34 years have gone by on Tuesday October 31st.
And I wanted to share my yearly reflection.
Beaware this is long and I don’t expect anyone to read it.
The lessons I’ve learned this year are by far the biggest and I feel I still haven’t fully internalized all of them.
I’d summarize this entire year around learning how to move from a scarcity mindset to a growth mindset. This is something I’ve yet to master, and I believe I’m doing the right things to get there.
I spent two months this year building out a system for how to answer the question when I’m 80 years old and looking back on my life, what will I want to say I’ve done?
This took a lot of work and time, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot about myself and happy with the direction I’m choosing to move forward in. I know what is important and what I want to accomplish. I started this because I didn’t want to get to the ages of 50-60 and regret what I choose to spend my time doing. I hope to one day share this work with the people around me to hopefully help them answer these hard questions too.
Leaving my full time job, was not easy, especially doing it through a recession. I believe though it was the right thing to do, I rather regret what I did do, than what I didn’t do. Being comfortable is easy and in easy you don’t grow, at least not much. The amount of personal growth I had to do this year, was literally insane. Even with all the counseling I’ve done, books I’ve read, and proactive work I did. I still broke.
Back in March, I went through a really hard time. I had lost customers in CJAM and felt the recession affecting my business. I didn’t think it would hit my business the way it did.
I’d be at dinner with my parents and I wouldn’t be able to eat. I wouldn’t even be able to put sentences together. I’d be on some customer calls and could feel myself holding back my panic attacks.
I’ve never experience anything like this before.
Luckily with the help of some amazing people around me, my wife, mentors, counsellors and friends. I was able to get out of that cycle in about 3 weeks. But man was it hard.
From that though I learned to build systems around how to deal with this in the future. I think one of the most important things to learn about going through a time like that is knowing you will get out of it.
That is the hardest part, not knowing if you will ever feel the same again. You will. And if you ever need support or help, please give me a call or message, I’m happy to try and help the best I can.
Other things, I learned about panic attacks and getting through them.
– You need to give time for your nervous system to calm down , relax and feel that you are safe. Go for walks in nature, breathe, listen to calming music, take the time to let your system regulate.
– I’ve built out a questionnaire when I deal with hard situations now to reengage my logic part of my brain and allow my emotional side to reorient itself. This really helps.
– Build a team of support around you, people you trust to speak to, don’t feel you need to go through this alone. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the people in my life.
Going through that hard time though has many positives though!
From going through that downtime in CJAM, I learned that there are aspects of my business I need to build out. I need to create a system for bringing in business to me.
I need to use my marketing knowledge to build my own business now!
And over the last month I’ve really been enjoying this process.
Building your own funnel, having a team to support you as you do it , has been an awesome experience.
I got to build extremely closer and stronger relationships with the people around me. Outside of my amazing wife and family. I have 3 mentors who helped me through this very hard time. I had friends who spent hours chatting with me and supporting me. And I had a counsellor that helped me through the toughest times. Feeling I wasn’t alone made the biggest difference.
Learning about the flow of Money. Money is an interesting concept and one that I struggle with. Not because I don’t have it, but just how I have this poor mindset around it.
I’m starting to internalize that money flows and it should flow. It’s not always going to be a straight line up, sometimes you will make more and sometimes you will make less. It comes and goes.
I heard the Japanese have a saying around “Arigato money”, thank you money when they spend it. I love this concept. I’m learning to shift my focus of success from money to other things and it’s starting to take hold.
Moving to an entirely new country.
A friend of mine said, never to make two huge shifts at once, aka, leave your full time job and move to an entirely new country, moving from 3 incomes down to 1.
But I did anyways, because why not. But as I’m getting more accustom to this new life my wife and I are living.
I am grateful for everything we have. When I reflect, if I chose to live in Vancouver for the rest of my life, I knew what the outcome would be… But in this new place, we have no idea what next year will look like.
I’m learning about new cultures, meeting new people and getting to learn more about myself. Although fear kicks and tells me move back to what you know. I know that pushing through the fear is where the growth lies.
Over the last few months, I’ve shared with those close to me the reflections and work I’ve been doing on myself. And their genuine responses have really touched me.
“Wow Behdad, what you’ve done there is impressive”.
“Behdad this is genius type energy, you can help a lot of people with this.”
I’m starting to feel more and more that I have a lot to share with the world and through sharing I hope I can help others reach their full potential.
My super powers lay in a few different things.
1. Helping others get through walls.
I love sharing, teaching, and mentoring others. Watching people grow because I was able to help them get through a road block is the best feeling. Especially when I can do that from a place of experience.
2. Grit, man I do not give up easy, and I put the work into getting what I want.
Let me give some examples. I’ve had over 30+ hamstring injuries, not including all the other injuries I’ve had. I still play sports , soccer and train. I won’t let those things hold me back. I’m relentless in my pursuit.
My Crohn’s , I spent over 5 years learning as much as I could to help get myself to a point where I haven’t taken pills for over 10 years now. And these are just some examples.
3. Taking complex problem and simplifying them.
I’m not talking about simple problems but problems that take awhile to solve. 3-4 years and after going through it, being able to explain it to others.I think that’s where my engineering brain works best. Right now I’m applying this skillset to business and moving from a scarcity mindset to a growth one.
Scarcity vs growth mindset.
This is going to be what I’m focusing on for the next year. I’m done letting fear decide how I go about life. The fear will never leave, but it’s not going to be what dictates my life and what I do. I want to go through life with a sense of curiosity, openness and trust in myself that I’ll figure it out. I’m learning an insane amount right now and I’m apply that learning which becomes skill. I’ll be sharing my journey as I go through this transition and I hope one day to have a process and way for others to go through the same shift.
33 was an absolutely crazy year for me, one in which had many highs and many lows. But throughout all of it, I believe I’m coming out of it a stronger person, with more trust in my capabilities.
I’m curious to see what 34 has for me!
