I recently had a someone from the entrepreneur community reach out to me seeking some advice about dealing with the doubts and fears about being an entrepreneur and launching a new product.

I recently left the medical field after 6 years to start my own venture. I feel so un-contributory to society now. Granted, I’ve yet to launch. My self worth is in the toilet, my memory is absolute sh*t (seriously I’m 25 and can’t remember the most basic things day to day). I can just feel the stress coursing through my veins. I’m SO excited for my up and coming business to launch, yet I’m mortified, knowing I’ll wake up day 1 thinking “nobody is going to buy this sh*t. I’m doomed.”

Does any of this relate? I got so tired of being on the bottom of the totem pole in medicine that I thought this would be better. And I want it to be.

Also, I eat very well and run 1.0 miles every day, but still succumb to fear and doubt. Perhaps I need professional guidance?

This was my reply:

I can’t tell you whether professional guidance will help or not. It’s been cathartic just to be able to talk to others about the stress I feel. I typically form networks of entrepreneurs and set-up coffee meet-ups where we’ll go around the table, talk about what we’re doing, problems we’re trying to solve, and collectively solve them. This provides some iota of relief.

You’re going through a lot of transitions simultaneously and I can imagine it would be difficult to find the root of these issues to deal with them individually. What you’re experiencing is normal from what I’ve seen of both myself and other entrepreneurs I’ve talked with.

You’re under a crazy amount of pressure and stress, managing your expectations of your product, society’s expectations of yourself, and your friends’ and partner’s expectations. That’s fair.

Thinking “nobody is going to buy this sh*t” is also par for the course, and probably the most realistic expectation of a new product on market. Most likely nobody will buy your product, unless you have buyers lined up. THIS IS FINE. Products are made by discovery + iteration. You’ll incrementally improve your product with feedback from your audience, your partners, and yourself.

At first the feedback of your product will sear into your soul because of your desire for it to work and be great immediately. You’ll develop a thicker skin with time and it will be easier to take the feedback that matters, but leave behind the opinions that don’t. This road is hard. Birthing a new product into the world is hard. Affecting change is hard.

Managing your own psychology is 99% of the work of entrepreneurship, all other external tasks are simple. The reason we feel this fear and doubt is because we’ve spent a lifetime consuming with society and learning a particular mode of living. The mouse goes to work, the mouse is rewarded with cheese. We then create a habit around this because we’ve found our cheese. We are now safe.

Then something happens and we decide to take on a new adventure for some reason. Whether it’s for wealth creation, a chance for independence, or the call to lead, we find ourselves set out for the journey of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship, in the case of early product creation, has no immediate guarantees like we find in the normal working world.

Fear and doubt are the methods dying habits employ to urge us to get back on path, to find our easy cheese again. We’re so used to being told to perform a task, then expecting to get a reward for completing the task, it’s comedic. You look up and you see everyone else living that same mode so it must be OK, let’s reinforce that mode. This is your herd mentality speaking. It serves to preserve the species, and it’s very strong — heck it’s guided us through millions of years of evolution. This is also the same reason some people will project their own insecurities on you, and perhaps even tell you that you’re doing the wrong thing, and that it will have long lasting deleterious effects. These people don’t see what you see.

What causes some people to keep going despite this localized societal death? My guess is that we have some explore v. exploit algorithm within us that causes some people to break away and deal with trying to find something better, willing to risk the unknown despite the perils that most definitely await.

I’m starting to wonder what drives will, grit, determination, and faith. These are the only things I can see that separates us from others that don’t continue down this path. You need to start finding comfort in the unknown to let these things work for you. My coping mechanism is finding solace in the idea that I’m an instrument of the universe, given the ability to see and create things that have never been created, because the universe might exist for a reason, and therefore I exist on this path for a reason. (Part philosophical compatibilism, and part deterministic fatalism) This is where you need faith.

