Jon Acuff - Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters

2013 Lampo Licensing, LLC

Published by Lampo Press, The Lampo Group, Inc.

Brentwood, Tennessee 37027

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The Dave Ramsey Show, Total Money Makeover, Financial Peace, Financial Peace University, and Dave Ramsey are all registered trademarks of Lampo Licensing, LLC. All rights reserved.

The opinions and conclusions expressed in this book are those of the author. All references to websites, blogs, authors, publications, brand names, and/or products are placed there by the author. No recommendation or endorsement by The Lampo Group, Inc., is intended, nor should any be implied. Some of the names of people mentioned have been changed to protect their privacy.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering financial, accounting, or other professional advice. If financial advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Editors: Brent Cole and Darcie Clemen

Cover design: Luke LeFevre and Melissa McKenney

Interior design: Thinkpen Design, Inc., www.thinkpendesign.com

ISBN: 978-1-937077-59-4

CIP Data application in process

Dad, why is L.E.s name mentioned three times in the dedication to Quitter and my name is mentioned only once? McRae, my then 5-year-old daughter

Great question. You can write the dedication to the next book. Me

Good. Ill say, To Jenny, McRae, and L.E. McRae

1: You Are Here

You Are Here

If you ever fly Korean Air, keep your eyes closed as you make your way to coach. You may have to feel your way there, but trust me, that momentary inconvenience is worth it. You do not want to see the first-class seats.

The challenge is that you enter from the front of the plane. If your eyes are open, youre immediately thrust into an aeronautical wonderland. First class isnt full of seats; its full of tiny pods of luxury. They have their own little sleeping cocoons in which to lounge away the sixteen-hour flight. And if you see these pleasure domes as you walk to your seat, youre going to get sad.

So that you fully comprehend whats happening as you pass through the seating classes, Korean Air color-codes the seats. The pleasure domes in first class are woven in a periwinkle blue fabric that seems to tickle you lightly and whisper, Dont you wish this flight were longer? The next class of seats is light blue, like the color of an apron youd buy at Williams-Sonoma after being wooed into the store by the smell of boysenberry muffins. The business class is dark blue, serious but still seriously comfortable. Finally, at the end of the color wheeland back of the planeyou get to coach class, your seat, which is brown, the color of disappointment.

The other thing itd be good for you to knowshould you ever find yourself flying to Asiais that Vietnam is not close to South Korea. I thought they were like Connecticut and Rhode Island. That maybe I could look out the window from the airport in Seoul and see Vietnam across the water. I was wrong.

After flying sixteen hours from Atlanta to South Korea, we had to fly another six hours from Seoul to Hanoi. We then boarded an overnight train to travel deeper into the country. I dont know if there were periwinkle first-class seats available on that train, but I do know we didnt get them. The shared bathroom was just a metal hole in the floor that dropped straight onto the tracks. I thought it was kind of fun. My wife felt differently.

After a solid night of rumbling through moonlit mountains, we arrived in Sapa. From there we drove another seven hours on dirt roads overlooking cliffs. Imagine the most dangerous road youve ever been on, remove all the guardrails, and then add water buffalo.

Finally, after hours of breathtaking scenery punctuated by moments of sheer panic, we came upon something Id never expected to see. French motorcyclists.

My initial confusion was that they werent on skinny ten-speeds from the 1960s with long sticks of crusty French bread sticking out of wicker baskets, and none of them were wearing jaunty berets. (Everything I know about France I learned from puzzles. And its completely okay for me to poke fun at France. The only language my books have ever been translated into is German. Im like Hasselhoff over there.)

Decked out in apocalyptic-looking safety gear and a weeks worth of dirt, they were obviously a long way from home. Lost in the deepest middle of nowhere Id ever experienced, the bikers were gesturing to some Vietnamese villagers huddled around a map that was unfolded on the handlebars of one of the bikes.

We pulled over to the side of the road to help them find their next destination. Steve, an American who had lived in Asia for eighteen years, looked out the bus window at the bikers map.

Wow, he said to Hua, our Vietnamese driver, that is an amazing map. Look how detailed it is! We should get one of those.

Then he paused just before lowering his window and said, Then again, the best map in the world doesnt matter if you dont know where you are.

***

Steve was right. Without a point of origin, even the best map is rendered useless. If you opened up the GPS on your phone right now and tried to get directions, the very first thing the phone would need to know is where you are. Google Earth cant give you directions across the state or even across the street without a point of origin. Yet most of us, when it comes to figuring out where were headed in life, never stop to ask the simple question, Where am I?

We just keep marching forward, day after day, cubicle after cubicle, moving faster and faster but not really going anywhere. Eventually, at the end of our lives, we start to do some questioning. We finally pause long enough to reexamine our decisions and maybe even ask hard questions of young, single-browed authors on airplanes.

Thats what a grandmother in her early 70s did to me on a flight from Dallas to Baltimore. She was flying back from a gambling trip in Reno with her sister. They were two grandmothers on the run, laughing and joking with each other in the back of a Southwest plane. During the flight, I gave her a copy of my book Quitter . I promise, I dont do that every time I fly. I dont wear cargo pants full of my books and then say, Oh, whats this? How did this get in my pocket? Thats crazy! Its my Wall Street Journal best-selling book! Ill sign it for you, but please, no flash photography. It dries out my pores.

But we had been talking about life and dreams, and giving her a copy of Quitter , which addresses both, seemed like an okay thing to do.

After she had been reading it for an hour, she leaned in to speak over the engine noise and ask me a question I wasnt ready for.

What do you do when all the excuses you used to not chase your dream are gone? What do you do then?

There was sadness in her words. A sense of fear and resignation that seemed to suck all the joy out of a boisterous weekend trip with a sister. Sadder still, I didnt have an answer for her. I didnt know the answer, but I knew there was one.

There had to be, because I didnt want you or me to get to 80 or 90 years old and realize we mortgaged the best years of our lives doing something we werent called to do. I didnt want to look back on life and wonder where it all went.