(these are auto generated, so may be 80% accurate)

[00:00:00] Yo, yo yo, welcome back to the Further Your lifestyle podcast, conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris Furlong. I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here, having the conversation with you and episode 55. And what I am loving about this is each week, I'm becoming more and more grateful of actually just being able to continue to do this.

[00:00:19] And I'm more grateful than the week before. And it's just, it's just really nice to be able to reflect on. I hope you're all having a wonderful day and having a fine day today, wherever you are, wherever you're listening, whatever you do. Um, today, I want to talk to you about setbacks when building your dream.

[00:00:35] And this is an interesting one because, you know, sometimes we think, oh, well, we haven't created our dreams. We're not living our dreams yet. And for me, you know, I, I haven't actually achieved where I want to be. I'm not where I want to be for the end game for the term. However, I have built something over the last year, which I'm very proud of and being able to reflect on that and seeing that.

[00:00:57] Over a year and how quickly that flashes and helps you realize that well, dreams are going to continue to change. And as you progress through them, you know, I am living my dream. I'm I've, I've got a podcast, I'm sharing this podcast on an ongoing basis and I'm working for myself. That is ideally the dream that's, that's essentially what I want.

[00:01:14] Um, but is it in terms of the volume, is it in terms of the income? Is it in terms of a few other things and elements at, at the full pig? No, it's not, but it's the journey to. And, you know, it's just given me a lot of thought around, you know, this little journey that we call life and how quickly things progress.

[00:01:31] But at the same time, it's only ever going to be what we make it. And when I say that, you know, you have to take into account. You know, things aren't always going to go as planned either. You know, there will be punches and they will come and they will hit hard. There'll be side quests that take you off and you'll do a U-turn and you end up going in the wrong direction for the foot for an amount of time.

[00:01:50] And sometimes things just will not go as expected. But this is all part of it. And really it's with those moments, with those situations, with those experiences of how we handle them, how we make them into what they are to become. So that's really what I want to chat about today. Now, just want you to take a moment and just think about when or what was the last thing that happened to you?

[00:02:11] And in that moment, it was so intense. You were stressed, you felt like everything was going to end. It was the end of the world. And everything was just, it was just, it was just going to be really, really bad. But once it passed, once you went through that or whatever it was, you came out the other end and you realized it wasn't all that bad.

[00:02:26] Right? Think about it. When was the last time? It probably happens a lot. Right? I know it happens to me all the time. This right here is you basically stepping out of your comfort zone into the unknown. If there was a, you know, a circle diagram and you were inside it, you've basically just stepped outside of that.

[00:02:41] And that's why you feel uncomfortable. You know, it it's, it's where it's scary. It's where the world is big and loud. Uh, it's where you feel most vulnerable. It's where you have to push a little harder or try a little harder and be something a little better than before. And that's okay. But you know, at the moment at, at the, at that point in time, at that moment, everything just feels like, oh, it's all scary because you've never dealt with it before.

[00:03:03] You're literally in uncharted waters. Right. And it's interesting to reflect on this because sometimes we, we, we, we tend to take it for granted. We get so hyped up on, oh, how's this all going to pan out. What's going on. And you push her and then it works out to be okay. And you've grown a little more, but on the contrary, there's sometimes things that we need to think about in the terms of, we have the same moments and things don't go as planned.

[00:03:27] Sometimes it is the outcome that we get. Isn't what we wanted. Sometimes it might just be the consequence of having to work over. Maybe you're having to fess up on a mistake or, you know, have to make a public apology or you need to do some work to make up for it. Sometimes it can be, you know, a big blow to your finances because you know, you're an investment went wrong or something like that.

[00:03:47] Or maybe you've got an injury because you did a stupid thing and you know, you landed the wrong way and you've sprained your ankle or something like that. Things don't go always as planned. And sometimes they can be a little life-changing or altering in a big. Y, but most of the time, I think when, when we go through these moments where things are making us feel uncomfortable, when we do have to take a turn and we do have to take a shift and there's a bit of a setback most of the time with these you'll find that yes, these blows, we will have pushbacks.

