This is a financial / business / real estate blog, but work is only one part of life. Too often we let that one part overflow into and run (and in some cases ruin) the rest of our lives. This article is going to be published in the Wake Up… Live the Life you Love series in Wake Up Moments book. It will be available for purchase on my website in February.
“My wake up moment came when one of my best friends passed on. Twenty-five is much too young to leave this world, and his passing sent me down a path that led me to where I am today. These are a few simple truths I learned from my friend and the way he lived his life.
What is most important in life? Simple – family and friends period. He may not have kept in touch with everyone as much as he might have, but he was always thinking of them. The Tuesday before the accident, a group of us went to a hockey game. We reminisced about the good ol’ days, and you would not believe the number of people and the good times we recalled. We even talked about friends we had not seen or heard from in years. My friend lived his life with as few regrets as possible; I know his greatest regrets was not staying in touch as much as he wished.
Do my friend a favor – pick up the phone or open your email and say a quick hello to all of those people you have been contacting. You keep saying you will call them next week, but next week never seems to come.
What is really important? To my friend, it was simple – relax, slow down and enjoy life. My friend loved his job and dedicated extra time to it, but he also knew how to have fun. He had a great balance between work and life. Too many of us forget that work is not life. If it did not involve family, friends or enjoying life, it was not important to him at all, and after a bit of reflecting, I tend to agree
After the funeral, I decided to follow his lead and started living life. I went completely out of my comfort zone and took a risk. I took a job in Kuwait as an environmental contractor worker for the US Army. I had no idea what was in store for me, but I knew I wanted to live abroad for a year and travel.
For a while, life was good. I enjoyed my job. I made some great friends, and I experienced a completely different culture. I traveled a lot in one year. I celebrated New Year’s in Bahrain, rode a camel to the pyramids in Giza, did some shopping in Dubai, backpacked through Germany during the World Cup (cheering like a crazy man at all three USA matches), flew halfway around the world for a friend’s wedding, flew a plane, jumped out of plane and the list goes on and on.
As I said life was good, but then I got promoted. Life was even better – or so I thought. With the promotion, I threw out my plan to stay on the job for one year. I signed up for one more year to see how things went. I lost track of my plan to experience the world and then go home.
I quickly learned the burden of middle management and the joys of responsibility without the authority to adequately manage them. My stress free, enjoy life and go with the flow lifestyle went out the window somewhere along the way as the reality of the new job set in.
I became testy and constantly stressed at work. It did not take long for the stress to and anxiety to spill over from work to the rest of my life. I lost track of what my friend’s passing taught me, and I did not even realize it.
I was unhappy, and knew something had to change. But I was not sure what or how. Yom Kipper was coming up in a few days, and I decided what a better day to reflect than the day built into my religion just for that purpose. I told my boss I was not coming to work that day and I stayed home. I do not follow all of the Jewish holidays as I should; however, something had to change, and that something was me.
I am not sure if it was the day of reflecting or 23 hours without food or water, but about an hour before sunset, I made my decision: I was leaving Kuwait and moving home. I realized family and friends were all that mattered, and after 16 months in Kuwait, it was time to go home.
At that moment my stress disappeared. I had no idea what I was going to do when I got home, but that did not matter. On my way home, I started living my life again. I picked up on my traveling habits and stopped in London for a few days to visit some friends, and I surprised some family in Boston before I arrived home.
It has been over a year since I left Kuwait, and I have been self-employed since then (or as I like to say, successfully unemployed). Since I have been home, I traveled a bit more, started to find lost friends and continued to live my life as I wanted to live.
Whether you realize it or not, you learn a little something from every interaction. Some of what you learn will be good and some will be bad; however, it is how you apply what you gained that will determine if you had a positive or negative experience. My friend’s passing taught me that.
Since the tragic event sent me down an unexpected road, my small world has been opened to a larger and richer one. ”
Aaron
Contact me at www.aaronsilverman.com