Believe in yourself. There will be danger, there will be trouble that you won’t have experience solving, there will be a whole world of new experiences that can make you feel good or bad. It’s ultimately up to you on how you let them influence you. These outcomes are all about perspective, and you will learn the tools to manage and cope in time. Your best course of action is to keep going and knowing that you’re still alive, which means you get another day to create, and that is something to be grateful for. Fulfill your purpose.

Don’t go back to the “I told you so’s” even if you have immediately failed, for you are now changed, different, and hold a new perspective on how the world can work, and that’s not something easily bought, or easily won through spectatorship. Keep building, pushing forward, and forging your path.

Dear reader, if you’re feeling stressed out and don’t have anyone to talk to, reach out to me and I’ll be happy to connect.

Follow me on twitter, or check out what else I’m up to here:

• Dan P. Gailey (@dpg) | Twitter
• Baqqer - CrowdFunding for Makers, Inventors, Creators, Developers, and You
• Playa - Connecting everything to everything

Last night was the first night I felt really alone and without a home.

I parked my van somewhere amid the buzzing electric lights and shops of the Haight/Ashbury district in San Francisco. I had to walk around the shops a little bit to work up the courage to climb in my van and figure it out. Was I hungry? Thirsty? Did I need to use the loo?

I was trying to psych myself up for a cold December night in this van. This van is my shelter now. I try and remind myself all the reasons I’m doing this. I made the choice to give up all that I was to pursue building my dreams.

I tried to separate the idea of having no home from actually being homeless. I walked around and stared into the faces of all the truly homeless and less fortunate people. Could this be me? You begin to imagine how this entire adventure could land me in their same position, and how easily one could find themselves without support, resources, or hope. I can’t help but feel a little societal / cultural pressure to conform, to turn back, and that it’s not too late to just give up this stupid journey. But I don’t do that.

Sleeping in your van is still illegal in San Francisco. I have to be quiet and respectful so that the cops won’t get called on me. I pace around the van thinking of how to look inconspicuous, all while looking totally conspicuous. I curse to myself and look around, hop in the driver’s seat and then hop in the back.

The van is a dark blue 2000 Dodge Caravan. I picked this particular van so to look like everything else. I wanted it to scream “I’m not here!”. I bought it for $1,100 cash from a very kind older woman in San Mateo. My friends Alli and Justin brought me and helped me to check out the vehicle. It was a bargain, even with my needing to replace the brakes.

Now, sitting in the backseat, dressed in jeans, DEFCON shirt, hoodie, and leather jacket, I felt scared and ashamed. For a few brief seconds my mind ran away with the idea that this is my life forever. I will live and die in this van, I thought. I felt closer to the idea of social death than I ever have. To say you’ll live and die by your products is one thing. It’s part of the nouveau tech culture to shout as loudly as you can about how much you care. It’s another thing to actually follow through. People are polarized between skeptical and supportive with regards to my journey. It’s reasonable the skeptics’ voices sound louder than the supporters. The loudest voice often shouts that I’m wrong for doing this. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I had it all mixed up. What did I get myself into? I have to remind myself this is perfectly normal anxiety for just having gone through a bunch of major decisions to change my current situation.

Life is an adventure.

Slumped over in one of the bench seats in the very back, I sink as far as I can so that none of the orange juice colored light from the city lamps touch any part of me. I don’t want to be seen. I’ve read about the problems with living in vans. Funny enough there is an entire subreddit dedicated to crashing/living in your van called /r/vandwellers. Among the tips like “find a great pee bottle!” are cautionary stories that all have one theme: keep moving and avoid the cops. Living cheaply by choice or otherwise is illegal. The worst of the stories involve cops rapping on the windows loudly with their flashlights, while their police car’s lights flash, and being asked to move along. Your poverty or frugality makes you a criminal.

I take off my leather jacket and crawl under it. I use the jacket as a tent to hide the loud glow of my phone screen. I send a text to a friend, “In my van now and I’m a little scared.” My breath fogging up the screen. We text back and forth for a few minutes about electric blankets and alternators. I try and play a game of Words with Friends, but I’m so anxious I can’t make out a single word.

