The "I'm Ready Now!" Podcast
Ideas to help you when you're ready for change.
The "I'm Ready Now!" Podcast
EP 20: Discovering Purpose: Navigating Life’s Surprises and Passions
Have you ever wondered how life’s passions can lead you to discover your true purpose? For those pondering their future paths, especially with the mounting pressure of costly educational commitments, this episode speaks directly to you. In this episode, I delve into my own journey from mechanical drafting in my early educational years to music, shaped greatly by inspiring mentors as well as growing up as a pastor's kid. My story highlights the value of foundational skills and the powerful impact of encouragement during formative years. As we build our podcast community together, I invite you to share your thoughts and feedback, helping us learn and grow as a collective. Let's embark on this journey where a single thought or idea can spark meaningful progress.
Welcome to the I'm Ready Now podcast ideas to help you when you're ready for change. I'm your host, isaac Sanchez, here. I share my musings on whatever it is I am reading at the moment, as well as any other ideas that I believe will help you break free from a standstill in your thinking in order to get you dreaming again. Thank you for joining me today. Well, I'm ready now. How about you? Excellent, so let's get started. Welcome back to the I'm Ready Now podcast. Thank you for joining me. I'm excited that we are together again. I always look forward to spending this time together.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, I did it again. I failed to meet a podcast deadline I set for myself, and you want to know the worst of it. This happened on a week I had off from work for Thanksgiving break. I'm embarrassed by it. I wasn't lounging around. Okay, maybe I was a little bit, but I just let my free time get pulled into other directions and I failed to hit my deadline. So I gave myself the lashings already and I'm ready to move on. It really is good to be back with you, though Now I should say that out of that, a change did come, out of the error of my ways. It's a realization that I need to let you know about. So here it is. I'll be publishing episodes at midnight each Sunday from now on, so by early Monday morning episodes will be available. After deep thinking about my deadline lapses, this epiphany came about, so I'll work my way through the content in small chunks during the week, and on the weekend I'll record and edit, if I have not done so already. So thank you for your patience. Something good did come out of this, and so I'm happy about that. I hope that will work for all of us.
Speaker 1:Okay, so back to the housekeeping. Here are my standard reminders I like to share right at the top. First, there are chapter markers on this podcast, so if you want to get straight to the content, please use those markers to skip right ahead. No harm, no foul, I understand. Also, remember that in the description of this episode, wherever you found it, there is a link you can tap to text me there. You can leave feedback on the topics we're addressing as well. You can always email me at IsaacSanchez, at Maccom. I look forward to hearing from you.
Speaker 1:So what's up in your world? Well, me having my dad around. About a week ago, my dad was visiting from Nashville, tennessee. He lives with my twin brother and his wonderful wife and three boys out yonder. I first went to go visit them about 12 years ago and just fell in love with the open space and the beauty when Lydia and I married this summer. This summer before last, we honeymooned in Gallington, tennessee, with the purpose of enjoying a guided hike in the beautiful Smoky Mountains and other things out there. This was Lydia's first visit to Tennessee and she had the same response that I did she loved it. She loved the lush greenery, the open spaces. So we have a special place in our hearts for Tennessee.
Speaker 1:Anyway, my dad has bounced in and out of Tennessee over the years. When my mom passed away about 12 years ago, my dad went out there to live with my brother and sister-in-law. He was in the construction business and it was booming out there, so he and my brother teamed up to get some work done. He was there a few years and then he wanted to come back, so I hightailed it out there and we came back with the U-Haul trailer hitched to his truck. He's been back here for several years now and he had been living with me in Chino, california, before Lydia and I married. When we married he headed back to Tennessee and has been there for a couple of years, so it was nice to have him back out here. He was back on this visit by a very kind gesture.
Speaker 1:My brother-in-law and sister were celebrating 25 years as pastors and, knowing that my father would love to celebrate with them and that they would appreciate him being there, my brother-in-law's brother and a friend bought his flight tickets over here and back for that surprise. And at the celebratory service they were surprised. All right, it was a wonderful moment. I was there when they kind of walked down the aisle and saw my dad up front in the corner, and so it was wonderful. Also, while he was out here, my wife, with the help of my nieces, the daughters of my other sister, they were throwing a surprise 50th birthday party for her I can say her age now because it's out there. So they figured my dad should stay for that and Thanksgiving my dad should stay for that and Thanksgiving. So my sister's birthday was on Thanksgiving officially, but we celebrated her surprise birthday party the Saturday before that. So my dad got to be a part of that surprise party and spend Thanksgiving out here.