[00:04:14] We will have challenges. We will have moments of doubt. And we may think that they're failures at the time when. All they are, are lessons and mistakes, which enable us only to succeed more success. Isn't possible without failure without the mistakes. If you don't have this, you're not going to be successful.

[00:04:32] It's simple as that. And the reason why is because you need to go through these things. To understand what's working, what isn't working and where do you need to be heading? Sometimes we don't see it at the point in time, but when you look back and reflect, and this is where hindsight comes in, and it's a beauty and it's a beautiful thing, but you're able to then understand, aha.

[00:04:50] This is why it was so important that I realized this or experienced that the idea of, I guess, all these, all these mistakes or errors or, you know, step backs and things like that, that they blossom into these lessons, things we can take and run. To enable us to, I guess, take action and go further with right over the years.

[00:05:08] And with the luxury of hindsight, as I said before, we can look back at moments and I can look back at moments and we can reflect on when things didn't go as planned. You know, maybe it was a, a race or a run. You didn't, you know, maybe you didn't finish on time or maybe you missed it off by a few seconds, maybe at work.

[00:05:25] Um, you know, you missed a deadline. You, you have a. Speech and in front of the classroom and it doesn't go as planned or maybe a car breaks down on the way to an event or your train is delayed for two hours, or you're having to work overtime because you made a mistake. You made a bad investment and you, you lost $20,000, a heated conversation between family and friends.

[00:05:45] And, you know, it leads to a broken relationship or something. You know, obviously not very simple to work through and very tense, or you have a loved one break up with you, or you have to have a tough conversation with a confronting issue. The list goes on, right? The list goes on, but all these moments, they have values and they have lessons and these things we can now look back on and we can leverage them for life for going forward for making sure that we're progressing in the right direction.

[00:06:12] The second. I'm going to come there. There it's, it's, it's, it's a guaranteed that there are going to be setbacks. There will be good wakes. There'll be bad wakes. There'll be good days. And there'll be bad days. Setbacks are there regardless, you know, if you're chasing your dreams or not. I think the difference is when we chase our dreams or we have these goals and we have those ambitions, there's this idea of expectation of what we want and how we want it.

[00:06:38] And then when the setbacks come, they become associated to these dreams and they just become. I guess a lot more evident. They become a weight in an overhead, um, in which we think are slowing us down, but you know, there's going to be setbacks regardless. We just associate with them. How about I share with you another perspective, you know, setbacks would have happened regardless, maybe not these exact ones, not in these circumstances, but these setbacks have happened.

[00:07:05] And this is, this is going to blow your mind. These setbacks have happened as you have put yourself out there, you have taken a chance to pursue greatness or to tackle the unknown or embark on a journey of whatever it may be to pursue your dreams and goals. But you need to think of this as in the same realm of luck.

[00:07:21] You only get lucky if you put yourself out there and if you show some love to the possibilities of, of options, So don't see these setbacks as red lights, see them as something, giving you caution that your curiosity is, is working and that it's helping you see that there's a green light around the corner and you just need to keep moving forward towards it.

[00:07:42] But trading cautiously, you know, when we have these setbacks in mind, you know, it's kind of like, you can't win the lottery. If you don't sign up for a lottery ticket at the same time, you can't get hit by a car. If you're, if you're not walking across the road, right? I mean, maybe there's other circumstances, but, and this is, this is quite broad, but what I'm saying is if you're going out to chase dreams, it's not going to be easy.

[00:08:05] It's going to be simple. It's not going to be like, there's all Fareed area and there's no issues. That's, that's a false reality and a false understanding or mentality when going into this, it's the same. When you go about life, you know, when you. Traveled to work and you try and get a delay that's it's going to happen one way or another.

[00:08:22] Eventually it will. So I want to be very, very, very clear at this point in time, I have been successful, right. You know, up to date, you know, I've achieved some really great things so that I'm proud of, but am I a success? You know, I haven't met all my goals. I haven't met all my dreams and I still have big, big goals and dreams going ahead, going forward.