I have a ritual that I use to put myself to sleep. I can’t just fall asleep much like I imagine normal people should be able to, just closing their eyes, little pink clouds float in and carry them away. My regiment for sleeping is this: I first restlessly toss and turn, flittering in and out of passing out and waking up, thinking about all the things I need to or have done. I get tired of this and remember that I can fall asleep while counting backwards from 100 while simultaneously thinking about playing a very particular video game. It’s instantaneous.

I am sleeping in the fetal position when the cold creeps into the vehicle. I wake up to strange noises of drunk San Franciscans scurrying around the streets outside. With one eye closed and one eye open, I grumpily and groggily reach for my sleeping bag. I should have made more time to clean off the white dog hair from the backseat. I’m wearing all black. I fall back asleep.

The next moment I’m woken up at 7am by the sounds of the city waking up. The tint on my van is dark enough from the outside that I’m sure nobody can really see in, but I can see them so perfectly it makes me doubt the reality of the situation. People are walking to work, dressed in their dark wool coats, white earbuds in their ears, holding their cardboard coffee cups.

Crawling out of the sleeping bag my first thought was: I MADE IT. I don’t know why I feel it’s such an accomplishment to have slept in my vehicle. I guess relative to the anxiety I had the night before, being alive, and not arrested felt pretty good. I made it.

I became elated with the feeling of being free. I felt like I pulled one over on the man! All my life I lived in and rented a house or apartment. This was the first time I slept somewhere I didn’t need to pay rent. It was a really new and free feeling. Then reality sunk back in. I had to brush my teeth and grab a shower.

Walking down the street to a coffee shop, while brushing my teeth gets a lot of strange looks. I make my way to Stanza coffee on Haight street. I am paranoid that I now look like I slept in my van. I am carrying a beard on my face that might give me away, I think. I check out the menu for a few while people order coffee. I’m here to order coffee, work, and recharge my devices, but first I need to use their lavatory.

I walk towards the back and there is a sign that requires one of the staff to buzz you in to use the restroom. This is typically to keep non-patrons from using the facilities. I look over to the barista with a mixture of fear and excitement, as if to say something along the lines of “SURE! I SLEPT IN MY VAN BUT I’m going to be buying something, so please let me use your bathroom.”

They just buzzed me in, no explanation needed. For now I still probably just fit the typical startup nerd look. One night in a van can’t wash that away. I order a coffee, and the woman behind the counter puts on the theme song to Twin Peaks. I sit by the window, the rain slightly coming down all along the people outside. The day is overcast and gray, washing out all of the colors. I ask her if she’s into David Lynch. We talk about her favorite movies. I feel normal again participating in conversation about pop culture

These are all just new feelings. I have to figure out where I fit again, existing simultaneously somewhere above and below the crowd. It will take a few nights for me to adjust to this new adventure. I’m sure there are going to be ups and downs, but this is what I do now. I’m more free than I have been in a long time. It’s simultaneously scary and beautiful, full of uncertainty and opportunity.

Dan P. Gailey (@dpg) | Twitter

“The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something.”
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I was adopted by my stepfather when I was a young boy and never really had contact with my biological father save for maybe three or four times in the last three decades. Every time we chat he kicks down some epically on point advice, but we never really stay in contact after a conversation or two. I don’t have much family that I am close with and my step-father passed about fifteen years ago. Because of all of this I’ve known quite a few holidays alone.

In the middle of this adventure I gave him a call a few months back and he picks up the phone. We pick up like no time has passed and everything just feels right. He talks about what he’s been up to, his work, and I talk about what I’m doing, my philosophies, and why doing this is important to me. [I just realize I’ve never written why doing this is important to me]

He’s a very logical man. While he wasn’t given the opportunity and privileges I had growing up, he’s extremely intelligent in how the world works, how people work, and quick with solutions. He’s a self made man. He’s done well enough for himself, first toiling away at blue collar jobs, eventually making his way up to manager at a food processing plant.