Speaker 1:Boy, the joke was that if you want a secret out, get my dad into it. He's 77 years old and still trudging along and getting stuff done, but every once in a while stuff will slip. But he did amazing. He actually got a round of applause at the party for being able to hold a secret for at least a couple of weeks, so everything was very special.
Speaker 1:Also, while he was here, he had a chance to spend time with each of us in California here the siblings that are out here so we all got a good piece of my dad. It was wonderful when he spent time at our place for a day and a half. We were able to take him to see my mom's grave site. Lydia and I spent some time putting that together and got him out there, and that was a very special time for us. It was the first time that Lydia had been to my mom's grave site and I hadn't been there for a little bit as well. My wife and I picked him up at LAX to kick it all off and we took him back some 23 days later to get him back home.
Speaker 1:Everything worked out wonderfully, so maybe it's our turn to head back to Tennessee to visit. I swear every time I'm there. I just want to send word for someone to pack everything up and bring it to me. Bring all my belongings, I'm not going back. So we'll see how Lady and I can make that happen. Let's move on to what we have going on today. What does Dan Miller have for us? So, what do you want to be when you grow up? Or, as the joke goes, what do you want to be if you grow up? Do you remember how you answered the first question as a kid what do you want to be when you grow up, kid? How about an answer like a sidewalk man. Do you want to be a sidewalk man? Do you want to be a sidewalk man? Well, let's see how that plays into our future as we dig into what Dan Miller shares with us this week.
Speaker 1:Wonderful vignette of a weekend morning with his wife and grandkids, as a few jobs were getting done around their home, says. The roofers were there, masons were setting forms for a sidewalk that would be laid, and so, eventually, as the large truck arrived carrying the concrete, one of his grandkids was especially mesmerized, and so the truck began to pour the concrete. One of his grandkids was especially mesmerized, and so the truck began to pour the concrete. And this one grandkid said that he wanted to be a sidewalk man when he grew up. There was only a brief reconsideration, dan mentions, when he and his grandson found themselves on the roof speaking with the roofers. I guess he got a little bit excited about that. But upon sharing his dream to the roofers this grandkid a little bit excited about that. But upon sharing his dream to the roofers, this grandkid one of these men quickly told him to make sure he gets a desk job instead. And I just thought that was a wonderful anecdote. You know, get a desk job, kid. I grew up doing some construction with my dad, so I can appreciate that a little bit.
Speaker 1:What is it about finding that right job?
Speaker 1:Are you meant to be a sidewalk man?
Speaker 1:What are we meant to be? Sidewalk woman, sidewalk person? So here we are, trying to find that golden goblet of purpose. So how do we do that? If we do have a purpose, how do we go about discovering it? Well, dan suggests we look out for three keys that can be patterns for what God has gifted us, for One is skills and abilities. Number two is personality traits. Three would be values, dreams and passions. Now he emphasizes the following. Here's a quote. If a person provides a quality skill like creative sidewalk construction, they're not likely to ever be out of work. And we see those cushy desk jobs come and go like the wind today, end quote. So he instructs us that it would not be good to misdirect one away from a creative passion, regardless of what it is. We can use more of that creativity. Even another sidewalk man would be great.
Speaker 1:He does remind us of a proverb to train up a child in the way that he or she should go, or in the way that he is bent. So in other words, that comes by the way from Proverbs 22.6. And the idea is nurture the way we see the child is developing. Just continue to move them along that way. Well, this made me think of some of my own experience as a high school student. I'm going to throw way back to that. I was at a crossroads my own experience as a communicator, musician and educator now. But I want to just kind of go back. This made me think about how things started for me. Maybe you can do the same thing for yourself.
Speaker 1:Dance musing really had me reminiscing about my own journey Coming out of high school. I did not exactly know what I was meant to do, because there were a few things I wanted to do. I definitely was at a crossroads of sorts. I wasn't sure if I wanted to pursue music, mechanical drafting or I don't know. I remember being confused about all of that, and I hated hearing about my peers at the time in the high school who knew what college they wanted to go to and maybe were already accepted into that college and what their majors would be so certain, so sick in my mind to me, because I was so doubtful.
