Choosing A Career Path & What Is Meant By Success

What is the true test of success in one's life?

And how do we know that we're on the right career path?

How can we tell if the path we're on is the right path for us?

As a young man,

I struggled with knowing what I should be doing or what would be the right path for me.

What would be the right career path,

I would say.

And then later on in life,

Once I established what career path was best suited for me,

Then I was able to move on to my spiritual side and dive into that.

But first let's talk about this for a second.

What I chose to do in life,

I meditated on when I was very young.

When I was in my 20s,

I meditated on it.

It's like,

You know,

What do I want to do?

What do I want to be?

And existence,

You can call it God,

You can call it existence,

Existence answered me and said it has something to do with telephones.

And at the time,

I didn't quite comprehend that.

You know,

Yeah,

Sure,

Everybody's allured by the telephone.

Telephone is kind of a neat thing.

But when I finally fell into my path,

Then that was when I realized that basically,

I could not have known what I would be doing later on in my life because the career had not been invented yet.

It didn't exist.

And that's going to happen to so many of our young children,

The youth of America.

A lot of the career paths that they've chosen haven't been invented yet.

They don't exist.

But you know,

We're born into genes of our parents.

And a lot of times these genes can help describe what you would do for a living.

If you're born into a family of doctors,

Then there's a good chance that you have a doctor's type of mind and you have the genealogy to maybe fulfill that career.

But maybe that's not always right.

Maybe you desire to do something else,

Something totally different.

Maybe you want to be an artist.

Maybe you want to be an engineer or something different that has nothing to do with being a doctor.

I read a story about a famous doctor who received a Nobel Prize.

He was getting a little bit later on in his life,

But he received the Nobel Prize.

And he basically was very sad when he received the Nobel Prize because even though it was a great honor to receive this prize,

He was sad and he told one of his friends,

I'm sad because this is the point where I really wanted to be a dancer.

And that's what I wanted to pursue in life,

Was dancing.

And now I'm successful as a doctor and I've never received that happiness that I think I would have if I would have fulfilled my dreams and become a dancer.

So maybe it's not all in the genes.

Maybe it's in your heart.

Maybe it's what your heart desires and is born with.

If you desire to be a mystic,

If you desire to know existence in a way that others may not be able to comprehend,

Then the path of a mystic might be for you.

Who knows?

But there's also the path of the artist.

I'll tell you a little story.

I studied Aikido for a few years and the first Aikido instructor I had in DC was Sayatomi.

And Sayatomi was an artist,

A pure form artist.

And the way Sayatomi taught and instructed his Aikido classes was to show you the whole thing and slowly let you pick up piece by piece and let you break it down in your own mind.

He would not break down the technique.

He would show the whole technique and then you could try to recreate his movements by watching them.

So Sayatomi had the mind of an artist.

My next Aikido instructor was called T.

K.

Lee.

And T.

K.

Lee basically had a technician's mind.

He was more on the mechanical side.

And T.

K.

Lee had studied under Yamada Sensei in New York.

And T.

K.

Lee was able to actually copy 100% accurately the hand movements of Yamada.

So I got to see the two different types of learning.

And it was funny,

When I was studying with Sayatomi Sensei and one of his instructors,

I started to get into art.

And I started painting.

And I was never a great artist,

But I did come up with some really nice pieces of work.

I got into airbrushing and experienced all that as I started growing and studying under Sayatomi.

Because I loved art as much as anything else.

Or anybody else.

So then when I switched over to T.

K.

Lee,

I really got more into my surfing.

And for many years before I surfed,

I was a skateboarder.

And if you're a young skater and you're listening to this recording,

Then you might have the mind of a technician.

You could also have the mind of an artist if you can pull off a technique without breaking it down and seeing in its whole and its totality and recreating that technique.

But the mind of a technician breaks everything down into step by step.

I want to know how do I get from A to B to C to D to E to F and G.

I want to be able to work it out in my mind exactly how it's done technically.

And then I was an electrician when I started getting into Aikido with T.

K.

Lee.

And I was also an apprentice electrician when I was studying with Sayatomi.

So I did have this side of me.

We didn't get to the telephone yet,

But basically the whole electrical thing led to low voltage work.

First,

I learned fiber optics.

That has a lot to do with telephones.

But then eventually when I moved to Virginia,

I started working at a company called Poe Enterprises.

And I was given the task of learning how to program and install and train and sell phone switches.

And I was pretty successful at that.

I sold probably over 60 phone switches within about an 8 year period.

And then I also maintained all these phone switches and everything.

And I loved it.

I felt like this was my calling.

When I asked myself in my 20s what I wanted to be and it had something to do with telephones,

Then I found it.

I found that this was something that I can excel at and something I enjoy and something I love doing.

And to me that is the key to success.

To find something that you love to do.

Because when you love doing something,

It's no longer work.

In a sense it kind of becomes play.

It is your play.

It's your enjoyment.

And that makes life easier to live,

Less stressful.