His voice still carries a southern accent, gruff behind his words. He’s not excited about what I’m doing at the least. He says I don’t belong here, he says I need to find somewhere new. I was heartbroken. I don’t mind hearing the words, I’ve heard them before, but somehow these cut deeper and sting longer than when others have said the same. I disagree and we leave it at that.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Over the next few weeks I continue chatting with him, and he’s become more accepting and even encouraging me to do what I must. I find out my grandfather was an entrepreneur, my uncle is an entrepreneur. He says this is where I probably get my tenacity and drive from (among other attributes.)

I call him yesterday and chat about where I’m headed next and he tells me he’s decided at 55 years of age to start his own business. Previously this is a man who told me he was “too old to change [his] ways” — to which I’d always reply, “it’s never too late to change.”

He’s now starting his own business and I couldn’t be more proud of him. I think this is the best holiday gift I could imagine. Just wanted to share that anecdote, and share the notion you can and will help inspire others with your attitude and hard work. Cheers.

Now get back to work and have a happy holiday!

• Dan P. Gailey (@dpg) | Twitter
• Baqqer (@baqqerapp) | Twitter

“A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I’m going to take a breath before I start. This is a hard update.

For the uninitiated I’ve vowed to spend the rest of my life building products that people love. I had three months of runway to build products before becoming broke and homeless. This week I’ve had to give up everything that I’ve ever owned and known. I find in life that so many people identify themselves by the things they own, so this was especially cleansing in a way that marked the end of a chapter in my life, but an entirely new and exciting start of a new one.

I am now homeless. I’ve made just enough money from selling off my worldly possessions to maybe buy a very cheap vehicle to sleep in.

Here are the things that happened over the last few weeks that seemed like highlights:

1. We launched Baqqer — Continuous crowdfunding for makers with an equity crowdfunding option. Baqqer enables makers, inventors, developers share the adventure of building products while raising money to build the next big thing. We’ve got our first advisor, a great lawyer, and two new developers looking to make this thing great. Investors are reaching out wanting to have meetings about investment opportunities. All within the last month.
2. We’re working on Playa — Machine to machine discovery, negotiation, and transactions. Playa was originally developed as a proof of concept at an IoT hackathon I produced last year. We’ve got some great advisors, developers, and engineers from Google, Twitter, Apple, Disney, Microsoft, and Facebook helping build the first open beta. We also have some people wanting to hold meetings to talk about advising and investing in Playa. All-in-all it’s been received well by those that understand the vision.
3. I was invited out to pitch Playa at Jason Calacanis’s Launch IoT conference and it was met with crickets from the judges (save for Janice Fraser). This helped me to understand that I’ll have to create a vocabulary that is marketable around the product and work on communicating the idea in a relatable manner to people. In the end I received interest from Cisco, NTT Docomo, GE and some really important IoT players that all want to partner with this new service.
4. Rejection — I’ve been rejected when applying to incubators/accelerators. No big deal. It’s all part of the process.
5. Discouragement — People trying to discourage me from focusing on such grand ideas, but that’s par for the course when building something this awesome.
6. Encouragement — There is a massive amount of encouragement from friends, family, and strangers that simply want to help me succeed. Also some of the people that initially tried to discourage me have now become true believers after seeing the progress I’ve made and how dedicated I am to my own vision. They have now become some of my biggest supporters. This is an interesting note.

All-in-all I’m both relieved and happy at the decision that I’ve made. I’ve created a plan and will make it work. I’ve created a budget that will (if there is no net gain/loss of income unaccounted for in the budget) help me survive six more months at worst. I’ll be sleeping in my vehicle, eating next to nothing, and living exclusively for building these products.

While living in my van I’ll still be documenting the process of building product through weekly (and as it happens) video and blog updates.