[00:08:40] But at this date I have. You know, succeeded. We've so many setbacks. And let, let me break it down to you because I've gone through a number of different journeys in trying to build businesses or. Get out of a nine to five or trying to just create something I'm proud of. And it doesn't always happen at the start and it will continue to change.

[00:08:58] So back in university, when I first started university, I was trying to find, you know, ways that I can make some quick dollars on the side. And at the time everyone said, Side hustles and all this jazz. And I actually used to, um, I used to buy in bulk. I kid you not. I used to buy these, um, needle ink pens, and this is really weird, but they looked like needles and there were pens and they had colors in the middle of it.

[00:09:18] So it looked like a, you know, a red needle with red blood in it or yellow or green. So it looks like some kind of concoction that you were going to be riding with. Um, and I used to buy them in bulk. I used to buy USB cables or funky colors, um, and he used to buy a few other little gadgets and gizmos as well.

[00:09:34] I tried selling them online and it didn't work. I didn't get anything. I kind of figured out late about $250 and I got nothing, but then I adapted and pivoted and I used to carry them wherever I went, whether it was at my word placement or a university. And I used to try selling them on the floor.

[00:09:50] Usually in the heat of the moment when someone says I need a cable or something. And you know, I was purchasing them anywhere between 33 cents and about a dollar 30. And I was selling them between $9, 97, up to about $20 for a bundle. And so I started to make some money. It was good, but then I realized that these things are cheap.

[00:10:07] They were nasty. They were not good quality. They were not going to last. And I kinda, you know, got a bit down by, you know, losing any sense of legitimacy, you know, cause people like, oh, these things are fake or. So I stopped it right at that point, I stopped it, but you know, it was a good experience. I then tried another business during university and that was actually part of our entrepreneurial class.

[00:10:27] Um, and we actually won the best business ma being built in that, in that class. Um, in terms of. And it was called, like Mr. Mum's cleaning. And essentially it was closed a cloth washing and returning service. So we would go pick up people's clothes, Washington, and return them back to the dorms or to the apartments or whatever.

[00:10:44] And, you know, it was something that I created with friends and it was really good. It was, it was actually a really good business plan, but we, we started to initiate it once we go down a university and we realized, well, all of us were going into these different industries of work. We were starting nine to five.

[00:10:58] We didn't have time to do this. You know, it was going to take a lot of time and it's not that the business idea wasn't good. It's just that we weren't willing to commit the time and effort. And we're like, it's not going to work out with everything that's going on. So we canned it, you know, we, we walked away.

[00:11:12] Um, we then started selling socks. We, we, me and my mate, um, at the time. We went into a partnership together and we started selling subscription socks. And I think we ended up making about 3000 bucks in socks and we hit a few hurdles along the way. And then the biggest hurdle was Australia post put their prices up to about at the time it was like $6 to send, like just a pack of socks.

[00:11:32] Um, and we were trying to get real smart and how we were doing it. Um, we were selling these socks at low, low price, the subscription Sox, $9 a month delivered to your door. And, you know, postage was being like six bucks. So we, we were, we were breaking into some pretty, pretty small, small margins, right. And long story short, it didn't really work out.

[00:11:50] Um, I, I tried to make it work, so I, I bought out my, um, my partner and I continued on for a bit, probably made about 400, $500. And then I just gave up because it was just becoming too much of a hassle. I think back, I probably could have done so much more with what I know now, but different, different, you know, different times.

[00:12:06] Anyway, I ended up selling the name and the rights to the, to the business and someone else took it over and you know, they're doing their own thing. So once again, it failed or did it, you know, it was once again, a learning lesson, it was a time for me to pivot and adjust. I then jumped into the online world of.

[00:12:22] Um, apparel, which was previously before this podcast called furry for the lifestyle. And it was a brand helping people, you know, I guess, embrace and encouraged to pursue their passions and doing that with the means of wearing apparel, which represented their lifestyle and, you know, look, it was good. If I was doing for the wrong reasons, I was clearly doing it for money.

