On the high risk of violating your own morals, doing things that don't make sense—that aren't right—because you're trying to please someone or uphold a standard that's impossible. And I'll give a real kudos here and shout-out to my late sister, who was working for a law firm in downtown Seattle. She was getting paid pretty good money as a paralegal—more than most paralegals make. But she came to a decision where she had to go into work one day, and at the icebreaker, her boss—one of the principals—asked her to lie to the courts on some documents. And they had a disbarred attorney working for him—a whole host of issues. There were red flags, but, you know, she needed the job at the time.
But when he asked her to lie to the court, she said, "No, I won't do that." And I give her kudos for standing up and leaving and going to take another, better work-environment job at quite a bit less money to do that. Guys, but that's the kind of situation we can find ourselves in if we're chasing after the almighty dollar. And we don't want to make poor career choices—life's too short—and we don't want to fail to uphold our morals because that goes into our character and who we are. And if you lose your character, your credibility, guys, you're gonna be in a world of hurt for a long time. That's hard to make up.
You know, so the best advice Bradbury says, too, is to only weigh the opinions of others. Realize that other people's opinions are just that—their opinions. Right? Regardless of how great or terrible they think you are. And we're all worried about what people think of ourselves. I think you've heard—and you've heard it said—people think more about themselves than you. But we have this false assumption that people are thinking about us. Your true self-worth comes from within.
And then secondly, they wish they hadn't worked so hard. Now, this is interesting for a number of reasons. Again, these people that this nurse interviewed—from three to twelve months to live—nobody on their deathbed, right? Or nobody with three to twelve months to live is gonna say, "Gosh, I wish I was at the office now. I wish I could go out on more sales calls, more business trips, whatever. You know, make just a little bit more money."
Guys, you're not thinking about that when you're faced with life-and-death situations—which we're all going to be at one point. What's important? You know, are we working too hard? I want to say, in America, I think we work harder than anybody in the world. And I'm not saying that as a slam—I'm just saying the amount of hours we put in, the lack of vacations—and I've done it myself. Put off taking vacations for ten years.
And we think we're gonna impact the world, we're gonna learn, we're gonna grow, and feel accomplished. But it becomes a problem when you do so at the expense of the people closest to you—your lack of spending time with family, right? With friends and all that. Where you come to rely—you know, the value of the company over money.
You know, the key is to find a balance between doing what you love—and hopefully, you can do that—and being with the people that you love. Okay? Otherwise, you can look back one day—and hope it's not on your deathbed—and say, "Gosh, I was focused on the wrong thing," or "My ladder was leaned up against the wrong building." Don't live a life of regrets.
And you know, thirdly, they wish they had expressed their feelings. This is a little bit different one and not one that I'm super versed in, but we're taught as children, you know, that emotions are dangerous—that we ought to control our emotions. They've got to be bottled up. And that usually works at first, but boxing up your feelings causes them to grow until they erupt.
The best thing you can do is put your feelings directly on the table. And I know it's painful to initiate, but it forces you to be honest and transparent. I'm doing a series of videos with the previous company—one of my—with one of my business partners right now—where I'm sharing my story because I needed to share it. I'm expressing my feelings about it in a professional manner.
You know, if you feel you're not making enough money, schedule a meeting with your boss—whoever—and tell them why you think you're worth more. Sometimes, you're not going to get anywhere with that. I'm gonna recommend ditching the boss and pursuing the entrepreneurial realm, but you know, that's up to you. Okay?
If you do nothing and you let your feelings fester, this will hinder your performance, prevent you from reaching your goal. And that's why, you know, a year and a half ago, when I stepped away from a job, it was one of the single best decisions I've made because I realized I was being squashed and boxed and put into a corner—not necessarily on purpose or maliciously—but I couldn't be who Brad Krantz wanted to be. And now I have an opportunity to do that—have an opportunity to remake myself, to jump into social media, understand how to build an online business, and associate with some awesome people that I would have never really done or been able to take advantage of to the extent if I'd stayed in my job.
But my feelings were—I realized the point when I heard some stuff going on with the company, and meaning that, "Hey, this is it. I'm turning in my notice," because—and that was it. I left. There's a lot of things I would like to say—I could say—but I kept it professional, guys.
Fourth thing: They wish they'd stayed in touch with their friends. You know, I know—until I look back—you know, I really don't have very few friends, if any, from high school. You know, we kind of moved through friends. Sometimes we move away from, you know, people that don't—you know, they don't relate to us any longer. We've moved on, or they've moved on—different careers. You know, they don't support our dreams or goals. There's a whole host of reasons.
But you—you want to keep friends, keep your friends close to you. Right? Most people realize this far too late. You know, we've distanced our friends and all that. We don't know any meaningful relationships because we're so busy pursuing the almighty dollar.