Petar Petrov's Blog

This weekend I went to the small village Gela, in the Rodope Mountains in Bulgaria. There was a bagpipe festival. All good.

At the top of the hill however was a small chapel. I am not religious so I rarely go in, but this past week a member of my extended family passed out, and I decided to light a candle. When I went, this whiteboard attracted my attention:

Basically, on the left it lists all the people that helped the renovation and how many days they worked. On the right are all the people and companies/institutions that donated money and the respective amounts.

Looking at this, you immediately get an incredible sense of community, drive to make it, creativity in organizing it.

It is exactly what my project www.touchsofia.bg is meant to facilitate online – finding people with common interest and donating their time, energy and money towards achieving a goal.

I asked around about this story and it turned out, the man behind it was right next to me, so I happily stole a few minutes from his time and got the following story:

His name is Nikola Beevski [Никола Беевски]. Here is an image of him in the chapel, that I stole from his portfolio page:

His dad and him decided to renovate this chapel named “st. Ilia” [св. Илия]. There was no one to paint it and draw all the saints on the walls, so Nikola taught himself for 3 years how to do that. He read every book from every library from around on how to draw saints on church walls and icons. During the 6 years of drawing (before that was full renovation, foundations, roof etc) he would check the paint quality by testing it on weather conditions. If he wasn’t satisfied, he would ditch the crappy paint and get another one. He drew and redrew everything until he was happy with the results. Eventually it was done. Wonderful, pretty. I asked him, “Do the people around know about it?”, “Yes, all the villages and cities around know about St. Ilia”

I thought there was something extraordinary in this one man setting on a goal with no knowledge, competences, or money and achieving this full-scale renovation of a Chapel.

I mentioned to him that I was doing a web project that aims just at that – organize volunteer work and money to get a job done. I am not sure if he really understood it, but the one sentence that came out of his mouth was,

If you started it, you will make it. [ Ако си го почнал, ще го направиш. ]

Incredible person.

[pic source]

I was thinking about most of my friends and how they are doing in life. Some of them have their business and are making lots of money and they love it, or alternatively have jobs that make them happy. Others are not so lucky, and have not really achieved much in those couple years out of college. I was trying to draw a pattern on the successful ones and what came out was the following:

Know what you want, plan steps to achieving it, and stay on your course

Now, this is more or less obvious, but what strikes me is that most people that don’t know what they want, or where they are going don’t put any effort in fixing this problem. However,

Knowing what you want is incredibly important, because no matter how much energy you have, if you don’t put it in the right direction, you’ll lose it.

Hopefully if I try to illustrate this in an unusual way, it will help a bit. I will use the wonderful image of the blue sea and the boat. You are the boat. The sea is your life, full of unlimited directions and long travelling to the shore (life achievements). Now there’s two things you can do:

#1
You don’t set firm and desireable direction. The sea will take you every day in a random direction. One day the waves are going to take you north, another – south. You can be skillful with the sails, and use them every day, but if you don’t have a unified direction, all effort will be canceled out in the end by the randomness that life offers you. In real world terms, you will be getting a job, you are good at, then switch to a completely different thing, then you will decide to travel a bit and this way years will go by, and there will be nothing very permanent or meaningful. That could be just fine if you liked your life and they way it slips by.

#2
Alternatively, you can look around, choose the best beach you want to go to through objective analyzing. You can then set your sails every day according to the wind and waves. You will won’t be going faster than #1, but every day will get you closer to the shore. It will be a long ride to cross the sea, but you will eventually, with dedication and energy, get where you want to be. In real life terms, that would mean buying a house, getting an amazing job or business, creating a wonderful family etc.

Both cases look similar in that the amount of energy put in sailing was the same. However, couple years down the road person in #1 will be right about where he was, while person in #2 will have already gotten some or all of the targets set in the beginning.

So I talked to people and I ask them what they want and where are they going. Often times, the ones that seemed lost to me did not surprise me with the answer. Here are a couple answers I get often and the problems with them:

I want to go to grad school
That could be a good answer if you knew exactly what you wanted to study, and what you will be doing with it. Most people go just for the idea of grad school, or because they can’t get a job. They also don’t know exactly where and why to go, nor how to actually get there

I want to travel
That’s another of the top choices around. Essentially it’s another thing you can do to pass time when you don’t know what you are doing. Travelling is fun and gets you awesome experience, just like grad school, but it doesn’t build you a stable life to keep doing it for a long time. It also gulps huge amounts of time/money.

I don’t know
I also get the honest “no idea” answer. Those people usually have a collection of things they could “maybe” do, but they are never good enough to be done. This answer I usually get from people that have always been like that. In other words – It’s okay to not know for a short period of time exactly what you are doing, but if you get stuck for weeks/months in this mental state, it means you are not making effort to figure it out. No effort is put into finding the answer.

