Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

This category of postings will hopefully guide you through my learning process at becoming good at whatever you try to. I am going to first give background on why I am starting this web log, but then I will begin the process of learning. Learning how to follow through and succeed at the goals that I set for myself. I hope you will join me as I try to accomplish all the things I have started at one point or another, or have wanted to.

First some history…

During my 24 years on earth I have had the need to become great at everything I try but haven’t succeeded as much as I would have liked. I tend to get really excited about new things that come into my life. For instance, I have wanted to be a great soccer player, football player, runner, basketball player, scientist, medical doctor, businessman, leader, golfer, romantic, kickball player, writer, reader, surfer, fly fisherman, kiwi farmer, conservationist, climber, lifter, audio tech,… the list goes on and on. Whatever it was I was in to or am currently in to, I wanted to be the best, or at least be really good at it. Only problem was, something else would come along that I wanted to be good at also. This would usually lead me to slowly phase out the previous obsession only to repeat the process. Or was I really just looking for something to replace the previous obsession due to a fear of failure?, or was it because I was actually failing?, or was it lack of support by a particular peer?

Whatever it may have been or is currently wouldn’t matter. Fact is I would just get excited about something new and over indulge at first only to slowly move to the next phase.

With that said just to give you a little more background on myself, when I get into something I really get into it. Some more recent adventures of mine have been surfing and golfing. Living in Hawaii I can do both of these pretty much all year long. Surfing started when my girlfriend and I first moved to the isalnds and I spent a whole weekend looking for a board and didn’t stop until I found one. Even though there are about a million on island it of course had to be perfect, for I was going to become the best surfer in waikiki. I mean how hard could it be? Well since that first board I’ve bought and sold about 15 boards but have slowed down a bit on my surfing excursions.
Next was golfing. Some people at work had been egging me on for a while and finally I decided to take the clubs out. Being fairly competative and knowing that a lot of people I know to be good at golf I could clober them in other sports, I decided to jump right in. Well its been 3 months since I decided that and I now have a completely new set of golf clubs, minus the putter, and continue to play and work on my swing. I also bought a rather expensive book that was supposed to be the end all fix to an inconsitent swing.

There is also my never ending quest to become a millionaire, to become rich, to live the life?. For some strange reason I decided when I was in high school that I needed a goal to become a millionaire by the time I was 30. For some even stranger reason when I was in college I decided to change that goal to 27. I guess I thought with an Engineering degree from The University of Michigan it would be easier (oh what a nieve little boy I was).

I have had many businesses over the last 15 years. From selling candy on the bus in 4th grade, to having sports card trading and selling days, to selling blowdarts at school (5th grade, I didn’t really think much until I was a junior in high school), to growing and selling Kiwi fruit, to a landscaping company I started, not much in college, then on to buying and selling surfboards here in Hawaii. Now although all of these businesses were fun and some I learned more from than others, I have never really had a planned route to becoming a millionaire, to becoming rich. I am not saying that I neccesarily need a plan, but with each new opportunity realizing how it could help or begin future opportunities is something that I need to pay more attention to.

Enter a one of my co-workers at the start-up biotech company I work for. The past couple of weeks I had been discussing with my girlfriend Kimberly about starting a website or two to try and earn money. I had done this before but that lasted all of 3 weeks. This time I was waffeling when my co-worker sent me a website, www.stevepavlina.com. It’s a very interesting site about some things this guy is trying out. It also talks about making money which was one of our common interests. Well, my co-worker started was so inspired that he started a website over lunch!

You can go to his website at www.byintention.com. He discusses his goal to get to one million dollars by the time he is 28 and gives some interesting tidbits about how to get there. He is a super intelligent guy who knows a lot about website devlopment and promotion. We both made our million dollar goals while in college (didn’t know each other) and met up at work and now discuss our common interests.

That was all the inspiration I needed. I went home that night, signed up for a hosting service, and started in on it. First thing was something to write about. Well, I have always wanted to write about goals and keep myself accountable for all that I say I am going to get done. There, a website. I decided that rather than just started many numerous things in my life only to get just good enough and then move on to the next thing I would really try and focus on becoming good at everything I try to do.

These are questions I hope to answer with the content of my weblog. Maybe I’ll come up with a formula for succeeding at whatever it is you want to do (if this is the case look out Anthony Robbins), or maybe I’ll inspire others to search for how they can be good at whatever he or she wants to. In any case I will continue to post progress towards my goals, no matter how outrageous others think they may be.