Paradox of Success | Fortitude in 15

Welcome to Elevation Nation with your host Sam Panich and Parker Yablon.

Elevation Nation is a community focused on bringing together young adults for elevating

themselves and others every day.

Each Thursday we take 15 minutes to talk about what's going on in the real world and

touch on all the great things that Elevation Nation is up to.

What's happening, Elevation Nation, it's Thursday, March 12th and I think we got some

good weather this week.

I think the sun was shining, it was a little bit warmer than previously, I'm out west

skiing and Sam is back from his trip in Puerto Rico, realizing he probably should have

stayed.

What's happening Sam?

How you doing?

Let's go to pee, happy fortitude and 15 Thursday for you, what do you got for us today?

What's our topic?

You know I'm always a deep thinker, I'm always in the notepad on my phone, I think recently

it's been clawed, I like had clawed create me my own journal and now I'm like anytime

I have an idea, clawed like takes it and it throws it into the journal and then spins it

back up into like hey this is what your theme was, he was your thought and I've been thinking

about this idea, I know we go back and forth and this is a dilemma that we face, often,

I think this is a dilemma that many people face and that is about the paradox of success

or you could call it the success trap.

So I got two paths for you Sam and I want you to think about what's path makes sense.

So first path, you work your job, you work hard, you grind, you put in the time, the

hours and as a result of that, you see gratification and satisfaction from the impact that you're

making through your work and of course as a result that you make more money, you have

more impact, but you're spending less time on the things and the hobbies you love and

spending time with the people you love because you're focusing on the work, the thing

that's going to give you gratification from the money that you're going to make because

you want to live a financially free life or you have this other path.

You say you know what?

I don't care about the money, I don't care about the impact in my work so I'm going to

work less and as a result of working less, you have time to spend on your hobbies, the

things that you love, but you live with the debt of that success knowing you could have

had more impact or financial security if you spent your time on the things that make

you more money or give you more impact through your work.

And so I go back and forth on this thing, dude, it's hard.

It really is challenging like when should I be spending my time on work going harder,

spending extra hours because I know it might yield a return in the future compared to

you know what?

Just like spend time doing what I love and maybe that's what matters the most.

Make this money really even bring happiness at the end of the day.

Are you asking me to pick one of those because I don't want to pick either?

Is there a world in between that we can pick?

I think we have.

Okay.

I think we're doing it right now.

We're doing it right now.

Do you think a lot of people fall in the trap of one or the other though?

They think that if they work harder and they go, go, go that they're get to a place where

they can enjoy the fruit of that labor when in reality they've always thought that and

they never got there.

I mean, absolutely.

I think the United States was built on that concept.

That's why middle class and life is developed on that.

Go to Puerto Rico, go to Italy, go to these other countries, these other places.

They just want to be happy.

They don't want to be healthy.

They want to have enough for their family and that's really it.

I think it's a tough world, it's a tough trap because we all fall into it and you can

say, oh, always pick the fall in my passion piece.

Will you really?

When medical bills come, when rent is due, there's a balance.

I think for us, Parker, I like the path that we're on.

I don't know how long it's going to last.

I don't know how long we can do it, but I think we've done a pretty impressive and damn

good job of working in extremely demanding and highly sought after a full-time corporate

role with finding things that bring us passion, both entrepreneurially, but as well as with

our lives, right?

Ironically enough, you're now the hooper in our friendship here.

You love basketball, you love running, I love boxing, I love cooking.

We still have time for those people, those passions, those things outside of work even.

I mean, we live full lives, man.

Do you think it's because you've said, and you've said to yourself, I have enough or you've

objectively created a definition for what enough is for San Panich or is it you have

put up and know, known how you created car rills in your life because I know when we first

started this thing, this podcast, and we were miserable as anything, I didn't have those

car rills.

I didn't know what the car rills I could put up for myself.

It was, yo Parker, the job, you got to go this way, you got to think about this, right?

I was dreaming about work.

I didn't know how to set car rills, but now is it because we've put car rills and we're

able to form almost like a path C, a different option.

I think we're more used to it.

I think we're more senior, I think we're better at it, and we've learned how to balance

everything.

Let's give some tips to elevationation.

What has worked for you in particular with regards to setting boundaries in your life?

It's funny, right?

I think back, I had a call with a new hire at the firm, went from entered to new hire,

we had a call, caught up, great kid, and he said, what advice do you have for me with

starting off?

He was expecting me to say, you know, some piece of business knowledge, something that

would make him more successful in the big four consulting world.

Do you have any guess what I told him?

It was the most important thing he needed to do, first couple of months.

Start back, yes.

I said practice, practice and get used to waking up early.

That was one of the biggest things that I struggled with was adjusting my body from

college wake up set, you know, nine, eight to a six a.m. wake up to try to get to the

gym before work.

I said, give yourself some grace, that adjustment period is hard, you're going to feel weird,

you're going to feel tired, you're going to feel in a funk.

The first three months of work, I was tired every day, whether that was depression, whether

that was not getting quality sleep, whether that was my body adjusting, not working out,

not hydrating, probably a mixture of all the things.

But if you're tired every day, you're going to hate your job.