I am doing X, and Y, and also Z…
That’s more or less the opposite of the previous case. I have friends that are always, always up to something. One, two, three projects. And each time I meet them for a dinner, their projects have changed and they have new ventures they are so excited about. After a while, you stop being interested in their things, because you know you’ll most probably never hear again about it. This case is not as bad, because it means at least that a person makes short term plans and a couple small steps towards them. Those get-rich-quick schemes or temporary desires are quite useless if not pursued over long term.

Do you know what’s your direction?If you can’t answer right away, you’d better sit and brainstorm on paper for life, or else you’ll be floating only where life takes you, which is usually not too far and back.

[pic source]

I take long morning showers. I get many great ideas under the running water. Sometimes though, I catch myself thinking about useless stuff. That is, stuff that doesn’t make me happy, doesn’t make me feel any better, doesn’t improve my life or anybody else’s life. Here are a few recognizable examples:

• Worries: “worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum”. You achieve nothing when you worry, unless you start solving the problem constructively
• Past: Dwelling on past events [without analyzing and applying it to current situations] will help you with nothing. Whether something good or bad happened, won’t matter if you keep looping it in your head.
• Future: It is good to plan ahead, and try to predict situations, but creating in your mind an array of possible outcomes and analyzing it becomes quite useless at some point, when it takes more energy thinking about it than actually asking someone or simply doing it.

Engaging with those thoughts is a process that needs to be recognized on the spot and cut out. It is not always easy to do so, since it is a habit that needs to be unlearned. But with the right energy and effort, it can be achieved and the result should be a more focused, meaningful and purposeful life.

Here’s what I purged today:

• Thinking about an ex-girlfriend.
• Worrying about a client not liking the current design
• Imagining a billion different scenarios about this client never liking anything and the problems arising from there
• Worrying about why someone I care didn’t return my call for almost the whole day
• Imagining a creative assortment of reasons that this person couldn’t or didn’t want to call me back
• Things that are not important or urgent or relevant at least for another year. Example: What will I do when my computer is outdated?

I urge you to start doing the same. Or at least for once note down the free flowing thoughts and objectively grade their usefulness/uselessness.

[pic source]

I am beginning to see a certain pattern across the people I know. Hitting the first years of settled life (late twenties), I notice that over long term everybody gets what they deserve. Whoever really wanted a certain job got it, whoever wanted to be at a certain location is there and whoever didn’t really care or put effort in something, failed at it.

There can only be 1 conclusion: In the long term it all depends on you.

So if you came to me and told me about a problem you had, I’d say….I’d say nothing. But in my mind I will think, “You really want that problem solved? Go fix it. And if you can’t or don’t know how, ask someone explicitly for help!”

Bad grades. Have you thought of of learning in a different way?
Bored with my job. Find another one, or make it yourself.
No money. Have you ever planned on making a lot of money and followed the plan?
I am hungry. Go eat!

So every time you catch yourself whining about something, figure out if it’s worth fixing, and if it is get your ass on it. Otherwise, stop wasting energy and time by whining.

It was very interesting to see that in small US towns as soon as a pedestrian approaches the zebra crossing, cars slow down, stop and wait patiently.

In Sofia there are now zebras painted too, but signs of stopping nowhere to be seen. Cars swoosh by and people stay forever waiting for cars to run out.

And this is a problem. People stay forever waiting for all cars in sight to go by and only then walk. What bothers me is another problem i notice around – no one does anything to change that. Instead of waiting, all you have to do is put your foot on the asphalt, and make 1 step. This comes as a reminder to the cars, that pedestrians actually have the right-of-way and they stop. All you have to do is one step to claim your rights, and yet no one does it and all I hear is “Cars never stop, we’ll wait forever because of those assholes…”

If you put yourself in the shoes of the drivers, this makes sense again, “This pedestrian doesn’t look like he is ready to cross, he is not on the move, i can squeeze by and save time” vs “Oh, he is crossing, I gotta stop”

And it seems to me that everything in life follows that same dynamic. No one is going to give you anything if you don’t ask for it. It might be yours, you might be entitled to it, but you have to ASK for it. To get what you need, you need to start walking, to do work, and make an action statement that you are claiming your rights and you are about to get what you are after. That’s when people notice you and are willing to trust you and give you an extra push. If you are entitled to the thing, they give it to you. If you are not, they support you in getting it. No one is going to give you financing/help for the startup, if you don’t firmly step on the ground, get moving, show ambition and determination on that zebra path…