I’ve mentioned before on my blog that I have an annual tradition of using my birthday as the focal point for setting and reaching yearly goals. Each birthday I spend significant time by myself, reviewing what I wrote and planned the previous birthday, assessing it against my progress, and setting new goals for the year ahead. It’s sort of my own personal State of the Union. Throughout the year, I have regular checkins and adjustments to make sure I’m on target and to allow for agility with my goals.

I’ve been doing this for the majority of my adult life now, and its quite interesting to me that as time went on, even events that were out of my control seemed to start aligning with this time of the year for me. It’s amazing how many major events in my life has occurred within a week on either side of my birthday. I don’t think its a coincidence. Focusing on the goals and having a clear understanding of them, have to be the two biggest determining factors in reaching them. For me, the traditional New Year’s occasion of setting resolutions mean nothing because its based on some arbitrary changing of a calendar. Centering it on my birthday has made it more meaningful; more real, and I believe has made more of an inner impact on me that ultimately has helped me reach my goals. I’ve used my birthdays to achieve massive weight loss, change jobs, buy my first home, test for my black belt, buy and learn to shoot my first gun, buy and learn to ride a motorcycle, and so many other smaller goals. Even last year’s Rumble turned out to complete the week of my birthday and last year, one week before, I found out that my Martial Arts teacher of 16 years was retiring and I would no longer be training with him or attending his weekly classes.

My birthday has also been the one time I lost a job. It was a layoff of sorts; really just a contract not being renewed due to a new policy to phase out contractors, but it knocked the wind out of me. It was the first time I’d experienced that even when you’ve proven yourself invaluable as an employee, you can still lose your job, because ultimately its out of your hands, That was six years ago, and it set in motion a completely new way of thinking about my career and my direction. I made a lot of minor changes particularly on what I studied and how I used my spare time to advance my career and my personal branding. I recognized that my strengths and passions were in building products and services and not code, and began altering my entire focus.

Work
Now, six years later, I find myself in a similarly significant job change. For the last 2.5 years I’ve worked for IMM on the Miley Cyrus web sites. It’s been great working with a small intimate team, using Rails and working in the entertainment industry instead of B2C for only the second time since I began my career. But as Miley’s career changed, so did the fans, and I could see the writing on the wall that one day soon there would no longer be the money there to keep these sites running. Rather than to wait for that, I decided to be proactive. I was routinely turning down Rails projects due to my full time job and decided to transition from full time employee to working full time with my company Agile Nomads, providing Ruby on Rails and front end development services. It’s a risk for sure, and its both frightening and exciting. I’m already more than fully booked in September and 80% booked for October and will be working with some great clients to produce some awesome products.

I don’t know how long I’ll stay in this situation; we’ll see how it goes. I’m committed to building great products using Internet technologies and Ruby on Rails and assisting businesses with their product development goals, and for now I’ll do that as a freelance developer through Agile Nomads, and address each opportunity individually as it arises.

I plan to continue working to build PeepNote, and at this year’s Rails Rumble, will be working with a team full of great guys to launch a brand new startup that truly comes from my heart and connects with my highest passions.

Church
But this massive change in my career isn’t the only change in my life. After 25 years of attending the same church, where my dad has served as Pastor, the church was unable to continue and closed just two months ago. Now the search is on for a new home church. I’ve never not attended the same church with my parents and sister. Change indeed.

