I was at that job for four years before the company let me go. The reason they let me go was because they were going to outsource my job to someone else to do it for cheaper, and honestly, that was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I remember the day my boss called me and my coworker who also worked on the website into her office and told us the “bad” news. I smiled at her, thanked her for hiring me, and suddenly felt like the world was completely open to me. I had never seen the world around me like this before, I felt like if I applied myself where I needed to, I could literally accomplish anything.
I called my mom on the way back home and explained what had happened with such a sense of relief. Had I not had the rock moved for me, who knows how long I would have stayed there. This was a mistake I knew I wouldn’t allow myself to make again. If I ever felt complacent again, I would be aware of it as a tendency next time and prevent it from taking hold at all costs, because all it would end up doing would be to hold me back from being somebody great.
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“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t—you’re right.”
When I started pursuing my dreams, there were a lot more reasons for me to stop working toward them than there were to follow through. You see, videos and storytelling were always something I loved to do. Growing up with my brothers, whenever my parents would leave the house, we would secretly borrow the video camera to record ourselves wrestling in our underwear in the living room with the floor covered with pillows and blankets. We didn’t think far enough ahead to realize that our parents would find the tapes, since we had left them in the cameras, but there was a magic behind storytelling in front of a camera that I fell in love with.
And as we got older, that love of wrestling evolved into recording our wrestling matches in the park with our friends. We each had different characters we played, and little kids from all over the park would stand around the small gated tire swing area to watch us hit each other with steel chairs, slam each other through doors, and trash talk each other before every match. For years to come, our wrestling characters evolved, as did the production and quality of what we were creating. Eventually I got more involved in the storytelling part of it all, writing storylines, creating dramatic angles for different wrestlers’ involvement, and even meeting with people months in advance to plan things out for the next summer.
At some point, though, we began to realize that we were indeed getting older and that our park wrestling days were coming to a close simply because we had other priorities in our lives. I was in college then, taking a video class with my older brother. The final project for the class was to record a semi-long form video, so we decided to record a pilot for a web series we wanted to create. Our professor had told us that the final projects would be shown in the college theater on the big screen so we could invite our friends to check it out.
My brother and I told everyone about it, so two cars full of people drove up to our school to watch the debut of our comedy web series. The only issue was that they never played it that night, leaving all of our friends dumbfounded and disappointed. I felt confused and embarrassed, so I approached the professor at the end of class and asked why she had not showed it, only to be told, “It was pretty bad, but you can watch it now if you want.” The theater was empty by then, and my hope of creating a web series was crushed.
The crushed feelings were short-lived, however, because soon enough my friends and I got back into creating skits for YouTube. I started to feel like this was something I could really do, something I could spend the rest of my life doing,, because it was so much fun to bring stories to life like that. We continued making skits until our comedy dreams had come to the same fate as our wrestling: everyone had other priorities in their lives.
I started to question if this was the right path for me. It seemed nearly impossible for me to maintain a creative effort that I enjoyed and to find people who were just as passionate as I was. That’s when I met a young woman whose ambition matched mine on every level. She wanted to create a comedy show on YouTube where she would dress up in costumes, play different characters, and interview people about the craziest things. Now this was something I was fully on board with; I had the freedom to create scripts and to produce videos, while working with someone who understood my dream.
Once again, though, the long path forward came to a screeching halt when she could no longer make videos because her job wouldn’t allow it. I felt like I had been chasing the dream of being a creator for years and had never quite found the right path for myself. I still wanted to pursue making films, but I just didn’t know how to go about it. I realized the best path for me was probably to work on video projects for companies and people who needed it. Through a mutual friend, I was set up with a project where I would record a commercial as a freelance gig in Manhattan. Unfortunately, as I will explain later, things worked out very badly for me and made me seriously question my desire to pursue film. I began thinking of all that had gone wrong that day. Was this the right path for me? Why was I so certain I could do this when every single time I’d tried, it had never worked out for me?
I thought back to that life-changing day in college and remembered: my purpose in life is to experience it, and the reason I should go on living is to share it with others.
That was the day I began making videos for my channel The Josh Speaks.
I was enjoying it. I was enjoying making videos about my thoughts on and experiences of things for the simple purpose of sharing them with others. That’s when I realized I had finally figured it out. All this time I had been trying to define myself by someone else’s standard. For the majority of my life it was my parents, then became my first boss, and then my friends and eventually strangers I wanted to work with. But now I was defining myself by my own standard; I was doing what I wanted to do and what made me happy.
Looking back, I’ve been making videos for years now covering hundreds of topics from developing friendships, starting conversations, and feeling like you’re good enough to asking out your crush, managing school stress, and more. I’ve spoken to thousands of people along the way online, in schools, and in person with all kinds of life stories and struggles—but the one thing I’ve learned from my own experiences and from what I’ve heard is that each and every single person has exactly what they need to embrace the awkward and be somebody great. I didn’t realize this at first, I didn’t even think it was possible; it wasn’t until I developed skills and confidence that I understood what purpose really is.
Not everyone has it all magically figured out. In fact, probably no one does. Life is a journey, and no one has the map. But a meaningful experience in life begins by simply taking steps in the right direction.
That is exactly what I want to help you come to realize through this book: that YOU can be somebody great—that building confidence and finding purpose take some small steps, but together, we can get there.
When you wake up in the morning and start your day, how much thought do you put into the idea of being awake? I’d imagine it isn’t a lot, considering there are so many other things to do, like getting ready for school, preparing your lunch for work, or even just picking up your phone to dive into any notifications that may have come in after you lay down to go to sleep. For the most part, we’re always ready to jump into the next moment ahead of us, ready to do something