Reach out to me if anything I’ve written about strikes a chord with you, or you want to help out. We’re looking for awesome people to help make a dent in the universe. Good luck, never give up, dream big, and be great.

Your friend,
Dan

• Dan P. Gailey (@dpg) | Twitter
• Sink or Swim (@sos_universe) | Twitter

If you’ve been following along at all with what I’m doing, three months ago decided to go broke and homeless while building my dreams. I’ve dedicated every moment for the rest of my life to working towards building the things I believe need to be built.

In the past three months, I’ve built 3 or 4 products, but really proud of the last two. The first is Baqqer[1] — Social crowdfunding for Makers (We now have shops!), the second is something I’ve been wanting to build for years and finally faced the reality that if I don’t build it, then who will?

It’s called Playa[2] (as in beach), and it’s an open service exchange for autonomous intelligent agents. I’m going to bring about what I call a 2nd order IoT platform ( IoT2 ). I’ve got a pretty strong vision of what I want to bring into the future, so I’m going for it.

I typically talk about my products on Baqqer[3] , Facebook, and Twitter[4] . I like getting feedback and keeping my friends and followers updated on my progress. Through this updating of my network, a friend reached out and asked if I wanted to be connected with the organizers of a local two day IoT/Wearables conference called Launch. I said sure, because I needed to get out there and start talking to people.

Let’s first put in perspective just how hungry I am. I lose my home on November 15th, and I’m down to eating one decent meal a day if I’m lucky. So the organizers email me back and say I’ll be demoing in the startup demo pit (awesome!) and breakfast and lunch are included (AWESOMER!).

I’m slammed all week with work on Baqqer, and the night before the conference I manage to stay up an entire 24 hours with the dream consultants at Tech Shop (love that place) making posters and t-shirts so I look vaguely like I know how to present myself.

The first day went by amazingly. I met a ton of great people that really understood what I’m doing, and a number of really huge platforms that want to partner up. I’m stoked! I go to bed that night happier than I have in weeks.

I wake up the next day and I’m the first one at the conference hall at 7am. I’m so excited to get back and start building relationships it’s palpable. I’m shaking hands, making conversation and most of all I’m getting to exchange passions with really amazing people.

At this particular conference, there is a “pitch competition” where startups are picked from the demo pit to pitch to a panel of judges what they’re working on. It’s a huge deal for a lot of startups because you get to address a massive audience both offline and online. You’re also hand selected out of the 50–70 startups in the demo pit — immediately getting singled out for a reason!

I see one of the judges walking towards my demo table and I approach her because I absolutely love her stage presence and no bullshit personality. I feel she’s someone I can talk to and don’t have to tap dance to get my idea across. We start chatting and she asks me to pitch her on what I’m building. I go into pitch mode and I’m pretty cool and collected just because I know there is no way in heck I’d be pulled on stage.

To my complete surprise after our chat she asks me if I want to pitch on stage!!!! I fumble for a second over my words while her assistant says, “Take it.” and I blurt out “Yes! Sure!” and so it’s done. I’m now picked to go on stage… or so I thought.

A couple of hours go by and I find one of the organizers. “Hi, can you tell me what I need to prepare to pitch on stage?” I ask. She replies with something to the effect that told me it wasn’t final and so I shouldn’t get my hopes up. Cool. I’m both sad but relieved because I didn’t have a physical product, I didn’t have a slick demo prepared, basically wasn’t ready for the huge responsibility of going on stage and pouring my dreams out for everyone.

There are speakers all day and the demo pitches come last. We’re all ushered in to listen to the speakers chat about what they’re working on and why it’s important. I’m sitting in the middle of the auditorium, listening and scribbling in my journal. I check my phone for any emails and see an urgent email from the organizer asking me to meet them at the stage door outside in 10 minutes. My heart starts instantly racing as I pick up my stuff as quietly as I make my way towards the exit.

