Personal Growth From the Bottom Up – BroderickDurisseau.com
A Blog Dedicated to Personal Growth, Success and Goal Achievement

Since it’s been about a year and a half since I quit college, I thought it would be helpful to share what it’s been like after quitting for those who may be considering it or anyone else that’s just curious.

Background

Around 2006 after about a year into college, I starting becoming frustrated with my lack of energy to even go to class, much less study for one. As I was looking for answers, I saw that a lot of people were going through the same thing.

Some were fed up with long college papers, tests, boring classes, outrageous expenses, but I also noticed that there were many who questioned why they were even there in the first place. You could tell they didn’t want to be there, but for one reason or another they kept going and complaining about it. Of course I was doing the same thing at the time.

Most of the advice that I came across just didn’t sit right with me. It was advice like “keep going” and “stick it out, it’ll be worth it later” and “you need a degree now a days” mixed in with some stories of regret for not finishing.

The advice that did feel right to me was “you don’t have to do anything” and “think for yourself”. So…soon after that I decided to drop out.

This is not meant to be “should you stay or should you go” advice. I won’t undermine your incredible ability to think for yourself by telling you what to do. I just want to get you ready for what to expect if you are considering quitting college and to share a perspective of a college dropout.

Relief

I’m pretty sure you’ll experience feelings of relief if you felt college wasn’t right for you. The day I let college go was a huge weight off my shoulders. No more giving into family pressure and reflecting on failing grades semester after semester. No more feeling guilty about not going to classes and procrastinating. No more wild college overspending on said classes and living expenses. No overly optimistic belief that I was gonna try super hard the next semester. Most importantly, no more confusion and lack of direction.

The Critics

You can bet there will be people who think negatively of you when you quit. I’ve had about 2-3 interventions where people sat me down and tried to make me see “their side”. These could be people that haven’t even met you, but heard that you quit through friends or family.

It’s disappointing that some people are brainwashed into thinking that a degree is the be-all, end-all of success. I’m sure you can think of tons of successes you’ve had without a degree. If you can walk, there goes one success already.

You can show these people all the examples you want that shatter that limiting belief. Most likely they’ll still cling to it until they’re ready to let it go.

People also might think negatively of you because they see you as being a quitter. If you quit, technically they’d be right. But who’s to say quitting is always a bad thing? Does it make sense to continue going down a path you know isn’t right for you? If you’ve ever quit smoking/abusing drugs/drinking excessively/overeating/(insert anything else that’s disempowering)….congratulations!

Debt Collection

Uh…I’m not gonna lie to you. This sucks.

Since my mentality was “must finish college at all costs”, I took on a lot of unnecessary debt. Credit cards, high interest loans, private loans, you name it. And…let’s just say they aren’t letting me forget about it (multiple phone calls every day and letters). The debt doesn’t really hit you until you decide to quit because many lenders are pretty lenient as long as you’re still attending school. Even soon out of school they’re pretty lenient with options like deferment and forbearance. Credit card companies..um…not so much.

I imagine the calls and letters would go away if I were to get a job soon and start paying them back, but that’s not how I want to pay them back.

Largely there’s been a lot of ignoring on my part. After a while of taking their calls, I realized that talking to them just made me feel bad and I wasn’t making any considerable progress anyway. Usually they would try to scare me into paying them with threats and what not, so I just stopped answering. I’m aware of the consequences of that decision and I still have every intention of paying back the money I owe, but not out of the fear/guilt state they seem to try to push me towards.

Ironically, the criticism and the debt collection calls/letters have made me feel more successful. If you’ve studied successful people, you know that criticism comes with the package, so being put to test of being able to handle it builds your confidence in your ability to persist. As far as the debt, many of the richest in the world have been broke and/or deep in debt. Those who successfully built wealth eventually recovered from those times, dusted themselves off, learned from it and moved On To Next One.

Authority

By far, the acceptance of my own authority is the biggest benefit to quitting. No one I knew of thought quitting was a good idea, so I violated a lot of expectations.