Home
On the heels of the church closing, and the decision (made a few months ago) to transition into working for myself full time, my family has decided to make another life altering change. It’s something we’ve talked about for years and years, sort of a bucket list dream, but with all that’s going on, we finally felt it was the right time; it was now or never; it was time to do it, or scratch it off the list forever. Looking over my list of what I wanted to accomplish by middle age, it is only 1 of 2 items left on the list. And so, we began our plans to sell or give away at least 50% of all we own, sell our home and move the entire family into an RV…full time. We love to travel and we firmly believe in giving our kids as many varying experiences as possible. As well, I want to be able to move around the country, working with startups and meeting like minded people in the startup community. We also want to ensure that each of us learns to live with less. It’s not that I’m against having material possessions, but if you aren’t careful they can own you. And we feel like we were on the brink of that, and were ready to take drastic measures to prevent it. It will also help accomplish my 2nd remaining middle age goal…having no debt except a home mortgage (RV in our case). It won’t be a short or quick journey. We have to prepare the house to put it on the market and then who knows how long it will take to sell. In the mean time, we are spending most our time selling things on craigslist or ebay, driving car loads to Salvation Army, and hauling some completely worthless junk to the curb. The adventure has already begun, and no matter how long it takes us to get there…we will.

And next birthday, hopefully I’ll be crossing that goal off, from my office in our fifth-wheel home, in some beautiful new part of the country…maybe next to the Chena River in Alaska, or a quiet harbor in Maine. I’ve been quite blessed to have been able to complete so many of my goals by this young an age, and though there aren’t many left on the list (created when I was in high school), I have no doubt as I move into this new segment of my life, that with new experiences and opportunities, new dreams will arise. I urge you to spend time setting your goals and being clear with yourself on what they are and what your passions are. I encourage you to stay focused on them and I truly hope you get to experience that wonderful sense of accomplishment by achieving them.

I finally had a chance to finish up reading the Delivering Happiness book I’ve been reading and writing about for the last few weeks. In all, I do recommend the book both to startups, and to those running a larger company. The book is almost two books in one. The first half, as I covered in my posts, Discovering Happiness and Now This is Real Passion, are about Tony’s early startup experience and the path he was on that led to his personal discovery of what his passions really were. This was the part of the book that I enjoyed the most as it focuses on my situation and on one of my favorite areas of interest: internal motivation and discovering one’s passions.

The second part of the book deals with the management of Zappos, as Tony transitioned into running and growing a company. Here, he discusses how he built the now famous Zappos culture. He discusses this in detail, including many internal memos and company letters, and even including 24 pages of the company’s Core Values Document. I touched on this in my previous post The Zappos Culture Book. This is all very interesting, but since I’m more involved in the early startup days, it’s a bit beyond where I need to be. It was still helpful and I identified with many of the core values, and felt like I would be comfortable adopting the entire thing, as-is, for my own company, though with some personal changes here and there.

I do think that overall, the book could have been better with an editor reviewing and chopping out maybe 25%. For that reason I gave it 4/5 stars, compared with 5/5 for both Rework and Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It. If you remember, with Rework, between the next-to-last and final draft they cut the book in half, down to 27,000 words from 57,000. Delivering Happiness would have been better a bit shorter and more focused.

In this second part of the book, spanning sections 2 and 3, you will learn what it is that Tony believes are the only competitive advantages they have, “everything else can be copied”. You’ll read examples of how the company stood behind its culture and core values and how they developed what those would even be. Tony will discuss the number one driver of growth: customer service and word of mouth, and how that is more than a marketing scheme, but a way of life for the entire team at Zappos. Tony also discusses the importance and value they place on their call center, and how differently they handle that than most other companies, and how other companies can instill excellent customer service at their companies.

As I mentioned earlier you’ll be able to read the entire Core Values Document of the company with helpful example stories where they put it in practice and how it effected the people and the company. Tony will discuss his experience with beginning to speak publicly and how he changed his approach on how to prepare for speaking and how freeing the new approach was. He concludes with a discussion on the science and study of what happiness means and the frameworks of happiness.

I would summarize the entire book into one main theme: Do what you are passionate about, embrace your passions, and share them with others, focusing, in all you do, to make others happy in every opportunity, using all your skills, experiences and passions.

Remember to post a comment on any of my Zappos posts to be entered to win a free copy of the book. I’ll name the winner on Monday. You could share an idea, ask a question, share a related quote or experience as well.