Speaker 1:I know now, though, that it is ridiculous to expect a 17 or 18-year-old to have an idea of what they want to do for the rest of their lives and then head off to an institution to pay $25,000 or more a year, only to find out that that wasn't it at all, or, worse in my mind, to feel the pressure to make a certain outcome a reality because of familiar history or pressure. I hear this a lot from my students today. It's a very real thing, and they're very stressed out about having to find out how do I cut away from that familiar pressure when what I really want to do is this thing over here, and I know they're not going to want me to do that. So of course this isn't always true. Some of you may be talking back at me even right now saying, isaac, it worked out perfectly for me.
Speaker 1:I knew my passion, my purpose, right out of high school, even earlier in some cases. Listen, I believe that I believe you and I envy you as a matter of fact, in my confused case. So at the time I was confused because of a couple of things that were pulling at my interest. So, for example, I remember taking a mechanical drafting class and really enjoying that. My teacher's name was Mr Hamner. Now I did that in junior high before the year before and I believe that was Mr Anderson Brookhurst Junior High in Anaheim High School in Anaheim, california. I remember this wonderful project that he had us do and he walked us through it where we had to take a picture of a car from an ad, a glossy ad of a car magazine, and trace it onto the vellum paper with plastic shapes of all types, curves and circles, and get the vehicle transferred completely. Then we had to color it like the ad. Well, that took a ton of patience and time and by the time it was done, even I was amazed. I wish I knew actually where that work was at. I wouldn't doubt if it was in a box somewhere of my mom's belongings after she passed away, so that class may have been why I wanted to enroll in that mechanical drafting class in high school. But when that happened, eventually I again found myself drawing elevations of structures on valent paper set on the drafter's table, using the two scales forming a right angle.
Speaker 1:The machine, it was engaging to me. It really was, and I remember that at the time, across the street at the local community college, they were just starting the CAD program, computer-aided drafting. It was amazing to see work we would do on the machine now being done on this computer machine. However, our teacher had a rule, a rule that we hated then but I understand now. But I understand now. Our teacher, mr Hamner, told us we could not go across the street to the CAD class until we had shown proficiency on the drafter's table. A very wise man. As an educator myself now I really appreciate that. You know what he was teaching us. So that was the drafting part.
Speaker 1:Then there was music. I'd been playing music at that point for about three to four years already and I was quite proficient for my age, enough that my twin brother and I a bass player caught the attention of our high school band teacher jazz band in this case and he really went out of his way to nurture us and encourage us that first year and I believe the second year also. And the power of a teacher's praise is really something else. There's a story there I don't believe I'd share, that maybe I had already. But for now, after high school I wasn't sure if I wanted to pursue music. I mean he had so excited me about it. We were playing in church but I wasn't sure, do I pursue this or not?
Speaker 1:There was an institution called the Berkeley College of Music still around. I thought about trying to go there but I wasn't ready to leave home. Quite frankly, a lot of great musicians have come out of there, even left early, because they were getting pulled out to be on tour. So the pull wasn't enough, wasn't strong enough to get me to want to leave home to head out there. I didn't pursue advice in that regard either, such as a band teacher I mentioned. I had a band teacher early on in high school that really paid attention to my brother and I and was really encouraging us Well by my senior year was a different band teacher and it was just a whole nother relationship, quite frankly. So, anyways, my best thing was to go across the street to the community college there, which had an amazing, award-winning jazz program. So it was an absolutely cool, life-altering experience to go there. I learned so much and grew so much in my musicianship there at that community college, then in my church organization.
Speaker 1:I grew up as a PK, a pastor's kid. So now here's kind of a third thing. I was playing music in there, of course, but this was another element of who I was becoming. So early on I was a leader in different groups there kids group, junior, high, high school and every church I attended, it seemed I tended to end up a front in some capacity, communicating with audiences large or small. Sometimes I was teaching singing, playing drums or communicating announcements. Now this is going from high school, even younger, up through my young adulthood, and so I loved doing it. Even though it took work and created butterflies in my belly, I loved it and I was encouraged in it. Some wonderful people, producers in these churches would really encourage me and help me to be better at what I was doing. I appreciated that so much, okay.
