Week 5 - Failures
- Sal Randazzo
- Feb 4, 2018
- 7 min read
Happy February - it’s already the 5th week of 2018. I hope you are enjoying my articles and learning a little bit about my life. This week I posted a voting option to write about my biggest failures or what I want to do before I die. The majority of votes were to hear about my biggest failures.
This article was uncomfortable for me to write to say the least. I spent this past week reflecting on my life and deciding what failures I wanted to highlight, do I want to highlight specific situations or broader scenarios? I came up with three themes of failures throughout my life. If you’re younger than me, heed these warnings.
Someone wise once told me, “foolish people make the same mistakes over and over again expecting different results, smart people learn from their own mistakes and grow, really intelligent people learn from OTHER people’s mistakes.” (thanks Mom!). I hope you can learn from my mistakes and avoid them like the plague.
Alcohol:
First off, I’m not going to tell you that I don’t drink - I’m not going to say never drink alcohol. My recommendation is this; if you are going to drink, take a look around the room and see if you have surrounded yourself with good company who care about your wellbeing. We grow up in a society where we go to college and every Thursday, Friday, & Saturday night is focused on going to parties. That’s just shy of 50% of the week being diverted from your health and wellness. Sure, we get to hone our social skills and probably our ability to operate on little-to-no sleep, but at that point in your life it shouldn’t be the focus your week. 90% of situations that have affective my life negatively is because I put myself in a bad position with alcohol involved - I didn’t surround myself with good company who cared about my wellbeing. What I have found is that a large amount of people can’t escape the college state-of-mind and continue this trend of behavior through their late 20’s and early 30’s. If you find yourself doing the weekly bar & club scene, ask yourself - what are you celebrating? Which leads me to my next topic - Time.
Investments:
I remember my dad constantly reminding me that the most valuable commodity was not Gold or Silver, but Time - we cannot buy more time. I wish I started investing sooner in life. It’s tough when we’re young, we need to put gas in our car, pay rent, and the last thing we’re thinking is to put money away for when we’re 65. I never saw myself living past 25 - that sounds morbid, but honestly - I never envisioned what my future looked like beyond 25. I couldn’t see myself at 30, 40, 50, let alone retirement age. Here I am at 29, wishing I could get the last 10 years of investment opportunity back (especially since how well the market is doing recently). If you feel like you can’t contribute anything, take $5 and transfer it to an account titled “retirement.” Do that every week, month, whatever recurrence works for your situation. This might not seem significant, but what you’re doing is invaluable - you’re training your state-of-mind, your habits that you will transfer $X every XX days/weeks/months - and THAT is significant. Here’s a great article regarding investing at 25 vs. 35. When you become financially stable and more independent, revisit that account and decide where you want to invest that money - up your contributions and over time you’ll have a significant nest-egg.
Relationships:
I wasn’t even going to write about this subject, but this was the #1 topic that came to mind when I thought about my biggest failures in life. When we think of relationships, typically we’re referring to the person we’re romantically involved with. Relationships cover all aspects of our life; Personal, Spiritual, and Professional. Personal relationships are relationships we have with our family, friends, and spouse. Our spiritual relationship is the connection we maintain with a higher being. Professional relationships are those connections that we make throughout our careers - the give-and-take relationships to better each other professionally. All three types of relationships are important throughout life. Let me tell you this - I was the WORST when it came to all aspects of my relationship life. I was unreliable, needy, self-centered, and didn’t care about anyone else’s feelings. My family and I have always been distanced, and I barely speak with my extended family. My romantic relationships always came with complications growing up. I grew up Catholic but didn’t go to church every week and I didn’t make my spiritual wellbeing a priority. My professional relationships were turning into “what can you do for me.”