Even though the work can be stressful and there's long hours.

But the pay is good and everything comes together when you really enjoy something.

So that's how I measure success within a career field.

Now let me say this too also.

So everyone knows I'm a skydiver.

And when I was learning to skydive,

They showed us it's a two parachute system.

You have a main and a reserve.

And in the beginning when they were working with the two parachute system,

They also put a belly pack on the front of some skydivers,

Which was a third parachute.

It was a round parachute,

But it was a third option.

What they found though was that it was too complicated.

People couldn't think about all the damn handles and all these different releases.

And they found that really the two parachute system works the best.

So if we apply this system,

Okay so you've got a main parachute.

You always want to fly your main parachute.

It flies the best.

It's designed to handle everyday use.

But there's always that reserve in case the main fails.

In case something happens with the main.

And the odds of something happening to the main are very,

Very rare.

I think it's one in 333% of an occurrence happening to your main parachute.

And that all depends of course on the maker of the parachute.

But most of the mains and most of the manufacturers make some pretty damn good parachutes nowadays.

So in life,

We want to fly the main parachute.

So if your main parachute is to go to college,

Become a doctor,

And be successful at that and love what you're doing and love your job and love helping people,

Then that's cool.

But you should always have a backup plan,

A reserve,

A reserve ride in case that main does not work.

It happens in life.

I mean we plan for one thing.

I actually went right out of high school into the military with the promise of becoming an air traffic controller.

So I thought I was set for life.

I went all the way through the air traffic control school.

Made it through all the on-job training and everything.

And then the day of the test came.

In the last hour of the test,

It was an eight hour test.

In the last hour of the test,

I made a mistake.

I did something wrong.

In the air traffic control field,

There is no mistakes.

You cannot make a mistake.

You have to be almost like a machine.

But I thought that was my main parachute.

That was my plan.

But unfortunately it didn't work out for me and I had to fly a backup parachute.

I had to fly my reserve in.

But that led me down to the technical trade and helped me to realize that being a young skater and a young surfer,

That I have the mind of a technician.

And you might have it too.

Or you might have the mind of the artist.

Or the mind of a doctor.

Or the mind of a dancer.

All these things are great career paths.

Some pay more,

Some pay less.

But that's not the qualifying factor to determine what is success and what is not successful.

Because it wasn't until I became a technician.

And what's interesting about being a technician and having a technical mind was basically in high school,

When I went through algebra,

I was horrible.

I just did not understand it.

But as an electrician,

We have to basically use algebra every day.

Figuring out loads of capacities for buildings and stuff like that.

To figure out the right cable size with circular mills and all this stuff.

So once it was applied to me out in the field in an environment that I could understand,

Then algebra made sense.

Then it all clicked.

And I was like,

Oh,

Maybe I'm not so bad at math.

I just couldn't comprehend it on paper.

And like I said,

You might have a technical mind and you might be suffering at math.

But don't worry about those things.

You just need someone to convey it and relay it to you in a way you can understand.

So anyway,

This is a little talk on being successful in life.

Choosing a career path.

Deciding what you want to do.

And like I said,

You can decide what you want to do and have that as your main parachute.

But have a backup plan.

Have an idea.

If college doesn't work out for you,

Then you're going to maybe try this or try that.

But have a plan for it.

And be prepared in life.

That will help you so much as you grow up and as you grow older.

There are people in their 60s that are still changing careers.

I'm 58 and I might be changing into another career very shortly.

And then of course I picked up meditating 25 years ago.

And now I'm sharing the wisdom and experience that I've gained and gathered in this thing we call life.

And now it's hopefully going to benefit you and maybe your little brother might need to listen to this recording or your little sister.

Who knows?

But anyway,

Good luck with it.

I hope that you choose wisely and like I said,

Have a backup plan.

And then life will be a breeze.

And you know,

Like I said,

They couldn't have three parachutes because it was too complicated.

So if you have a main plan and a backup plan,

That should suffice.

And if that doesn't work,

Then you can draw back and punt and rethink about everything.

Because things change in life,

People change in life.

And we grow and we develop.

And I think if we realize,

You know,

And do some core searching,

You know,

Meditate on it.

Take it into your meditation.

Let it be the last thought in your mind as you meditate.

And then get into silence and give existence a chance at least to answer,

You know,

If you don't know yourself,

What you want to do.

Okay,

Guys,

I think that helps.

And I think that this is a nice talk.

And if you like this talk,

Then leave me a rating.

And hopefully,

If we get good ratings,

Then we can post stuff live and stuff like that.

So that would really help me out a lot.

If not,

Don't worry about it.

Yeah,

You know,

If you thought it was silly,

The talk didn't help you at all,

Then you know,

That's okay,

Too.

Because maybe you're already on that career path and you're doing great in life and you don't need a pep talk.

But anyway,

Y'all take care of yourselves and namaste and aloha to all my surfing friends.

Bye bye.

Take care.