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CHAPTER 1

WHAT IS YOUR AWESOME?

One day when I was in fourth grade, I was sitting at my desk in class as our teacher, Mrs. Park, walked around the room handing back completed assignments. She'd lay the papers on each student's desk, and as they found out what grade they were given, my classmates would either be disappointed or relieved. We were given one of four marks: a plus, a check, a minus, or a circle minus. A minus was bad, and you really didn't want to get the circle minus, which was the worst.

Mrs. Park was behind me in the aisle and as she walked by my desk, she put my paper in front of me, which had an oversized plus on it. She said, "Good job. You should think about going to college."

She didn't stop to say it. It was just a casual comment she made as she kept moving to the next student, but it was the first time I remember hearing the word college. At 9-yearsold, I didn't even really understand what it meant, but it felt like she said something positive about my future. I thought, "I don't know what college is, but I'm going to go there!"

On my journey, my first destination — my first awesome — was going to college. I had other goals in my life along the way, and have had many since, but this was the first choice I made for myself designed to get me out of the life I was living and into a better future.

The details of your desired destination may be quite different from mine, but if you want to improve some aspects of your life, the goal is the same.

Do you know where you want to go in life — what you want to see, and do, and feel? Maybe you want to experience things and gain insights by living them rather than reading or hearing about them. Maybe you know deep down that the path you're on will not take you there. Maybe money is tight. Maybe you don't have the support of friends or family. Maybe you've surrounded yourself with people who are content with life as is. Maybe you're not sure how to create the lifestyle you dream about. And maybe, because of how you were raised or the culture you grew up in, you don't believe it's possible for you to forge a new path. My goal is to help you turn those maybes into answers.

What do you want? When you look deep down inside, what is in your heart? Do you want to develop deeper relationships or enhance other social aspects of your life? Our connection with others has a huge impact on our happiness. Wanting to develop new, quality relationships or the depth of relationships you already have are both worthwhile and totally attainable.

Do you want to improve your health? It's normal to desire to feel stronger and more energetic. Your energy level has an impact on nearly everything else you do.

Maybe you want to increase your job enjoyment or academic success? Do you want to be wealthier? Happier? More confident? Maybe like I did, you want to travel more. Visiting places all around the world has been a highlight for me.

Your desires may be related to your past. Do you want to let go of discomforts from your history or find a way to forgive a hurt caused by someone else? These aims can be a powerful way to enhance your future.

As you move forward in in this book it's helpful to have at least one awesome destination in mind. Rarely do things go perfectly and rarely are valuable outcomes easy to achieve. Just as an airplane continually adjusts its route to stay on track to its destination, we need a destination to measure against in order to make those needed adjustments or decisions.

There is no correct or incorrect Destination Awesome. Whatever you'd need to achieve in order to feel like you've reached your awesome destination, that is what you should have in mind as your end goal.

Though your particular destination will be unique to you, let's look at a few areas that many of us tend to consider when we think about what would be awesome for ourselves. While I do that, I wouldn't be giving you the whole story if I didn't share the odds you'll have to beat to reach awesomeness in those areas.

Many of us relate awesome to the idea of having a career we love. One that we are excited to go to each day. Not one where we are simply trading time for money. StatisticBrain.com, an online stats resource whose mission is to provide accurate and timely statistics, reports more than 70% of Americans experience physical and mental symptoms caused by stress; the American Psychological Association reports Americans consistently experience stress levels higher than is healthy. One of the top three types of stress is work-related stress. In a CBS News report, 70% of Americans said they are unhappy at work, mostly because they don't feel engaged or passionate about what they are doing.

The odds say you are unlikely to be supremely happy at work or stress free when it comes to your work.

When envisioning an awesome life, many of us also think of our lifestyle as it relates to money. How great does it sound to be financially worry free? To know the money is there for the bills, to have the ability to travel, take time off, invest in an opportunity when it presents itself, or to be able to give to great causes, charities or people in need? Lifestyle is most often synonymous with wealth, though it would be shortsighted to think money is the only variable in true wealth.

Based on 2010-2011 information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Federal Reserve, the Statistic Brain reported the average American family has less than $4,000 in total savings and that half of us have none put away for retirement, which describes the vast majority of my family. Wow! Those numbers certainly do not provide for much in the way of freedom, options or an ability to donate to charity. In order to beat the odds financially, you'll have to either have a much higher income than average or better financial management habits than most. Or both.

