myself out there like that, knowing that there is a lot of room for improvement. Okay, now that I’m writing this it seems even more embarrassing. But I can’t avoid it, and it has to happen, possibly repeatedly, so that I get better at the craft of conducting the interviews and putting the podcasts together.

After all, it’s the great comments from the Sail Loot community that keep pushing me along.

“This answered so many questions I’ve had about the crew of Delos & their cruising style. Thanks for doing this, and keep up the great work!” – Dennis S. Pearce

5. How are you going to save the world?

A: I hope that some of this that we’ve put together here at Sail Loot inspires others to set sail. I hope others realize that anything is possible. I hope that the Sail Loot community becomes a community of people following their dreams.

Your dreams don’t have to be to set sail and go cruising. Of course, I hope to inspire some people to try it out and see what the cruising lifestyle is all about, but sailing money could mean travel money to somebody else. Sail Loot could be the freedom to live closer to family for others.

I also hope to do my part in raising awareness about the underwater ecosystem that us humans seem so eager to destroy. It’s beautiful down there, we’ve explored less than 5% of it, and it is what makes Earth habitable.

6. Gun to your head, if you had to leave the house all day, every day, where would you go and what would you do?

A: Sail. SCUBA dive. Ski. Hike. Have conversations with others in those communities. Take pictures. Record videos.

7. If you knew that you were going to die one year from today what would you do and how would you want to be remembered?

A: Sail around the world to raise awareness of the underwater ecosystem.

What are your answers to these seven questions? Let us know in the comments!

TeddyJ

 

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About Teddy

I am a 37 year old that just wants to find a way to make a remote income, gather some Sail Loot and cruise the world! I have been sailing for a couple of years now, but mostly on 10 day trips as vacationing crew. I just recently took sailing to the next level by completing my Basic Keelboat, Basic Cruising, and Bareboat Cruising Certifications! I am also Vice President of a Medical Consulting Company, have a Mechanical Engineering degree from Georgia Tech, and have taken several Coding, Computing, and Online Business courses. It's time to share what I have learned!