[00:12:43] And I realized that after, you know, a good four or five years, that that's not what I wanted. I wanted it to be able to do a podcast, have a conversation with people and help them pursue their dreams, not by them buying clothing, but by just listening and having the conversation. And that's where we are today.

[00:12:58] Right. It's crazy how it look. There's a lot more that goes into that and a few other little pivots and adjustments and things that you learn along the way. And that's just me trying to build my hair and little side hustles on the side, but the point here is failure is going to happen and there's going to be blows.

[00:13:13] There's going to be setbacks and things that you have to adjust. Um, but this didn't stop me forever. With the setbacks, it helped me step back and reassess and see how I can adjust and take a different route or regroup and then push on again. And that's the whole purpose of it is you take the lesson from it.

[00:13:29] You, you step back, you regroup, you zoom out and then you can look back in and think, okay, all right, what do we do now? And then you zoom back in and you charge forward to the. Well, you know, next logical spot. And the thing here is it's going to continue to happen. We're on a journey, a long journey. And you know, we're probably on a very small amount of that journey, you know, 10% at a, at a moment in time of what you're working on of your greater life.

[00:13:53] And the sooner you understand this, the better, because you are going to make mistakes, you are going to have setbacks and there's going to be things outside of your control and that's a whole different conversation. Um, but now that you've heard of that, I want to ask you. How about you? How are you managing your setbacks?

[00:14:10] Are you looking at your setbacks as things that are, you know, telling you to stop and telling you to give up, or are you using them to find ways to work around, get creative, get innovative and find paths forward, or what's the next best thing for you to focus on? Sometimes, you know, we have setbacks in life.

[00:14:25] They take big blows. You know, we might have a death in the family, or we might have something which is just, just comes out of the blue and just absolutely knocks you off your game. These will happen. And, you know, it's. With that you have to appreciate every day, the gratitude of what you've got, where you're at and how you're doing.

[00:14:42] Um, and, and leverage that because you know, if it's a day where, you know, you're moving forward, you're progressing, everyone's safe, everyone's happy. That's a day to double down on. Right. And some days you're going to have low days. You're going to have bad days. You can have bad weeks, but then you're going to have good weeks, good days as well.

[00:14:58] Uh, How are you managing your setbacks? And do you find they're becoming a focus or are you, or are they just a thing that you learn to pivot around, take the lessons and run with it. Let's chat about it. Let me know. You can reach out to me via Instagram at further your lifestyle or drop us a tweet over at Twitter at@furtheryourlife

[00:15:17] even an hello@furtheryourlifestyle.com. I would love to have the conversation with you. If you are listening to this or watching this on the YouTube experience, you can drop a comment below as well, more than happy to have a conversation. Um, I would love to hear from you share with me, how is it working for you?

[00:15:31] And if it isn't working for you, let's chat about it, right? Don't be shy to reach out because set backs and when they come and when they have a domino effect, you can get knocked down. And it's very, very hard to build that confidence back. But if you just do it slowly and surely, you will get to where you want to be.

[00:15:48] And it's a long journey. It's not going to happen overnight. So that is episode 55. Really do appreciate you being here. And as I said, if you want to continue the conversation more than happy to do so, I hope you've taken something away. If you want to do anything to support this podcast, the best thing you can do is if this episode resonated.

[00:16:05] Share it with someone, send it to someone, or if there's another episode that resonates with you, send it to someone, share it to someone. Uh, if you want to leave a review on Spotify or apple podcasts, that would be greatly appreciated as well. Well, that's it folks. I really do appreciate you and you have a wonderful day.

[00:16:20] Cheers. Now, if you didn't know, we do have the podcast merge and this is with a key focus. And enamel pins. Now, if you haven't checked these out, make sure you do because the intent of these are really just to be a small token and a reminder for you to charge on, to push on and to further your lifestyle, whether it is a gift for someone else to encourage them, or maybe to inspire them, or maybe it's a way to motivate yourself, or you can simply just make a purchase to simply support the podcast, which would be greatly appreciated.

[00:16:49] We do also have some sweaters and some long tees, so make sure you check it out. Lincoln, the description and in the show. Really do appreciate it. Cheers.