People Who Have Shown Us You Can Beat the Odds

• Guy Laliberte was a street performer before introducing the world to Cirque du Soleil, which is hugely successful. The company became the largest theatrical producer in the world with over nineteen shows in nearly 300 cities, including some permanent productions in Las Vegas, employing more than 4,000 people, generating revenues of more than $800,000,000 a year and winning multiple awards and distinctions.

• Climbing from the housing projects of Brooklyn to the CEO of Starbucks with a personal net worth of over one billion is the story of Howard Schultz, who in 2012, was listed in Forbes as one of the 400 wealthiest people in the U.S.

• Leonardo Del Vecchio went from being an orphaned factory worker to an apprentice for a tool and dye maker, to the founder of the largest manufacturer of sunglasses (including Ray-Ban and Oakley) and prescription glasses. As of 2011, he was ranked as the second wealthiest person in all of Italy and the seventy-first wealthiest person in the world.

• J.K. Rowling was a single mother living on welfare when she wrote the first book of the famous Harry Potter series. That series went on to win many awards, sell more than 400,000,000 copies, and be the base of the highest grossing film series in history. The movies have generated more than eleven billion in consumer spending when taking into account both theater sales and home viewing revenue.

• Oprah went from wearing potato sacks for dresses to working in radio while in high school to co-anchoring a local news broadcast to being one of the most well-known, influential and financially successful women on the planet. Her program was the highest rated talk show ever. There's no need to even give her last name for everyone knows to whom I'm referring.

In addition to career and finances, many of us equate awesomeness to having relationships that bring us happiness and fulfillment. In fact, in more than 250 studies done on happiness, the common theme, when considering all of the external factors that affect our happiness levels, is that it is related more to our connections with others than anything else. Yet nearly 50% of all marriages end in divorce and close to another 20% of people never marry. Taking into account divorce and never tying the knot, that's around 70% of people who may lack one of the most fulfilling types of relationships.

Spending quality time with people is important in relationships. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports on the ways the average American workers allot their time. The Bureau found that after sleep, work, grooming, eating, household activities and caring for family, just over four hours a day is left for leisure and athletic activities. When you couple that with surveys of Americans and the Nielsen Co. reporting that the average American is watching five hours of TV and video a day, there is little to no time left for cultivating friendships.

To have the awesome relationships you desire, you will have to beat those odds.

What Can You Do to Beat the Odds?

A helpful step in beating the career odds is to do your research. While studies show that having a degree still leads to a higher likelihood of getting work than not having a degree, they also tell us that some majors have higher employment rates than others.

A 2013 study by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce shows a better employment rate for graduates of nursing, elementary education, and chemistry and lower employment rates for graduates of information systems, architecture, and film, video, and photography arts. Whether higher education is part of your plan or not, you'll find suggestions in this book on how to beat the career and financial odds in chapters covering topics such as positioning yourself, finding a beneficial network, trust levels and being better than average.

Getting to your awesome also requires you make better choices. With a lagging economy, rising cost of living, uncertainty in governmental policy and spending, and easy access to substances and casual sex, decisions are coming with tougher consequences than in years past. With people struggling to make ends meet, an unplanned pregnancy would be even more challenging. With competition for jobs increasing, due to both global access and a high unemployment rate in the U.S., skipping class or blowing off schoolwork and the resulting effect on a transcript or the possible lengthening of time in school may have a larger impact on you than students of previous generations. Overall, and as unfair as it is, you will need to make better decisions than your parents did. Many chapters cover this topic in the personal characteristics and behavior portions of this book.

You will have to build beneficial relationships. With the average household in America comprised of either a single parent or two working parents, which leads to less family time, young adults need to be able to find mentors and supportive peer groups. You'll find information in this book related to this topic; nearly a third of it is committed to helping you build valuable relationships.

Also key to beating the odds is a commitment to continued learning. The world is changing more quickly than ever before and we have to be more adaptable. Continued growth in skills and knowledge is the way to build your adaptability. The great news is resources for learning are abundant. Just reading this book is a notch on the learning belt so kudos to you for picking it up.

