The Character Craig Boone from Fallout New Vegas. The game tells the story about a man of loss finding his purpose in life. Boy I so related to this fellow!
In about 12 days I fly out on my first Business Trip since I got washed up many years ago in the Global Financial Crisis and boy am I totally excited! As an “Old Persian Man” of 35 now, as I sit here I am not only pondering my first self-funded work trip, but also the revolutions and changes in my life.
This Business Trip of mine was always on the cards and was one of my “Bucket List” items I had some years ago. I thought in the “Highly Unlikely Event” I succeed as a Business Owner / Entrepreneur I will go on this trip. The great news was that I did! It has got me feeling very proud, but also lucky in quite a reflective way. I am working around the world visiting Dubai, the United Kingdom and also the Philippines. I am blessed to be spending time with some amazing business leaders and learning from the best.
It wasn’t too long ago that I was in between homes, sleeping in my car as I had nowhere else to go and pondering how I am going to get through the day. A great part of my life I have described as “Living like a Rat”. That is, surviving from day to week, week to month, and month to years – quite a painful type of existence I lived since the GFC where my own failings lost the farm.
It has got me thinking about one of my favourite Video Games, “Fallout New Vegas”. I am sure this is a complete boy thing and one of the side-characters in it in an Ex-Sniper by the name of “Boone”. The Fallout Series are basically set a few hundred years in the future after a nuclear apocalypse with society rebuilding itself (much like society being one unsettled “Wild West” so to speak). Boone loses his wife to slavers years before the game is set and you find him as a very disturbed character. You can ally with him and depending on how you help Boone, you can help him solve his problems and create a new life – or you can kill him if you want!
Of course I helped Boone in the game as when in those days I played those “Role Playing Games” I totally immersed myself in the action, making in-game decisions as I would in real life. In helping Boone, he starts thinking differently and turns his inward pain into a positive purpose of helping others. By the end of the game, he is quite a positive character who helps save many others from the fate his wife suffered from the Slavers that captured her.
Boone only reminds me of my own journey. From losing some old friends in battle many years ago, to the Global Financial Crisis splitting my life into two parts – I was very sad for a long time. I was homeless later on too and all this had a negative effect on me.
As I came to grips with my ownself, I started to look at things very differently. When I changed my own view on what happened, I started becoming happy and appreciative. Did my circumstances change? No actually at the time, but I DID.
And guess what? I loved the pain and wouldn’t replace it for everything. In my own life journey, the painful experiences have coalesced into a driving purpose – which ultimate gave me the internal motivation to keep at my own business and helping the lives of others. Today, I don’t even remember my old self and like Boone from Fallout, being lost and finding my own way over time ironically gave me the mental freedom I was really looking for.
My advice? If your life is awesome then ignore this post! Just make sure it stays awesome so you don’t learn the logic I have gone through. If your life ain’t what you wanted it to be, may I suggest you go hard in changing it and look at how you can channel our pain & suffering into a way of helping others. To me at least, I have helped changed many lives for the better and the reality is that if I never lost the farm, there is no way I would have been able to achieve that objective.
Hope you enjoyed my post! Not quite on Small Business Marketing as I have been lately, but on a topic that has really got me reflecting on how to improve lives for the better!
Thank you from Edward Zia – Marketing Mentor and Reflective Old Persian Man of 35.
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