Even if you're doing cool shit, you're just going to be exhausted.

And so I think giving your body that ability to adjust to the real world is important.

But yeah, I don't know Parker, I think like we get stuck in this paradox of more money

will equal more happiness.

I think for me, it's more money will of course be more freedom, but it's also more security.

When you asked if I had a number of guardrails in place that would help me in establishing

this, the answer is no, to be perfectly honest, I'm still freaked out.

I have issues with my financial security.

And I think that's just looking ahead at the world that we're about to enter.

And my anxiety may be racing, I know I was texting you about this last night.

The anxiety of not knowing what comes next, where I think our parents generation, it was

worked your way up to corporate ladder.

Sure, technology is going to advance, but you work hard and you can become CEO of this

company one day.

It's not the case anymore.

So there's a lot of unknowns right now.

I think it's like to that point, most would say to get financial security then is you have

to then work harder.

And the byproduct or the thing that you need to give up to work harder is spend less

times on the things that you enjoy.

And that is the trap because you could work harder and make more money and get to a point

where you feel financially free or you may never get to that point.

So if you're never going to get to that point, wouldn't it make sense, possibly to take

the other route and not care as much about the thing that you think that you're never

going to get tough decision.

I think it's very societal based right in the United States.

It's a lot easier to just grind and grind and grind and say something better is coming.

In other countries where they have a different perspective when it comes to work and to how

to live, I think they're very comfortable with staying relaxed.

Funny enough, I met a guy on my flight to Puerto Rico, really cool dude played soccer

at University of Maryland and he is German, but he works for a nice landed company.

And I was asking, you know, what is that like?

That culture change is a different and he said, nobody works more than 40 hours a week.

None of them.

It's not that they don't work hard.

It's not that they don't care.

Their culture tells them that it's 40 hours of work and beyond those 40 hours is for you

and your family.

It's socially unacceptable to work more than that.

It's absurd.

It doesn't make any sense.

And so I think that side.

There's always a trade off too.

It comes at a cost.

Sure.

Right?

I mean, yeah, I guess, I don't know.

If your society is cool with it, then it's, I think, less of a cost than doing that here.

We live, I mean, as a modern American, you know, to your point, it's probably consumerism,

probably isn't as crazy as it is elsewhere in the world as it is here.

You see what you want to, where you want to travel next, the food that you want to eat,

the place that you want to have, or even just the security that you know you can pay

your bills.

And in American culture, the way that you get that security is to your point, Sam, make

more money.

Well, Parker, I would say you brought up something interesting and I even felt this a little

bit on my Puerto Rico trip.

I'm walking around in paradise.

Things are wonderful.

But part of me saw all the emails coming in that I wasn't having time to reply to, wasn't

thinking about.

And part of me missed that adrenaline rush of just grinding through shit and being productive

and going, all right, I got all those things crossed off like I love deleting emails across

the thing.

I like to do this.

I love it.

Things that are real that you could say, I, you love the task.

Task.

Task.

Task.

Task.

There's nothing that I think you get more gratification from than saying that you checked

a box off.

Yeah.

Totally.

And so when I was in Puerto Rico, living life that I had worked so hard to save up money

for to be able to go, I was thinking about the adrenaline rush that I would get when

I was able to sit at this desk and knock things out.

Now I'm sitting at this desk and once I get through all those things, I'm sure I can't

wait to be on a beach chilling somewhere else, right?

And so I think just two minutes are wired.

I think it's just a DNA thing in the modern human.

We want what we don't have.

Once we have it, we want something else.

And so, you know, to say whether, you know, working your way up a corporate ladder and making

more money is better than quitting your job and traveling the world right now and making

no money, who's to say?

But I think that's why I kind of like, what we've done, man, split the middle.

Split the difference.

Do both.

Way easier.

I think there's very few people who find themselves fully on path A or path B and everyone

finds their own path.

And I think the point of this episode is that the trap is very real.

Yeah.

Obviously, everyone has their own unique experiences.

It comes back to it's like, how can you create the, the, the guardrails in your life that

work for you on the things that you care about?

But also knowing that you're creating guardrails to keep that security that is very important

for you to, and you know what, it's all part of growing up and learning.

Some people never figure it out.

Some people figure it out or think they have it figured out.

I like to think at least having these conversations and being vulnerable and introspective with

people through the podcast or through whoever we meet helps us figure it out.

And so elevationation, if you're trying to find what that path looks like for you, maybe

it's worth a conversation with someone else and ask them about their path and how they

did it or more importantly, maybe it's time to grab a piece of paper and a pen.

What does that path look like for you that you want?

And start outlining what it looks like and maybe start taking those, those steps down

that path, because like Sam said, as simple as changing his morning routine has made some

big impact and changes in his life.

Hey, by the way, I ordered a new bookshelf.

It's coming.

I'm glad.

I'm so glad to hear that.

I might need one too.

Now you've sometimes people give us book recs and I don't know if it's at the library,

so I just buy it.

It's just easier.

I got a lot of books now.

It's nothing control.

It's good.

It's good.

It's good.

All right, Parker.

I love you, man.

Until next week, Mahala.

Thanks for tuning into elevationation.

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Until next week, elevationation, peace.