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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I’ll be going to see Coldplay perform this August, and I believe if you are learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I look back at 3 years of being an entrepreneur.
Today’s Fun Fact: Are you trying to lose a bit of weight to get ready for swimsuit season? Here’s a weightloss tip for you that requires no exercise or change in eating habits. It only requires a bit of travel. Did you know that you weigh less at the equator? It’s true! At the equator, the centrifugal force due to the spinning of the Earth is at its maximum, and vanishes at the poles. This means that the attractive force of gravity is slightly reduced because it is directed towards the center of the Earth, while the centripetal force is directed outward from the center. The effective acceleration of gravity at the poles is 980.665 cm/sec/sec while at the equator it is 3.39 cm/sec/sec less due to the centrifugal force. If you weighed 100 pounds at the north pole on a spring scale, at the equator you would weigh 99.65 pounds, or 5.5 ounces less. Your mass, in grams, however would stay the same because ‘grams’ is a measure of the resistance of a body to being moved and has nothing to do with acceleration or gravity. Your mass in kilograms would remain the same. It is common for people to use ‘pounds’ and ‘grams’ interchangeably but they are not. (source)
What I Learned Yesterday:
Can you believe we’ve already made it to May? That’s right. Mother’s Day is less than a week away, my 17th wedding anniversary is less than 2 weeks away, and tornado season is in full swing here in my neck of the woods. Time sure flies by. One other evidence of this truth will occur tomorrow, May 3rd. Tomorrow will be the 3 year anniversary of my final day at my old job. Wednesday, May 4th (Star Wars Day) will mark my third anniversary of being a full-time entrepreneur. I didn’t intentionally choose Star Wars Day as my entrepreneurial anniversary, but it’s a cool day to share for sure.
This third anniversary is a big deal to me. As I mentioned in a recent episode, my CPA told me that hitting the three year mark is a big deal. She said that it takes most businesses 3 years to hit their stride and make it. I thought she would be mistaken, but she wasn’t. It’s really amazing to look back at the landscape of these three years and observe the journey I’ve made.
So that’s what I’d like to do today. That is, I’d like to look back at the landscape of my life. I’d like you to do the same. I’ve spoken before about how these milestone moments should be cherished. When we reach a birthday, anniversary, or other easily trackable day in our life, it’s really important to use those days as gauges.
I don’t know about you, but I love racing games. For my iPad, I love to play Real Racing 3. When I’m in the midst of a race, there are a few things I keep track of. I look at my braking and speed going into corners so that I can take the optimal line and maintain top speed without going off the track. I look to see what place I’m in and how many laps are left in the race. I look to see if there are areas of the track that provide a bit of a shortcut. But my goal is to win the race, and to do that, I need to track my progress against the competition and make sure I’m improving my performance each lap. I track the former by keeping an eye on the gauge that tells me how far I am from the guy in front of me and the guy behind me. Those gauges are helpful, but not always accurate.
For example, if I’m braking hard to enter a hairpin corner and the guy behind me is on a straightaway, it will look like he’s closer at that moment that he truly is. When I accelerate out of the corner and he reaches the corner, it will sort of even out, except that I may then be in an S curve. So it’s not really possible to truly gauge how I’m doing compared to my competition. Instead, I have to monitor it and make sure that my average distance is going in the direction I want. Better yet, I keep an eye on my lap times and make sure that I’m improving my lap times as I go through the race. I can use all that data to help me improve my position on the track and improve my performance in future races as I learn more about each track. If I didn’t monitor those things throughout the race, I’d have no idea how I was doing, what I could do to improve, or perhaps even what enabled me to get to my current spot on the track.
And so it is with these milestone times of our lives. They are a practical way of checking our lap times to make sure we’re making progress.
So I’ve been looking back at the tapestry of my life a lot over the last few months. It’s been a really interesting journey for sure. I bet my tapestry looks a lot like yours. It’s filled with fun times, sad times, embarrassing times, and proud times. It’s filled with mistakes I wish I hadn’t made and it’s filled with some very fortunate moments. It’s filled with times that I couldn’t have made it without help from friends and family, and it’s filled with moments when friends and family wouldn’t have made it without me.
My tapestry is filled with life. All of these things I described are just a fractions of the things that are the markings of life.
Here’s what I learned.
A few nights ago my son and I were on a walk and he asked me an unexpected question. He said, “Dad, which one of your old girlfriends do you like the least?”
I have no idea why he asked that question, but it caused me to laugh out loud. I told him that I didn’t have an answer. I liked all of them at the time we dated, but that wasn’t the main reason I didn’t have an answer. I went on to tell him that even my most recent girlfriend was nearly 20 years ago. I said that I’m not the same person I was 20 years ago, and I don’t expect that any of my ex-girlfriends are the same person they were 20 years ago. Even if I didn’t like one of them back then, there’s no way for me to know what they are like today.
I like who I am today. I like where I’m at today. I like that I quit my corporate job 3 years ago. I like that I chose to marry Kari Brunson. I like that we’ve chosen to live in Edmond, OK. I like that we’re still happily married after 17 years.
But don’t think for a moment that I’m happy staying where I’m at. I want to continue to grow. I want to continue to learn. I want to continue to love my wife more each day. I want to continue to get better at my craft.
Moving, growing, learning, loving, and changing means that mistakes are heading my way. That’s part of life. But mistakes are often when we learn and grow the most. And mistakes are the markings of life. If you cut down a tree you’ll see rings. Those rings tell you how much the tree grew, how old it lived, where it had to make it through a dry spell, or even if it suffered a scarring blow. Those are the markings of life. If you look at sedimentary stone, it will tell you a very similar story. You’ll see layer upon layer of age, growth, deposits, and the moments when the rock was cut the deepest. You’ll be able to see where the rock stood firm, and where the rock gave way to let the water and wind pass by. Those are the markings of life.
We all have markings of life and they tell us how we got here. We didn’t get here alone. We didn’t get here without help. We didn’t get here without victories. And we didn’t get here without mistakes. But we are here.
Where will my journey take me next? What will my tapestry look like this time next year? How will I grow and learn this year? What will the markings of this life be next May? I don’t know but there’s only one way to find out. Time to hit the accelerator and find out what’s around the next corner.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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