Over time it all falls in line. After separating from the military, I quickly realized all we have in life are those relationships. When I was stationed in New Mexico, I can remember my Dad telling me, “you need to call your mother.” I’d quickly do a tally and realize that I had gone a month and a half without even speaking to my own Mom. I didn’t care about what she thought, I would get on the phone and come up with an excuse of how busy work was. Work doesn’t matter when it comes to the one person who brought you into this world - call your Mother! Families and households are the first unit of production in society - think about it, this is where you learn your first set of every skill before becoming a productive member of society. We learn basic human skills in the privacy of our own home, and we learn how to accomplish tasks to meet a common goal. We learn social skills at the dinner table for the yearly family get together - all these tools we use throughout our entire lives, we learned from our family… Call your Mother!
I can remember questioning the roman catholic step-by-step “procedures.” Stand/Sit/Kneel at this time, right hand over left when receiving the Eucharist, and say the Our Father a specific amount of times - Why?!, where in the Bible does it state that these are the requirements? I believe that we (as humans tend to do) have placed a mankind, tangible expectation on a superhuman, omnipotent power. Think about it, thousands of years of interpreting what was translated to humans. My biggest fear is that it has turned into a production, a social status that people use to show OTHER people that they have a spiritual relationship - does God really care that we wear suits and dresses to church every Sunday? Would God shun the homeless guy wanting to go to church because he wasn’t clean? I’d like to think no, but society has placed some weird expectations nowadays. My take on spiritual relationship is exactly that - a relationship between you and the higher being of your belief, don’t let anyone else’s perspective on your relationship affect your spiritual well being.
I remember growing up, having multiple romantic relationships over time that failed because of my actions and state-of-mind. Again, I was unreliable, needy, self-centered, and didn’t care about anyone else’s feelings. There was this girl I was dating in high school, I didn’t treat her well growing up - she knew I loved her, but I was very immature and not ready for a commitment. We went through iterations of breaking up and getting back together for years. We ended up going to the same college, studying the same degree program (how awkward is that!), and became close friends. We dated other people but knew that we were supposed to be together. It sounds cheesy, but honestly there’s a superhuman feeling about being with the right person. After rekindling that fire, on the heels of a deployment and a tour to Korea, I asked her to be my Wife. The thought of going another year and a half without her and potentially spending the rest of my life without her was unbearable. Again, we knew that we were supposed to be together, but one of us (i.e. me) was immature and not willing to put her before myself. Nearly five years later, she is a daily reminder that I like who I am when I am with her. She makes me a better person without having to do anything, we can lose everything in our lives and I know that we would have each other no matter what. My wife is the most patient, passionate, and kind-hearted person I know. What I learned is that if you’re not ready to put yourself second in a relationship, don’t hurt other people along the way.
At the end of our lives, all we have left is each other in this world.
Whew! I can’t believe I got through that - this was a tough topic to write about. I hope you enjoyed it. On a lighter note, that friend of mine that I wrote about at the end of Week 2, who decided to work out with me and take my nutrition tips has been committed to bettering his health and wellness - he’s lost 9-lbs and is feeling 100% better!
Also, this week we have narrowed down Aerial Imaging Solutions business logo. After a few tweaks, I’ll receive the copyright and I’ll share it with you next week! I was able to fly a few different sites this week - take a look at some of this imagery:
(RPIC: Sal Randazzo, 300-ft AGL, Reg #: FA3AARWW43) - Berkeley County Water & Sanitation - Pimlico Water Tower Inspection. The video of this inspection is on my Instagram!
(RPIC: Sal Randazzo, 200-ft AGL, Reg #: FA3AARWW43) - New development being constructed - site work by Sanders Brothers Construction.
I hope you enjoyed this topic/post and it helps you with your personal goals. I'm constantly seeking feedback - leave a comment below or send me a message letting me know what you think, how I can make this better, or if there's a topic you want me to cover!
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About Sal Randazzo:
Sal is a defense contractor, entrepreneur, and fitness enthusiast. His Blog is designed to share his life with his followers. His YouTube channel & Blog is a gallery of his work and personal life. Enjoy!
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