Justin Boreta is a founding member of The Glitch Mob, an artist-owned group. Their last album debuted on the Billboard charts as the #1 Electronic Album, #1 Indie Label, and #4 Overall Digital Album. Their music has been featured in movies like Captain America: The First Avenger and The Amazing Spider-Man.
In an interview with bestselling author Tim Ferris, Justin Boreta is asked what advice he’d give to his 20 year old self. His response? “Chill out. Calm down.” As a 20-something myself, I think this is so important to remember. I catch myself getting overwhelmed and I stress about something that in a week works itself out. Justin sums up how things don’t always have to be fully planned out.He says, “it doesn’t matter as much as you think it does”. Once you really take the time to think about it, I’m sure you can find quite a few examples of how things didn’t go as you planned them, but they still worked out.
We can take this method of thinking and apply it to many different aspects of our lives. We are conditioned all throughout school and college to make a plan, pick a career, and then follow it. However, 9 times out of 10 that plan doesn’t work or we change it so much along the way that it ends up being completely different. Instead of pushing our plan we have to step back (chill out and calm down). Don’t force it. If it’s meant to happen it will, and if you force it, you’ll end up more stressed and may not even be happy with the outcome. We can all relate to things that we expected to go a certain way, but instead something else happened and it was actually a better outcome than our original expectation.
“This reminds me of when I was in college. I was on a set 7 year medical program track, but2 years in I realized that I didn’t want to go into medicine. I wanted to try other career options before locking in 7+ more years of medical school and residency.That’s how I tried out so many new jobs from sales and data analytics to serving and bartending.
Along the way I have met so many people who’d tell me over and over again how they had set plans that ended up changing to get them to where they are today. For example, just yesterday I met a woman who majored in marketing and now is doing pharmaceutical sales. She told me she never expected to be doing what she does now, but she absolutely loves her job. If she hadn’t been open about her plan, she never would’ve taken some of the jobs she’s had and would never have known she actually loves sales in the pharmaceutical industry.” - Rukmani, Marketing Manager
Tell us a time you were able to step back from a plan and it worked out for you in the comments below!
Ferriss, Timothy, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers HMH Books, 2016.