Update:I’ll be shipping a copy of Delivering Happiness to the winner of the free book, Amber Weinberg. Thanks for reading Amber!

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. ~ George Bernard Shaw

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. ~ H.S. Truman

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. ~ Carlos Castaneda

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sitting in my window seat on the flight home from this weekend’s conference, my mind swirling with thoughts from the weekend, I look out the window, and am pulled away from my contemplation by one of the most remarkable visions I’ve ever seen while flying. There is a thin sheet of wispy clouds below me just thin enough to still reveal the city night lights beneath. Off in the horizon is an amazing lightning show visible from behind a much thicker mass of dark clouds. Most of the lightning flashes fill the distant sky without actually seeing the lightning bolt itself, but every few minutes a solid bolt breaks through the clouds, lighting up the entire scene. In all, it’s an awe-inspiring contrast of man made and natural light, creating a mood altering and surreal scene before me.

As I look down through the clouds onto the homes, businesses, churches, and communities below, I think back to a woman waiting in the airport with me just an hour ago. She had been bumped from a previous flight, and while waiting at the airport, had received a call that her young son had been in a serious car accident while she was out of town. He was on his way to the hospital when I first overheard the situation. After a few minutes of nervous pacing, she received another phone call. I could not hear what was being said, but she collapsed in uncontrollable grief and sobbing. A friend finished the call for her, and several minutes after I heard the update: her son was unresponsive, and was being airlifted to a different hospital in a last attempt to save his life.

I missed my kids. I longed to hold them.

Surely every home spread about below me had some kind of problem, difficulty or stress facing it. Many of them probably facing multiple issues, from strained parent-child relationships, to crumbling marriages, to financial issues caused by poor money management or unfortunate circumstances in their work situations, to health issues for family, friends, and loved ones, and even devastating loss. It reminded me of the recent loss of my grandmother, my grandfather’s failing health, the closing this week of my families church for the last 20 years, a fire that burned the church down a few years ago (we rebuilt it), and even back to the tornado that destroyed our home back in ‘92. At some point in our lives, we all face many of these problems, but I wonder how often we remember to be thankful and appreciative during the times when we aren’t dealing with severe issues, and I wonder how empathetic we are to those going through them now, and more importantly how willing we are to help those dealing with an issue.

As I head home, I also have thoughts of the projects I’ll get back to work on and what direction I should take with several of them. I have new thoughts and ideas stirring in my mind, inspired by the speakers and conversations from the conference I attended. I can’t wait to take action, to have more conversations with my like minded friends and partners, and get back to doing what I love. But though I love what I do and I love working with some truly great people on some really exciting projects, I can never forget the big picture; the other things in life that matter, and I’m thankful for the little reminders in life that come along, often just in time.

I’ll never know what happened to that woman’s family, nor how the outcome will shape her family for generations to come. All I know is I prayed for her many times on the flight home. I felt her pain, and I used it to remind myself to really cherish the times I have with my children and my loved ones.

The next time you’re feeling overwhelmed with grief or stress from a situation you find yourself in, stop and get some perspective. Sit by a busy place, perhaps in a mall at a coffee shop, and watch the hundreds of people walking by and remember that each one of them is facing difficult times, at least at some point in life. Remind yourself you aren’t alone and your problems aren’t a unique curse on you. It’s just part of living life.

Then, find someone in need, and offer to comfort them, pray for them, or help them in some way that you can. Remind yourself of your blessings and enjoy them, guilt-free, while you have them. Gather your loved ones, and express your appreciation for them. Embrace what you have, while you have it, even in the face of difficult times. That’s all we can do in the end, because the troubles on our path ahead are out of our control. As scary as that is, we have only one choice: live each day to the fullest, love life, love others, give and serve in all we do, enjoy the fruits of our labor for as long as we have them, and handle trials and troubles with integrity, honesty, faith, and perseverance.