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Originally Posted by MattUK  Thanks for all the positive replies. It's basically people my age (20) and elders calling me a bum & it's got to the point where i don't even try to justify what im trying to achieve through affiliate marketting, which is to earn money passively so i can train full time as an athlete, giving me a greater chance of achieving my lifes ambition to be a pro athlete...
But yeah, it's hard to convince those that i care about to believe that i'm a driven individual while im not "at work" or at a "job" rather
Thanks guys |
Matt, basically it sounds like you've got it figured out and those who criticize you are either jealous or clueless. And jealous or clueless people are the types who's opinion should matter to you at all.
Kudos to you for chasing your dream of being a pro athlete. Just out of curiosity, what sport do you do? You're definitely doing the right thing--its sort of an old cliche' but as you progress through life you don't regret the things you tried and that didn't work out, you regret the things you never tried.
As far as convincing those you care about I can definitely relate. I think that's one of the reasons I ended up getting divorced--my ex-wife was always concerned about what others thought about *me* professionally. All of her friends had husbands that did traditional jobs--one guy was even a Viagra salesman (for Pfizer) and she kept pestering me to see if he could get me a gig as a drug salesman. It was sort of strange, since I obviously enjoyed what I did, make more money than her friends' spouses who had "traditional" jobs and she was self employed herself. Getting divorced was hard at first, but longterm I'm much better off.
In other words, as some of the other posters have noted if its your friends/significant other who have been giving you grief at some point you may need to reassess those relationships.
Obviously family is a bit of a different issue--you can't exactly find new parents, for example. I guess this isn't exactly a unique issue as children for generations have been concerned about making their parents proud. Its important, however, to not let their perceptions of reality determine how you live your life. My dad is a good case in point--for most of his early life he worked for other people and was very dismissive about self employment which he didn't consider a "real job". He was downsized in his early 50's and he started his own business which ended up making him more money and giving him more freedom than he'd ever imagined. His tune changed completely, and he frequently says that if he had it to do over again he'd never even think of working for someone else.
I guess we all want to make our parents proud and have them think of us as "successful" but ultimately you have to remember that its your life and you have to live it in a way that's best for you. At the same time, it can be very difficult emotionally to have your parents wanting you live one way and knowing that you have other plans. It took me a number of years, but I finally figured out that if my parents were concerned about my path in life the best way to deal with it is to listen to what they had to say and then do what I wanted to do in the first place.
So I understand where you're coming from, but you have to remember that your life is your own. Doing things like going on interviews to "keep up appearances" actually detracts from your own goals in life. In other words, it doesn't really do anyone--particularly you--any good.
If you read biographies of or listen to interviews with successful people you'll seldom hear them say that their parents were supportive from the start. This is especially true if their discipline is risky, competitive or out of the ordinary. As I've mentioned elsewhere I'm a big boxing fan, and there's countless championship level fighters who admit that their parents didn't want them to go into boxing. Frank Sinatra's dad tried to talk him out of going into music and for awhile he worked at a shipyard for essentially the same reasons that you've mentioned--because his dad thought it was a better idea.
I can come up with plenty of examples but you get the point. Don't let your family or anyone else get your focus off of your goals...