#SYDWAC - Follow Your Nerdiness!

Sam. Sa. Foreign. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to start your day. Great. Start your day with a coach. I am your host, certified high performance coach Sean Buttner. And before we get into today's show, about living in your life full of meaning, of really advancing yourself in a way where you can feel your progress and be your best every day. When I remind you to do the social media thing, please, you know, wherever you're watching this video, like subscribe, hit the notification bell. You know, we stream live to three platforms every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, trying to help you advance your life in a fun and meaningful way. So today, I'm really excited about today the topic because it's all about following your nerdiness. Because I've been going through a couple projects and, you know, it's kind of gotten me to just reflect on my life a little bit and how this idea of cultivating interests, of really, you know, following them can lead to adventure, can lead to friendships, can lead to unexpected awesomeness in your life. So I'm not sure if you have anything that you're cultivating just as a hobby or something that you're interested in or something that you would read all the time, no matter what, but this is a video to encourage you to continue to do that and to find more of it in your life if you are feeling not super awesome about where life is right now. Because I know so many people are struggling with what do I want to do with my life? What do I really want for myself and my family right now? And my suggestion to you is to follow your nerdiness. And this is how it worked out for me, right? So growing up, I was super fascinated with video games, right? I remember my dad had an Atari 2600 when I was really little. And I always would try to, like, you know, move Pac man around, you know, or Pitfall or all that kind of stuff. And so it just kind of started this love of technology. And so as I'm growing up, you know, video games are, you know, super important to me, right? It's a nice quiet space where I can kind of escape for a little bit. And then in high school, I take a couple of programming classes, right? So I'm starting to take that interest in video games and move it into software, right? So I do that in high school. In college, I go to school for business and eventually information systems, which is the, like, business side of technology, and take another computer course, right? Another software course in Java, and I graduate, right? And my first job is I'm trying to think what do I want to do after school? You know, so my first job after my graduate work is being hired as a programmer for Walmart Corporate, right? Doing web stuff in Java and G2 double E and all that stuff. And so this thing that was seemingly unrelated to what I was learning in school or where I thought my career might go, ended up being the start of a career in technology. And it was fun up until it became a job. So many times the things that you love when they become a gig can kind of suck the joy out of it a little bit. And so I started to struggle just not feeling the excitement and wonder of technology at that point in my career after just being kind of burnt out on deadlines and, you know, doing things that needed to get done and not necessarily were the coolest. And so from that I, you know, super stress started into personal development and that then helped me leave that job at Walmart eventually because I just was burnt out, right? And so trying to figure out what to do next, I was really focused on getting out of student debt. So I thought, oh, maybe I'll help other people and you know, put out material for that, which I did unsuccessfully. But the work at Walmart, the work with trying to start that business led me to a job at Apple, right? Which was pretty amazing that a guy with a couple like two semesters of programming was able to go into a software career and then work at a place like Apple doing software. So that was pretty awesome. But I also had that personal development stuff and I would read and just consume as much as that as I possibly could on that. And that helped transform me into being a coach eventually, right? Which is what I'm doing now is something I absolutely love. It's something that I'm like, man, if I could have figured this out when I was in my 20s, you know, how life would have been different? You know, you kind of have, have that thing where you find your passion, just do things that you're interested in. And so, you know, following my nerdiness helped me grow and learn as a human being, helped me communicate better, helped me become a more well rounded person and helped me in my tech career learning personal development on how to relate to people, how to read people, how to facilitate meetings and crack kind of engineers that were a bit grumpy or whatever at the time. In my now coaching career, my experience as a software engineer helped me automate some parts of my business or at least prevent me from getting stuck in implementing technology that a lot of my peers tend to struggle with because I'm not afraid of technology and I have a little bit of know how to to help make my life easier. Right, so what are the lessons here? Right, Your hobbies, Following your nerdiness helps you grow, helps to learn, it helps you in other areas of your life that you might not even imagine and it can bring you joy. Right? Like technology now is fun again for me after, you know, 10 years of having a complex relationship, I suppose. But I like the challenge and the problem solving part of it and doing it for my business. It's a little bit more of an incentive to go forth and do it. So my question for you is, what are you nerding out about right now? And how could you add more of that into your life? How can you double down on that so you feel more joy, you have that shift of focus. So you're not all just like a one trick pony, I guess is the phrase, you know, you only have your work and the thing that you do for work. And outside of that, you know, you're not cultivating, you know, a love for food through cooking. You're not, you're cultivating art or, you know, music or things of that nature that one, help you make, help make you a more well rounded person. But two, it just makes you more interesting. It makes life a little bit more, you know, exciting and zestful. Right? That's my hope for each and every one of you. So, you know, what are you nerding out about? Let me know what your big thing that you're nerding out on is right now. So cheer you on. I think if more people would get out of looking at the world and complaining and got more into, hey, I'm really cultivating this skill, I'm cultivating this interest that a lot of things energy wise would shift where people would be less like angry out in the world, is my humble observation. Maybe you agree with that, maybe not. Regardless, double down on your nerdiness. I don't think you'll regret it. I haven't and I continue to double down on that and just take that part of my interests in my heart where it tends to just lead me to. And it's worked out amazing. So that said, guys, thanks for watching. We'll be back here on Friday for our Friday reflections of the week. I hope to see you there and live with more joy, more personal growth, more impact and more nerdiness in your life today.