Speaker 1:So here I am now, you know, in high school, like what do I do? You know I've got some communicating experience. You know, throwing back to high school now, going a little bit back and forth here. I apologize for the confusion on that. I'm just saying I started with these elements, right, you know, communicating in church as a young boy, growing up through adulthood, playing music in church, going through high school and college. The mechanical drafting that went through high school and some college. So what do you do now when something out of the blue shows up? Okay, so there I'm confused and I just start living my life and trying to do the best that I can. Well, what do you do when life just kind of knocks on your door and says, hey, how about this? Well, that's how I got into teaching. I shared the story earlier in a previous episode, so I won't belabor it here again. Mainly, though, there was an opportunity afforded to me to become a high school English teacher after being an instructional assistant for about six years. So while there, they said, hey, we need teachers, and they needed English teachers in my school and they would pay my education in full. Well, 32 plus years later, here I am still doing that. Okay, an educator Didn't see that coming at all. Also, let me throw this in the mix Briefly I had stints working with my father as a cabinet installer in later high school years and in my early adult life.
Speaker 1:So I was around construction Today. Some very helpful skills stayed with me, but it was never anything that I considered pursuing. It was a wonderful time spent with my dad though, wonderful moments on construction sites, sitting in a drywalled garage and tipped over five-gallon paint buckets, eating sandwiches or burritos my mom had made for us for lunch and talking about a wide range of things. So it did a lot for my relationship with my dad and I, but not much for my deeper sense of carpentry or cabinet installation. So in all this transparent time I ended up as an educator. I've continued as a musician and a communicator. A bit of carpentry, but not a lick of mechanical drafting, has been in the mix. I can't draw anything with or without a drafting machine. It's pretty amazing that that just kind of slid right off me.
Speaker 1:So I am a believer in what Dan Miller suggests as guides to pursue One, skills and abilities, two, personality traits, three, values, dreams and passions, and I guess somewhere in that mix is, in my experience, just being open to life surprises. So I guess, kind of to wrap up this part, don't be afraid just to pursue whatever path you're in, uh, but being open to these opportunities that just come your way, that you didn't see coming, um, those just might be life altering. All right, so let's move on into our time of application. This is so important as we wrap this up. If we're going to grow and mature in our outlook in life, that means learning and then taking what we have learned and applying it to our lives. So you know the routine get your digital notes or your pencil and paper, pen and paper, whatever's working for you, but please be proactive on this.
Speaker 1:So this week, dan's question to us is this have you found an authentic application for God's best gifts to you or the universe's gift to you? We can respectfully agree to have various viewpoints about a power greater than ourselves. Putting that aside, let's focus on a key question. Putting that aside, let's focus on a key question what could you do to move closer to that perfect fit? It really is a moral obligation to find this out. That I believe firmly. If you believe that this life, this one life, is a gift to you, that we've been given the gift of this one life. What do you do with it? When days feel like they're slipping by so quickly, what do you do with that? It's a moral obligation to get up and pursue this act on that. Get help if you need to do that. So that's how we want to wrap up today. Let's take this holy obligation, hand it to us and let's clarify how to act it out in this one life that we have.
Speaker 1:Follow along with me here and see if this makes sense. Person one guard the painted bench, so no one sits on it. Person two but it's not wet. Person one Guard it anyway. As a matter of fact, bring me a second guard. Person 2. But it's not wet. Person 1. Go get the second guard. So why in the world would guards be instructed to guard a bench that is not newly painted, lest someone sit on it, even if it's not wet? One answer is because that's the way it's always been done.
Speaker 1:Well, next week, dan Miller shares a fantastic story and history that illustrates this point in order to point us in a new direction of thinking. I hope you'll join me as I share his thoughts and expand as well as expound on them. Okay, so let me send you away with a quote the only journey is the one within. That comes to us from Rainer Maria Wilk. That's it. That's the quote. Think about it, act on it. Have an amazing week, friends, and thanks again for hanging out. Let's do this again next week. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:If you found this time together useful, please consider following this podcast and leaving an excellent rating. If you feel you can't do that yet, please reach out to me and let me know what I can do to get you to leave a top rating. If you are already excited about what you've heard, please consider sharing this podcast with a friend. I really would appreciate it. Also, I'd love your feedback, both on today's topic as well as what you'd like to hear me address in the future. I would really appreciate that input. Again, I'm your host, isaac Sanchez. I hope today's thought serves you the way it has served me. Remember your next move is just one inside away. Have an amazing rest of your day. I'll see you next time.