Brendon Burchard — one of the highest paid trainers in the world — has read a book every week for many years. His commitment to continued growth is inspiring, and it is easy to see that it has paid off for him. So once you are done with this book, pick up another, or watch a documentary, set up a lunch with a professional in an industry in which you are interested, attend an event at which a speaker shares insights, get a study group together, or any of the many other ways you can cultivate learning.

In the coming pages, you'll read about the shortcomings I grew up with, but it's important to understand that at some point, when I got old enough, the choice between continuing to live unchanged and traveling a different path was mine alone. If I was still living that lifestyle, I wouldn't be able to point the finger at my parents, at my lack of money or skills, or at other people's expectations of me. We are all the captains of our own ships.

My dad was a single parent and a high school dropout with very few career options. He took the highest paying job he could get — truck driving — which kept him away from home 90% of the time. The very little time I spent with him, I saw how hard he worked, how tired he was, how limited his time was with my brother and me and how little he had to show for it. I looked around the trailer park and thought, "There has to be a better way."

How did other people have a more joyful existence, and what did I need to do to be one of them rather than one of us?

The only answer I came up with early on was education. I was fortunate to have a passion for learning whatever could help me improve my situation. Neither of my parents or my siblings finished high school. My mom and my brother eventually received their GEDs, but education was something no one in my family had much of or seemed to care much about. My teachers and people on television claimed education could be transforming. McGruff the Crime Dog would pop into the commercials telling me to stay in school and a public service announcement touted, "If you want to be cool, stay in school." Michael Jordan talked about the importance of education. Teachers, television, and famous athletes all shared the same advice about the importance of education, and that is what I latched on to.

Academic education started me down my path. It wouldn't be until many years later I'd be subjected to the wisdom of leaders living lives of success and fulfillment. From them, I'd learn education doesn't end with a diploma or even college degrees. That is when my focus shifted to personal and professional growth which led me to a place, physically and mentally, far away from the trailer park.

Jim Rohn worked for more than forty years as an author, speaker and personal development trainer who helped people all over the world sculpt life strategies. He said, "Formal education will make you a living; self education will make you a fortune." That fortune can be a wealth of money, great relationships, happiness, and freedom. Not many people strive for lots of money for the funds alone; it's about what good they can do with the money and the freedom it provides. Adam Stock, the founder of Rising Stock, a profitability coaching company, said, "Money can't buy you happiness, but neither can poverty. So why not be rich?"

I've shared a lot of numbers and information, and you may feel a bit overwhelmed at this point, maybe even a bit discouraged. I want you to know, without a doubt, that no matter how far it is to your Destination Awesome, you can make it. There is no far that is too far. We arrive at some destinations quicker than others. We arrive at some ready to celebrate and at others ready to nap. Maybe this process comes easily to you; maybe you're ready for this book and are at the exact right place in your life to take action. Maybe you'll have to work through it slowly and deliberately, like you're cutting a path through a jungle of brush as tall as you using a dull-edged machete. Either way, you will make it. If you keep going, keep taking action, and keep swinging your blade, you will make it. So my question for you is, "Where are you going?"

Vehicles to Take You to AWESOME

Begin by thinking about the big picture of your future. We'll break it into smaller, more immediate goals or milestones soon, but first you want to have an ultimate destination (or characteristics of a destination) in mind. Whether on paper, in the margins of this page or just in your mind, it will help to answer the following questions.

What type of work would be awesome to do? You can write down career titles or simply any traits you desire such as flexibility of schedule, travel, working on a team or using creativity.

What is your financial awesome? What do you want to be able to do with your money?

Describe what you believe makes for awesome relationships. Is it a number of friends you'd like to have? Consistent or quality communication? Openness and sharing? Lack of conflict? Common goals or interests?

In regards to your personal development, what would be awesome to you? What would you really like to learn at some point? How to build a website, a car engine, a tree house, or a financial portfolio? Do you want to improve in dancing, singing, painting, or driving a manual car?

Gone In 600 Seconds

Now break it down a bit further, and make a list of any changes you'd like to make over the next six months. Don't limit your answers. Use this time to brainstorm. You can evaluate priorities of the list later. You'll soon discover that improving one area will automatically help you begin to improve others.

You'll also find this exercise, and others, in the Destination Awesome Action Guide at the back of the book.

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Excerpted from "Destination Awesome"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Amiee Mueller.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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