I’m now standing backstage, in full stage makeup, microphone wrapped around my head, and talking to the stage manager about my cues to go up and where to stand. It’s a blur. I’m now one of five of the “best of the demo pit” startups. I love the stage, I love addressing crowds, but this is a really cool next level for me. I’m now pitching Playa to the organizers and panel of judges!!

We get to the end of my pitch and I try to articulate as best I can how the service works and what potential applications there are. The judges try their best to keep up. In the end another startup won the competition. That’s fair, all I had on stage was my landing page, my pitch, and my charisma. I’m really happy I made it that far.

I walk backstage, out the side door, and back to my booth. Excited I made it this far, proud I was able to scrape by with tons of hardwork and a lot of luck, yet a little defeated that I didn’t win. (I know, I know, wishful thinking)

Two gentleman approach me as I’m tidying up my spot. They’re from a huge company. They’re VPs at this huge company and they start asking me about partnerships. It’s surreal. The day ends with even more people approaching me about wanting to work together, asking me how they can leverage the platform I’m building, and even imagining fantastic new use cases for the platform itself.

I’m exhausted at the end of this but happy I decided to say yes to all of this. The momentum has been building. I’m now talking to infrastructure companies about partnerships and sponsorships. I’m talking to amazing ex-twitter, ex-google, ex-facebook awesome people that are interested. I’m talking to machine learning experts, and world class product design firms that want to invest. I’m talking to simply interesting people, (The original product designer of the iMac!) I’m working off the momentum of the events on Friday and moving full steam ahead as fast as possible.

All in all I had a little over 300 new signups for Playa. Not bad for a single day!

I guess the take away is live for your passion, work hard, say yes, and with a little bit of luck you can meet opportunity when it knocks. Last but not least, I owe any amount of success I have to my friends, baqqers, fans, followers, and most importantly the community for inspiring me to stay motivated and keep moving forward despite how much it may seem that the chips were stacked against me.

TL;DR: Am hungry, said yes, had fun, made friends, and I’m still going homeless.

• Dan P. Gailey (@dpg) | Twitter
• Sink or Swim (@sos_universe) | Twitter

“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.”
-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“How do you turn someone else’s success into your inspiration?” one of our community members asked. “I know that I personally take a hit to my confidence when I see someone else succeeding where I wish I could and where I am struggling to succeed”

I’d like to share some lessons that I’ve learned while growing as a person, a leader, and a friend. These may seem like words you’ve heard before, but until they’ve become a part of you through reflection and introspection, you won’t truly have absorbed their meaning.

Everyone has their own path

Remember that life is different for everyone, and that everyone has their own path created by the choices they make. Their path is not your path, and your path is not someone else’s path. It’s your job to walk your own path, and to plant and water the garden your path bisects. Collapse your ego from musing on what may be, and instead focus on the here and now.

Life is a journey

We will take many paths in life. All those paths in retrospect form the totality of our journey. You’ll cross paths with people in life, but the duration they’ve been on their path is entirely different from the duration you’ve been on yours. When you do cross paths, don’t compare where you’re at to where they’re at. Your beginning is not comparable to someone else’s middle.

Success is not zero sum

In a zero-sum game there is a winner take all mentality that exists, but success is not a zero sum game. Success is available to those that seek it, work hard for it, and strive to maintain it. Do not think that someone else’s winning makes it harder for you to win.

Inspirational admiration

If you admire someone’s achievements, the best possible thing you can do to recreate those achievements or some semblance of them is also dedicate your time and effort to understanding and replicating their discipline, beliefs, and practices.

Irrational envy

Success is often hard won, meeting years of failure, working on your craft, and waiting to meet opportunity. We don’t often get to see just how difficult it was to achieve something great, how hungry one became, how much they had to sacrifice, all for just a sliver of victory. It’s easy to think others have it easy, but the reality is that they have or still are struggling as you are.

Personally, I find supporting and giving to people is the best and most rewarding practice I could ever imagine. The right people always reciprocate, and you build relationships that create feedback loops of success.

