My Reality Check Bounced! - Jason Ryan Dorsey [77]
WHAT TIME IS IT IN YOUR WORLD?
Sara left her high-paying job because she realized that the corporate ladder she was racing up was just as fast wearing her down. Her new position as a high school teacher may not come with stock options and first-class travel, but she now wakes up excited to go to work—and how many people can honestly make the same claim?
I think many twentysomethings go through an overworked but underwhelmed crisis similar to Sara’s. I know I did. We both learned the hard way that being busy is not necessarily success. When you’re too busy you can’t take time for yourself, so you miss out on what makes life so great. Once you do find your balance, you’ll realize what it is you’ve been in such a rush to experience.
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INSTANT MESSAGE
Spare time is never found, it’s always created.
Where you focus your time reveals the true order of your priorities.
All you need is thirty minutes a day to get on the right track.
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BOUNCED: Being extremely busy means I’m a success.
CASHED: Success is having the time to do what makes me feel most alive.
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ONLINE: Find out how Sara is doing at her new job at
www.myrealitycheckbounced.com/book
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11
CUTTING CORNERS
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If you can’t tell your mama about it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.
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REALITY-CHECK MOMENT: SOMETIMES I HAVE TO COMPROMISE MY ETHICS TO GET AHEAD.
We are a short-attention-span generation. We see our peers make millions by the time they’re twenty-five, and we want the same thing—but we don’t want to have to wait for years or to work so hard to get it. We see politicians accepting bribes, pro athletes taking steroids, entertainers cheating on their wives and getting famous for it, and we think—am I missing the boat here? As a consequence, many of us are tempted to cut corners to get ahead quickly, even though we know it may be wrong.
The problem is that what may appear to be only a blurring of ethical lines to you can be a huge violation to others. Just one ill-conceived or ill-planned or ill-timed unethical choice can set you up for years of painful consequences that would otherwise have been avoidable. No matter what Future Picture you seek, if you pursue it with an unethical mind-set, you leave yourself wide open to potentially devastating and irreversible outcomes.
One glaring example of this is my friend Blake.*1 He was a young entrepreneur who started a business in his college dorm room about the same time I did. The major difference: My business was helping teens from tough backgrounds make better decisions. Blake’s business was selling fake IDs (at least what I considered fake IDs) over the Internet. Here I was trying to reduce potentially painful paths such as underage drinking, college binge drinking, and drinking and driving, and Blake was getting rich enabling them.
Blake and I met, became friends, and had some serious talks about his business. He agreed to share his wild story in this book on the condition I tell it from his perspective. I think his story speaks to the unethical shortcuts we all will encounter:
Both my parents immigrated to the United States from Poland. Because we didn’t have money, I was always looking for quick ways to make a buck. When I was about fifteen, I got my first real job. From the outside, my employer seemed to be running a normal business with a storefront, large sign, and lots of clients. But inside he sold “ID cards.” These were very similar to state-issued driver’s licenses, except they had a tiny disclaimer printed on the back: “For novelty