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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Carrie Olsen. I worked in a wedding chapel for eight years, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a lesson I learned about being a modern day pioneer.
Today’s Fun Fact: 78% of NFL players are bankrupt two years after finishing their careers. 60% of NBA players are bankrupt within five years of leaving the league. I think that this just proves that if you’re bad with money on $30,000/year, you’re probably going to be bad with money on $30 million/year, too.
What I Learned Yesterday:
My husband, Derek, and I both work from home. We also live in a day and age with amenities like dishwashers and washer machines. Because we both work from home, we have the flexibility to make our own hours for the most part. Which means that if I wake up one morning and decide I want to sleep for another hour (of course this never happens with a one-year-old in the house), I could probably do it, and nothing awful would happen. We can decide to go for a walk in the middle of the day, or take a full day off without suffering any real consequences. Likewise, if we put off some of our chores, like doing the dishes or laundry, no one dies. We can just catch up the next day.
Well, in April of 2014, my family and I took off on an epic, five-month cross-country adventure. We bought a travel trailer, packed up our things, and hit the road. It was the first time we had ever done anything like this, and although it was exciting and invigorating, it was also scary.
But I quickly found out that there were things that I had to do, specifically as it related to the travel trailer, to keep our family moving along every day. Each time we moved the travel trailer or arrived at a new RV park, there were specific tasks that Derek and I had to do, like connecting hoses, stabilizing our belongings and hitching up the trailer, that would have extreme consequences if we failed to do them or did them poorly.
Here’s what I learned:
Surprisingly, I found myself re-energized by having a set of responsibilities that had higher stakes than the majority of the ones that I had in my life up until that point. I felt more of a sense of purpose knowing that my contribution was actually needed every day. If you’re struggling with fulfillment, perhaps you just need to raise the stakes a bit. Find a thing or a cause or a person to pour into. For me, when the stakes are higher, my work feels much more fulfilling.
I’m Carrie Olsen and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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