Also remember, while you’re asking the questions, “Why can’t I be like them?” or “Why can’t that success happen to me?”, someone else is probably asking themselves the same thing while watching you on your path.

Hope this helps bring some perspective to envy, life, and relative paths to success. Drop me a line if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.

• Dan P. Gailey (@dpg) | Twitter
• Sink or Swim (@sos_universe) | Twitter

We’re finally live with our Maker Shops and now you can sell your hobbies, products, whatever you want directly to your followers and fans! Sign up and check it out at https://baqqer.com/

• Baqqer - CrowdFunding for Makers, Inventors, Creators, Developers, and You
• Dan P. Gailey (@dpg) | Twitter
• Baqqer (@baqqerapp) | Twitter

Preface

I will not for a second pretend to have found enlightenment. I know that’s a ridiculous statement to open anything up with, but hear me out. I have these tools which have helped me create an energy to do things others find daring and make real and positive change in my life that has the capacity to affect millions of others. I find comfort in knowing that these tools have brought goodness into my life and in that goodness I find that my life has more comfort and reciprocates the energy I put into it like never before.

Introduction

Why should we have purpose? Can we live and not have purpose? Purpose is probably different for different people, but personally I have found that without purpose I make choices that had me waking up one day asking myself what am I doing with my life? Where was I headed? Why am I here? These questions left a void I tried to fill to no avail, and I was alive but reasoned I was not living. So what is purpose and why is it good?

Purpose

Purpose is the goal we live for. It’s the ultimate and absolute resolve of vision distilled into a fire that drives our every waking moment. Purpose is where we find our ultimate flow. Purpose is the path to enlightenment. Purpose gives our lives meaning and fulfills us as humans in this universe. We are all tasked with finding our purpose in life. It’s in that purpose that we give back to the universe the energy that it breathed into us at conception.

Values

To find purpose you must first have a fundamental core set of beliefs. Until these beliefs are established your purpose cannot find a home, because it has no boundaries by which to define itself and exist. Your beliefs and values are what make you unique, since your experience within the universe has been absolutely unique and will not be reproducible in any measurable amount of time. You will find that once you’ve established your values, you will begin to ally with other very good and wonderful people.

To find your beliefs and values, you must first observe yourself and your situation interfacing with your existence. True observation I’m not sure can be had without being truly enlightened, but a pretty reasonable approximation can be found by measuring how you feel relative to your experiments in life. To observe ourselves we must first become self aware in our understanding of who and what we are. This requires some higher order thinking that also controls our rationalizations of our actions, with a second component of understanding how our interfacing with the world makes us feel. Once you’ve found a belief system that makes you feel better about yourself, but also produces good results around you (this is the most important part, otherwise you might end up operating in a self serving and destructive vacuum) you can now begin the search for purpose.

Fear

The only true hurdles you will encounter to beginning and continuing on your journey to meet your purpose in life is fear and anxiety. Anxiety is a product of conceiving and internalizing fear, so we’ll only try to manage fear in this text. Fear comes in many forms but its ultimate goal is to deter us from taking risks. While this may have served our ancestors to preserve our species as individuals, fear in modernity has no place. It is just an artifact of our baser selves that manifests through some emergence pathway.

Fear can come from within or can be projected onto us by others. All fear comes from trying to imagine the future outcome of events. Fear is what keeps people accepting the immediate little of which that has been given to them. They then rationalize their situation by settling and finding some base comfort to fashion into habit, but this is not good.

The fear we manifest from within can be defeated by first understanding that we cannot predict the future, nor do we have control over future events. Therefore imagining future outcomes that don’t serve to empower us to continue forward will erect barriers that will only serve to inhibit us. To participate only in imagining positive future outcomes require us to place faith in ourselves that we can accomplish our goals, and in the universe that it will help carry us towards our purpose.