And it felt goooood.

It felt good not having to please anyone around me. It felt good to know that my decisions were aligned with my desires. It even felt good knowing that people around me would benefit because I would be able to spread my excited empowerment to them rather than my frustration and anger.

Lessons Learned

1. Make quicker, more decisive decisions

Successful people listen to their intuition and other warning signs around them and decisively take action to create an outcome they want. Taking care of it might require taking some uncomfortable action, but they do it before the situation turns into a disaster.

I didn’t have to spend semester after semester wallowing in guilt and frustration. I could have nipped it at the bud. Those semesters cost me money, but more importantly they cost me time.

Discovering the Law of Attraction helped with this. It’s easier to act quickly and decisively if you’re focused on what you want instead of bogging yourself down with blaming, complaining or other distractions.

2. Listen to people who have been where you want to go

I realized that when people give advice, it comes from certain perspectives. I have to take that into consideration if I’m thinking of acting on their advice. For example, let’s go back to the advice I mentioned in the beginning. The “stick with it” advice came from employees. Many of whom I know for a fact are “sticking with” jobs they don’t like going to 40 hours a week. However, “you don’t have to do anything” and “think for yourself” both came from successful business owners.

Sticking with it just caused me more frustration. I’m thankful I made the decision to think for myself and quit.

Some Questions for You

What are you tolerating? Are you going down a road you know isn’t right for you? Scared to quit?

Maybe you just don’t want to go through the hassle of quitting and moving in another direction? I’ll tell you straight up, dealing with those consequences while you’re feeling relief and excitement for the future yields better results than continuing to put up with what you don’t want and being frozen in fear of quitting.

Afraid of what other people might think of you? What about what you think of yourself?

Man…it’s been a while. Feels good to be back in the game though. :)

Thought I’d give an update as to how things were going.

30-Day Trial #4

I didn’t continue the trial too long after I started it. Around that time I was starting to think that these 30-day trials were a way for me to avoid doing stuff I was afraid of. There were some big changes I wanted to make (location) and I thought that the 30-day trials were just me stalling. After taking some time off I can see that that did have some truth to it, but I still want to keep doing visualization.

Ebay Reselling

While I was doing my other trials, I was always questioning whether I should be working on visualization, reading, etc. when there are much bigger issues to deal with. I wanted to move out, so shouldn’t I be doing stuff to make enough money to support myself after moving out? I thought so, so I did.

Ideally I wanted my sole income to be made online. I had made money online before, but I had never made a full income before. Usually when I hear about making money online Ebay comes up, so I thought I’d give it a try. I bought this book (here’s a pretty accurate review of it), bought some stuff off slickdeals.net and resold them on Ebay. I had sold a lot of stuff on Craigslist before, (everything in my apartment) so I had a pretty good idea on what to do. The intention was to get my feet wet with selling and shipping, so I wasn’t too concerned about profit. I think people who really put forth serious effort reselling on Ebay would laugh at my super beginner strategy.

One thing I like about Ebay is that it’s so easy. I guess over the years they’ve done a lot to the site to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible. Same thing goes for Craigslist.

Purpose

Though I do like Ebay and Craigslist, the idea of reselling makes me feel like I’m going backwards. The truth is that the world doesn’t need another Ebay reseller and it felt pretty empty to me anyway. At the core, I’m just manipulating numbers for my own benefit. Writing on this blog is a lot more fun and fulfilling. It’s made me realize that making $1 the way you really want to is better than making $1000 in a way you feel you have to “settle” for. However, neither option is a win-win.

Lately I’ve really been doing some serious thought about purpose. There’s so much talk about purpose within the self help field, but up until now I really didn’t pay it too much attention other than reading a book on it. It’s a pretty big awareness raiser when you realize that even if you haven’t consciously chosen a purpose you still have one.

Clearly the purpose of me reselling was just to make some profit, BUT this is what I don’t want to see anymore of. There’s tons of stuff out there doing more harm than good and wasting people’s time. The sole reason much of that stuff sticks around is because it generates money. So many things are being motivated by fear or lack, and I don’t want to add to that.

