Year: 2019

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Welcome to The Real World! First Job Out of College – About Me – Part VI

If you have missed out on the first five articles, here are the links below:

Part 1: About TheYoungRetireeBy33

Part 2: Developing My Money Mindset

Part 3: Deciding What University to Attend

Part 4: Becoming A D1 Student Athlete

Part 5: Transferring to Arkansas and How I Chose My First Job

My First Real Job After Graduating College

I had made my final decision to accept the job with Walmart’s eCommerce division. It was time to move up to Bethlehem, PA and begin the real world. I was full of nerves and excitement as my starting date began to creep closer.

Instead of graduating and going straight to work, I decided to take a two week trip to Europe with a few friends. And may I tell you, that was the right decision. Here is a picture of me getting some hang time in front of the Colosseum in Rome!

After a fun two weeks in Europe, it was time to come home and head to Bethlehem. Luckily I was a little familiar with the area from traveling to play Lehigh’s Men’s Tennis team when I at Buffalo. I arrived in Bethlehem and prepared myself for the beginning of a long two years.

What My First Job Entailed

A big reason I took the first job I did was due to the responsibilities of the project I would be taking on. As a field engineer in Bethlehem, I lead construction of a $350 million fulfillment center. This entailed managing construction and mechanical installation crews from over 10 different companies.

What did I know about construction going into this? Nada. I definitely learned a ton over the course of the first year leading the construction. I am a firm believer that you create your own fate. I could have thrown my hands in the air and given into the fact I had no idea what I was doing. Instead, I decided to take advantage of this situation and continue learning. It is amazing what you can learn if you have the willingness and drive to learn. My responsibility continued expanding as I continued driving results for the business.

More Responsibility

The physical construction was now completed and it was time to transition my focus. I then turned to designing the workstations our associates would interact with. This was a completely different task that I again had no previous experience with. My main goals were to design cost effective, ergonomic, and efficient workstations. This took 5 months, and during the process I negotiated a $200k discount on the workstations. This was also another thing I had never done. Who thought a young 22 year old could negotiate with a large scale provider of workstations, but I did.

Now the workstations were complete. It was time to again transition to a new focus. This time it became a focus to assist in the development of the Warehouse Management System (WMS). A WMS is a system that manages your inventory within the warehouse and allows you to receive, pick, pack and ship orders. This was an impactful experience. I was able to begin the design of how the Warehouse Management System would work for the entire network.

I began to learn the ins and outs of how a system should work. I would direct the team designing the WMS to develop critical functionality. Helping lead this development allowed me to become a Subject Matter Expert (SME). A SME is well that, an expert at something. This gave me the upper hand and was one of the most critical things that set me up for future success.

How To Create Value In Your Role

I became the go to guy for all the operations teams to come ask questions and solve problems. Teams knew they could come to me, ask a question, and I would listen and then develop a solution. Have you ever heard the quote from Elon Musk: You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve. I was able to not only identify problems, but also come up with solutions. This is critical to adding value in your company.

Many individuals can identify problems, but few individuals can solve them. You add the most value when you do both. Want to speed up your career? Do both.

Key Takeaways:

  • Identify problems and develop solutions for the problems. Identifying a problem is not going to help you progress in your career at a rapid pace. Go one step further to develop a solution to help solve the problem.
  • Take time off after college before going to work, especially if you plan on being in the rat race for a while. I took two weeks off to explore Europe and it was an incredible experience I wouldn’t change for the world. I recommend doing something similar.
  • Have the drive to be thrown at things you know nothing about and come out with knowledge on the other end. There were many times in my first role where I changed my focus entirely to something I knew nothing about.

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Take A COLD Shower! There Are Massive Benefits

Oh yeah. You read that right. Ready for this weeks challenge?!

Take a cold shower every day this week!

Now let me start with the why first and acknowledging I have more than likely lost 70% of the audience already.

Benefits of taking a cold shower in the morning:

  1. Life is all about doing things that are difficult. Taking a cold shower is a cringe worthy thing to think about. When completing this task early in the morning, you have completed a difficult task right off the bat!
  2. Cold showers promote fat loss!
  3. Cold showers improve immunity by reducing inflammation and increases circulation in your body
  4. Cold showers lower stress and chances of depression
  5. Cold showers enhance your skin and hair! According to cold showers help seal the hair shaft. Being a male I have no idea what that means, but I guess it is a good thing.

There are many more benefits you can read up on that I have not described above. I wanted to provide more context on the benefits before you dismiss the notion. I have listened to some of the most powerful speakers (Tom Bilyeu, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Wim Hof) talk about the power of taking a cold shower. The benefits far outway feeling “uncomfortable” for 30 seconds in the morning.

Are You Up For the Challenge?

So what do you think? Are you willing to take the leap and take a cold shower each morning this week? If you are not willing to take a full cold shower, you can always finish off your shower with 30 seconds of cold water. There is a large benefit even if the “cold” is only felt for 30 seconds. I usually take one deep breath to focus my concentration before the cold hits.

Challenge yourself! Step outside the norms and knock off a difficult thing at the very beginning of your day! You will feel rewarded after getting out. I promise. Every morning I get out of the shower with a bit of an adrenaline rush. See if you get the same benefits.

Key Takeaways:

  • Completing a difficult task in the morning will give you a sense of accomplishment from the get go!
  • There are many psychological and physical benefits to taking a cold shower
  • If you aren’t willing to challenge yourself to do things that are difficult, I guess you can stay with the pack. Be different. Try to do things that make others look at you like you are crazy.
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Become The Master of Your Fate

“If you realize your creative power – if you assume responsibility for the seeds and soil of your inner garden – then you become the master of your fate.” James Allen, As A Man Thinkith

Time to diagnose this quote in two different segments.

Realizing Your Creative Power

A few months ago, I heard of a study that wanted to better understand individuals creativity. The study looked at 4 different groups of people. The goal of the study was to see which of the four groups could come up with the most creative solution to a problem.

The different groups were:

  1. NASA scientists
  2. Ivy league grads
  3. High school students
  4. Kindergarteners

Could you guess which group came up with the most creative solution? If you guessed the NASA scientists, you would be wrong. If you guessed the Ivy league grads, you would also be wrong. The High school students? Nope.

That’s right. Of these four groups, the kindergarteners developed the most creative solution. Why? The study determined a major key being age. Age can’t have that big of an impact though can it? When they dug deeper, they found the main reason to be the fact the kindergarteners had not had their minds brainwashed to think a certain way. The kindergartners had not gone through years of schooling being told to think a certain way. This allowed their minds to continue to think of limitless possibilities.

Limiting Beliefs

Have you ever thought about schooling being a way for individuals to force you to think a certain way? I hadn’t either. Now I am by no means saying the government is controlling how you think…let’s not go down some crazy rabbit hole. Here is what I mean. In school, you learn the difference of being correct versus being incorrect. We learn how we need to answer questions to get a good grade. Our thoughts end up conforming to thinking how we are being “trained” to think.

This is why the kindergarteners have a wild imagination full of creativity. Their minds are still young. They haven’t gone through years of someone telling them how to think to get a good grade. This allows them to think the world has endless possibilities. Ask a kindergartener to look up at the sky, ask them what they see. You will get some wild answers. Ask a college grad what they see, and you will get some basic answer. Interesting thought.

Taking Responsibility Of Your Fate

Have you ever wondered why you are where you are? Let’s say you are working the classic W2 job. Dread every Monday morning when you have to start a new week. Looking forward to every Friday to go out and party on the weekend.

Watch this video right now. If you haven’t seen this, it is incredible. Great quote from this video: “What if I told you this was the last Monday of your life?” Watch the video to get a little motivation and full story.

The main point from the video is to take control of your life. You get to make more choices in this life than you lead yourself to believe. Nobody is forcing you to work that 9-5 job you hate. Nobody is forcing you to spend all time outside of work sitting in front of the TV. Nobody is forcing you to spend money on material things you don’t need.

Think about where you are in your life. Are you taking control of your fate? Want to try and push yourself to the next level? Checkout this previous post I had on having a Miracle Morning each morning. Push yourself to grow.

Key Takeaways:

#Thoughts#Insight #Wisdom #Mindful#Thinking #Health #Mindset#WisdomWednesday #Money#Mission #Power