The fear that is projected onto us and injected into our psyche by others is a primitive function of the herd to keep others in place and preserve the species as a whole. Humans are equipped with empathy which helps people imagine themselves in another’s situation for better or worse. Because your journey is not their journey, and your beliefs are often not their beliefs, they will try to imagine what they would do in your situation, and begin to unfold their own fears about that uncertainty. Often with good intention, they will offer advice that has helped them to accept their local maxima. This might include dissuading you by any means they can, and passing along the lessons they’ve learned in life to accept their existence. You should not fault others for not understanding, for they have not found enlightenment and are on their own journey. If you must seek others out for support, find your true believers and never listen to anything that doesn’t empower you to move forward. Ultimately it is only within yourself will you find the resolve to complete all tasks, but this resolve is often only found after you’re assured on your path through successes. Keep measured accounts of your successes no matter how small.

Dealing with anxiety and self doubt requires us to be present in our environment, while simultaneously accepting the idea that where we are is in the past, and where we’re headed is completely different from one moment to the next. In practice many cultures have taken to meditation, chanting, praying, yoga, jogging and concentrating at the rhythm and patterns of the task at hand to bring themselves into the present. My mind is always wandering down curious paths, so I imagine like anything the mind can be trained to stay present if required. Find what works for you and practice.

Armed with these tools you will find a way to accomplish any of your goals. Dream big, be great. I wish you all the best, and please reach out to me for any reason.

• Dan P. Gailey (@dpg) | Twitter
• Sink or Swim (@sos_universe) | Twitter

Look, let’s get this out of the way: I understand building anything new is a work of passion.

Two months ago I decided to say fsck-it and left my job. I asked myself: If I’m not living and dying for what I love, am I really living?

I sat down and calculated I had three months of runway before I went broke and homeless. Fuck. I had no choice. I had to lock myself away and code night and day, day in and day out. I lost sense of time completely, I looked like a madman, people started distancing themselves from me when I told them what I decided to do. “I am crazy!”, I thought.

For the past several weeks I’ve been coding and getting feedback from people testing out my work. I’ve poured my blood, sweat, and tears into this project like no other. Going back and forth between obsessing over every pixel, and trying to convince myself to just launch the damn thing. I’m humbled, embarrassed, and downright scared, but I have a purpose. That purpose has kept me coding through the struggle while I was eating beans out of a can with a piece of bread as my only daily meal.

I lost 20 pounds. My pants are looser than I’ve ever felt, and my belt is running out of notches to close. But it’s for a purpose I live. I want to develop some beautiful work that enables people to see further, do more, and go more places than they could by themselves. A product to launch a thousand — no !— a million others. I want to enable an entirely new class of creators, makers, inventors that can quit their jobs, sustain themselves, and in turn build their own beauty into this world.

I made my first dollar today. I wanted to cry. Happy that a single person believed in me and what I built enough to give it a try, and sad that I hadn’t taken this chance sooner. If you are passionate about what you’re building, you will make a difference. Even if that difference is in a single person, from a single dollar, that’s where everything good in the world started. Please don’t give up.

Sorry for the emotional post. It’s quite a ride. I hope you check out what I built at Baqqer, let me know if you have any questions. I’m open and honest about everything I do. Just ask.

• Dan P. Gailey (@dpg) | Twitter
• Sink or Swim (@sos_universe) | Twitter
• Baqqer - CrowdFunding for Makers, Inventors, Creators, Developers, and You

One of my greatest desires in life is to create products, tools, and systems that will help all of mankind to see and go further. I believe creating these things is something you should strive for if you receive the calling. I want you to forget about the current incumbents of your field, I want you to forget about how things are or were — the future is yours to shape.

If you are gifted with both the ability to have vision, as well as the capacity and talent to achieve your purpose, then you are doing humanity a disservice by not following through to build your reality.

I want to create entirely new modes of understanding and insight that help people grow in exciting never before seen ways. This is my gift; This is my fire. It’s the singular song that resonates through every product I set out to build.

What is your fire?