So what do I want? I have a general idea and it is written down, but after listening to Frank Kern’s Core Influence and reading some articles on Steve Pavlina’s blog (How to Visualize your New Reality and How to Order) and reading other self-help sources, I’m pretty sure I haven’t been nearly as detailed as I should be in describing exactly what I want.

In a perfect world:

- What would your thoughts be when you went to sleep?
- How exactly would you be earning money?
- What would your friends be like?
- What would you have for dinner?

Those are some questions from Core Influence (probably somewhere before that too) and they are questions I hadn’t thought of. Looks like I got some work to do. :)

This month my focus will be on visualization. My first 30-day trial was on visualization, but I really didn’t dive into it like I want to now. Plus at that point I didn’t know enough about it or have enough direct experience doing it consistently to write too many quality articles about it. I’d like to read at least 5 books on the subject, listen to several hours of audio, and share what’s useful on this blog. I’ve probably spent 20 minutes visualizing each day for around 80 days since Oct 1. During the last month I went for about 10 days straight without consciously taking time out to do it, and I could definitely tell the difference in those days.

I’m pretty excited to implement some different strategies I’ve read in Creative Visualization, and I’d be happy to hear any other recommendations on the subject.

I want to visualize for at least 45 minutes each day. 15 min right after I wake up, 15 min in the middle of the day (we’ll say 2:00pm), and 15 before I go to sleep.

I’ll be giving updates on daily on Steve Pavlina’s Forums and Zen Habits’ Forums. :smile:

30-Day Trial #3 didn’t quite go as planned. I started the trial with 7 goals then ended up cutting it down to three.

After the revision on Day 6, the three goals were to:

1) Wake up at 6:00am daily and stay awake
2) Visualize for at least 20 minutes daily
3) Eat no processed starches, foods with refined sugars, cheese or fruits throughout the day

There were stops, revisions, twists, turns, and bumps, but it was still a fun learning experience for me. I imagine that will be similar to many 30-day trials I do. After the initial revision, things went pretty well up until around the 19th.

Waking up at 6:00am and staying awake

On most days I would go to bed late and wake up at 6am only to go right back to sleep for another hour or two or wander around and waste time.

This goal just didn’t happen at all. There were many times I wondered if deep down inside I really wanted to accomplish this goal. I do want to be an early riser, and there’s no doubt in my mind I can do it. Going to sleep when I’m sleepy has been the real source of the problem, so I’ll have to do some more searching to find out why I’m not getting to bed on time.

I know one cause is productivity-related. As I’m writing this now, I’m wondering why it took me so long to get started with this update seeing as I’ve had the whole day open to get this done. Many times I’ll wait until late at night to start something I would have liked to had done earlier. Lord, I remember my first visualization trial I probably hit the “publish” button on 80% of the posts right before midnight just to get it up on time. I think I’ll re-read some productivity books so I can dissolve this problem.

I know that isn’t the only problem though. There are days when I don’t write for the blog at all, soooo there’s gotta be somethin’ else.

Visualizing for 20 minutes

I stopped visualization after the 19th and I started doing it again around the 28th. I can tell the lack of visualization had an impact on my focus and the other two goals in this trial. Things started getting more relaxed and the days were filled with me succumbing to one distraction after another. I’m pretty sure I won’t have a problem with this goal next month though. :wink:

Cutting out processed starches, foods with refined sugars, cheese and fruits

When I stopped visualizing, I started eating processed starches and foods with refined sugars after going a month without eating any. Next time I try a goal like this I’ll put the goal in words that focus on what I want (more whole foods) not what I don’t want (processed crap).

This is a health goal, but it’s a health goal that is affected by finances. A person that has built a life-long healthy lifestyle earns enough money to buy health conscious food and supplies. I want to be a person who can afford the healthy options too. Right now I’m not quite there yet, but I can see my finances going in that direction too. :smile: