the zurkie show - stop holding your future hostage

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

you don't have to know your life path, A to Z. all that matters is that you're actively putting yourself in a place to learn and be a better person. Focus on you, focus on learning things in your life right now. there's a good chance your future self will thank youhttps://linktr.ee/thezurkieshow

One of the top five worst experiences as a teenager is the feeling of your parents staring you down during dinner and asking you. So, what do you want to do with your life? What kind of question is that, mom? Really? What do I want to do with my life? What do you want to do with your life, huh? How about that? You ever thought about that?

Huh? My parents would troll me all the time. They would always be like, oh, what do you want to do? You want to make a video? But I don't know At one point I wanted to be a pilot, real talk. I wanted to fly planes. But after I learned that that was like

a million dollars to get a license, not really, but it's expensive. I was like, okay, maybe I don't want to do that. Maybe that's not where my passion lies. But if you're like between the ages of 16-21, how do you know what you want to do? How do you know? And it's crazy that we still, have this kind of mentality of like, well, young people need to figure it out. They got to know right away.

When in reality, like, you spend your entire life figuring out things that you like and you don't. So that's cool in essence. All right, Zerk. Nice yap. What is, what can I actually do with my life if I don't know what I want to do? Like, if I feel lost, if I feel like I haven't picked up the pieces. Well, okay, I have some experience in this because I think that I intuitively have always been very reflective as to figuring out like what I genuinely like to do and what I didn't like to do. And oftentimes the things that I thought I liked were really the things that I thought other people liked to see me doing. The truth in all of this is kind of underwhelming. Are you ready to hear it? Okay.

You have to let it find you. Oh! Bras! What do you mean? This is so vague. This is terrible advice. What do you mean? mean? Okay, I will try to explain it in the best way that I can because it doesn't mean, like,

letting your passions find you does not mean chilling on the couch and watching Squid Game. It's not what that means. It doesn't mean tapping into a niche Reddit rabbit hole that isn't going to improve your life by any means. I mean, you should do those things. Those are great leisure activities. You know, go watch the Anthony Bourdain documentary. I'm watching that right now. is so good, so good, called Roadrunner. It's phenomenal. I recommend it. But how do you let something find you?

Like, how do you let a passion, let a business idea kind of, you know, tickle your brain? The baseline is, if you are between the ages of like 16 to 21, honestly, any age still, this applies to anybody, but in my opinion, I think this is so crucial for when you're really young. I think you really need to prioritize experience. An experience does not always mean paid experience. It means coming up with an idea yourself and executing that idea in a very, very rudimentary, really, really sometimes poor way. Because the more that you execute, the more you're going to find the things that you like about

executing something, doing something, and the things that you don't like about. that about doing something. For example for me like an idea that I had was oh I wanted to make a money selling shoes so I tapped into sneaker reselling I was hella into sneaker reselling I love that I went to all the sneaker cons in Chicago I was all over with that stuff but I realized very quickly I didn't love the game of it I didn't love the fact that people were buying bots and they were setting up you know proxies to go and buy these shoes and they had five people that knew a manager at Foot Locker that was giving them shoes. Like, I was like, bra, there's two.

I stopped sneakers because there were too many sweats, you know? Same reason people have stopped risen, too many sweats, you know? So, okay. How did I let it find me? How did I do that? Well, the good thing about sneaker reselling is I learned very quickly. Okay, I really like the process of making a deal, negotiating with somebody.

I got the Nike Off White Air Force once, rest in peace, Virgil, and I'm trying to sell them for a couple bands, and someone slides up in the DMs with an offer, and I'm like, no! You want a lowball me, $900 bucks? Are you crazy? Hell no.

But that taught me, okay, I like negotiation. I like business in a certain aspect. Maybe I'm not too crazy about finance in general. I think it's important to have financial literacy. Yes. Ben, yes. But for me, it's not as important to be like in the financial weeds. I just like making a deal.

I like shaking the hand. I like being like, okay, I got something that you need. Let's make a deal ski. So I knew that. I picked that up from that. Okay, cool. Later down the line, I was like, I really love cameras. I really love filming stuff.

And I love editing. This is something that I guess I just kind of fell into because I wanted to learn how to make my own Minecraft let's plays because I loved Minecraft. So I went with it. And I started doing that. And I started doing like freelance work when I was in high school. I made some really bad videos. But I got paid.

Hey, you know, respect. It went to a couple, you know, McDonald's meals and it helped me buy a camera. So I can't complain about that. But I did all of these things because I was just trying to figure things out. I was just trying to have some kind of experience. And to me, I knew that that wasn't the thing I wanted to do. forever. I mean, I was entertaining it, but in reality, I was like, ah, this doesn't feel, this feels temporary for me right now. And it was about the experimentation and being open to

potentially something of, you know, within those hobbies, within those pursuits, leading me to the thing that I really, really love. And so I was letting it find me. I was letting it find me. And I wasn't confining myself. I wasn't telling myself, I am this. And I'm only doing this. But there was a period of time in which I pigeonholed myself into one thing. And that was when I first started creating content. It made, you know, videos. I was really, really into journaling. That was like my big obsession and I made journaling videos talking about how people could consistently write and what, you know, you could learn through journaling, all of that. But after a while, I just, I burned out of it.

because yes, I enjoyed the process, but I felt so prisoned to this kind of video content and this kind of storytelling. And I was like eagerly waiting for something to kind of break me out of that. And at the end of the day, I had to let it kind of find me. I really did. And I also had to put in the effort and put in the reps in that thing to realize, okay, no, I don't like this. I really, really don't like this. maybe there are some of you right now who are in a certain major in college

maybe you have a certain dream going out of high school going into college of what you want to do and what your life is going to look like and you do have some anxiety because you're not sure if that thing is going to be the thing that people talk about everyone talks about you have to do this thing for the rest of your life so make sure that you make the right decision

and you don't mess up you will do so many different things in your life. You will. You will. Because this world changes on a dime. It changes every single day. Maybe the job that you went for in college in a couple of years won't exist. We're seeing that in real time. There are literally jobs that people used to do. Now they don't do them anymore. Why? Because AI. Because ChatGPT generated it. So no more. And that will probably continue to happen. There will be more of this coming down the line. So what it comes down to is if you want to find something that you genuinely love and you're passionate about, find skills, find things you're good

at. Focus on the things you are good at naturally and also you are willing to put time into. Those skills will build those opportunities. Maybe your degree says one thing, but your skills tell the story. Those are the actionable things that somebody's going to be able to look at and be like, okay, this is valuable. I find this very valuable in this person. I would like them to work for me for a couple thousand dollars a month. And then you will be able to go on a couple of dates to Chili's, and it will be awesome. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play.

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Because you will get a triple dipper in two drinks, and it will be $60, and you will be happy. You have to let it find you. Now, this also applies. for relationships. You know, I've been talking about relationships a lot. Let's just talk about the friendships because I think that there is so much anxiety

around having friends in your adult life. Your friends in your adult life will not be your hometown friends. They will not. In principle, they will not. You grew up with your hometown friends. That's like 21 years of experience with these people rivaling that of a

couple years with somebody completely new. But if you let the right people find you, if you put yourself in the positions where you can let these kind of people find you, your relationships will be stronger than your hometown friends. Maybe not all of them, but some of them, you will have the opportunity to have some really, really interesting and beautiful friendships. But you have to be open to that. You have to be open to that. There are a lot of people that go through the emotions when it comes to adult life. And I am one of those people. Sometimes it is genuinely really hard for me to, you know, make time for other people and make time for potentially a new friend because I'm just, I say I'm locked in. I'm not. My time management sucks as an adult. And I'm

trying to fix that every single day. Promise you. And, you know, it's something that you got to get, you got to get better at with time and with experience and with intention. But whenever I've let it find me whenever I've let these kind of things find me while I was on my own journey while I was focused on my own interest and my own passions I've just always found the most success I've always found the best friends this way I remember when I got to Georgia I was trying to like dude I was I was doing everything to fit in I was doing everything I was I was partying I was trying to just like you know so be a social chameleon that was really what i was trying to do and it wasn't until i i actually went and visited my my grandfather he was passing away at the time and and it was like the last time

i was going to see him that i remember i had this like very sobering thought where i was just like what am i what am i doing trying to intermingle with people that do not care they don't care about me they could care less about me like why would i do that and why why do i not just invest time into the things that I want to do and the people I want to be around because if if I don't do that I'm going to be on this deathbed one day regretting all of that I'm going to I'm just going to be living a shell of a life that on the outside looks really really beautiful but on the inside it's it's suffering it's a whole lot of suffering and there's a lot of suffering in life period you will suffer you know we suffer all the time it's just it's it's the truth right it's just

We have varying degrees of suffering, but we all suffer. So why don't you entertain the best? Why don't you entertain the things that truly are the best for you? Because I mean, we're all going to go through it. So you might as well enjoy the ride, you know? You might as well enjoy what's going to happen. And you might as well enjoy the hard times by having really good things to look forward to. And maybe that's, you know, woo-hoo.

Whoa, really? But I genuinely believe in that. I genuinely believe that if you focus in on the things that are just joyful for you, you build community around that. You build friendships and lasting relationships around that. And yes, you will have people come into your life that are too good to be true. You will have people come in that, you know, it seems like a perfect match. through experience you will learn no they were not there was a bunch of smoke and mirrors and

you know you will have opportunities that you'll hear about and that people will be like i want to put you on this i want to get you this job like i promise bro and it will fall through and you will learn to know when these kind of opportunities are too good to be true but you you won't do any of that if you're chasing after something that just isn't you this episode is brought to you by tell us online security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what?

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Because there isn't a mold for this. You know? I wish it was as simple as, oh, just pull up to a park every day and hold a paper sign and talk into a camera. But it's not. It's not. What I do might not work for you. What you do probably won't work for me. But.

But you can learn. And you can apply and you can try. And you never know. There have been so many things that I've been closed off to in the past where I was like, meditation, yeah, a whole lot of junk. That's what that is. But when I started tapping into meditation, I was like, why is this literally changing my life? Why is this making a lot of my anxiety and anxiousness just like kind of, you know,

get accepted into my body? Why do I feel so much better through this? it's because I gave it a shot. I let it find me. I was like, okay. Yeah, I guess. I got nothing to lose. I'm already down bad, you know, living at my parents' spot,

and I want to leave and I want to escape. Like, yeah, let me do some meditation. Let me see what's going to happen. I mean, I have nothing to lose. And if you kind of look at trying new things in this way, I think it really does just open you up to so many incredible experiences. There's a chapter actually in this book that I love. It's called The Defining Decade by Meg J.

And it's a book about your 20s. And I absolutely love a lot of the things that Dr. Meg J says in this book. One of them is talking about this whole like phomoism of your 20s, of your early 20s, of just like in general, like your young adult life. There is so much pressure to figure it out, to know what you're supposed to do, that it kind of paralyzes you into doing nothing. and that is the worst thing you can do. Doing nothing and not even just attempting to go out there

and make a swing at something, it just, it doesn't help you. Because oftentimes, like a lot of us will be like, well, I'm not perfect. I'm not in a position to change things in my life. So I'm just going to like go home,

eat a bowl of Japanese curry and play some Overwatch. And that is awesome. I love that you're doing that. That's super cool. But if you don't put yourself out of that comfort zone, and you don't realize that you will never be ready. You will not. I was never ready for most of the things that I achieved in my life so far,

which, you know, cool, but we keep going. There's so much more in this life. You will never be ready. You are never fully ready for the exam. You think you're ready. You've studied. That's great. Why?

Because I studied. But like, you will never be fully ready as to, oh yeah, yeah, this is the moment where I'm going to do this. No, you won't. You'll always have reservations and you'll always be kind of stressed about it. You'll always have second thoughts. Yes. And at that point, you just have to go, in my opinion, with your intuition and your feeling of,

is this right? You know what? Yes, I will never be ready for starting my own business, of course. Is this right that I'm going to invest in this cleaning supplies and I'm going to start cleaning for a couple hundred bucks? yes, it feels right. Let's do it. Let's just do it. Worst case, I break even. All right, that's fine. You know, I don't know if this person is into me. They keep looking at me. Every time we have class together, you know, they hit me up from time to time. I don't know. Maybe I got to play it cool. Or I just got to full send it. Just see what's going to happen. Because worst case, if it doesn't work out,

all right, it doesn't work out. That's cool. It's fine. But you have to, you have to be a lot. You have to let these kind of things find you. And they will find you only if you do things. That's the truth. Only if you do things. Only if you have experiences will the Easter eggs reveal themselves of, oh, wait a minute. I love taking care of people. I love working in the restaurant industry. I love it when somebody, you know, smiles at me because I made their day. That's great. I want to do this. I want to do more of this. I love being able to problem solve.

Maybe I want to be a consultant one day. Man, I really, really have this strength in talking to people. Maybe I want to work in sales. Maybe I want to work as, I don't know, a bank clerk. Sure. Or maybe I want to get a new hairline because the wind keeps blowing mine. And I got to go to Turkey and tap it. No, I'm totally.

I'm trolling, man. By the way, you know what? You, I don't know if any of you have dealt with hair loss as you go through your young adult life. Dang. You never think that you will be a bald person. And it's almost like bald people don't exist until you start losing hair. And you're like, damn, that's going to be me.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, hell no. But you do have to let things find you. And they will not be in plain sight. And it won't happen if you're delaying yourself from just, trying something and just going out there. I think that in my opinion, a lot of my best experiences have come from jobs. They've come from just asking people, hey, can I work with you on something? And honestly, working for free. I've had so many jobs that were really just free experiences.

But, you know, I was able to sleep on somebody's couch. I was able to get fed and I was like, all right, you know, I'm doing all right. But don't succumb to this stress of you need to have everything figured out. Because I think that every time I've heard somebody who's older talk about their life and like their trajectory and their journey, all of them have been like, I thought I was going to be doing something completely different. I mean, I thought I was going to be doing something completely different if I'm completely real with you than what I do now. A hundred percent. But the truth is, I love this even more. It's better than I could have ever imagined. That's a weird thought, but it's true. It's better than I could have ever imagined.

So these are the things that, you know, you deal with. It's completely normal. It's completely real to deal with all of these things and feel like, man, I don't know. I feel like such a, you know, I feel like such a failure that all my friends know what they're doing. But the truth is nobody knows what they're doing. Nobody knows what they're doing. There are very few people who genuinely have it together A to Z and they know exactly how their career is going to go. Everyone that I knew who had a set in stone plan.

They all changed, all. Because you are not going to be the same person at 18 as you are going to be at 23, 24, 25. You won't. So just open yourself up to that and know, okay, I might be feeling kind of pretentious about certain things. I might feel like I know my calling and yada, yada, yada. But let it find you. Let yourself blow in the wind a little bit. Oh, my God.

Let yourself blow in the wind a little bit, you know. Let yourself get smacked in the face. you need to you need to don't deprive yourself of just making mistakes and trying to be perfect because you won't be perfect and there is so much beauty and making mistakes that eventually get you to where you want to be that is that is that is what i can tell you from someone who has had that experience and who has made mistakes and who has you know had his fair share but i'm still a young buck i still got a lot ahead of me so i'm still learning every single day And who knows?

As a kid, I wanted to be a pilot. Maybe there's still time, eh? I love planes, man. This is a beautiful park in Austin where you can watch the planes like take off and land, and I'm very grateful for it. Wow. But the moral of the story is,

don't stress too much about how things will play out. Don't stress too much about needing a certain position. find your skill set, find your strengths and your weaknesses, and see what you can do with that Zerky Show, what you can do with your strengths, with your weaknesses, what are you good at, what are you bad at, and be honest with yourself. Because the sooner that you're honest with yourself, the freer your life is going to be. I promise you, the more you get to learn yourself and the more you let it find you, the better things will be

Zirky Show! What a beautiful day in the wind. Did you know that the Zerky Show is everywhere you go? That is right. You can watch it, you can scroll it, you can stream it, we are everywhere for you every single day. Tap in! I'm feeling like DJ Khalid because we got a major bag alert. Quavo! If you want to send me a letter for a chance to be featured on the first episode of Mail Time with Zirky. This is my P.O. Box. This is how you address it.

I hope to see a letter from you. Completely optional, obviously. But if you want to have a chance to be featured, this is the way to do it. Tap it. Also, Valentine's Day is coming up. So if you need me to gas you up in front of your Valentine. Gassed up, shoddy. This is the way to do it. The Zirky Show on Cameo taking requests. Tap in if you want the best Valentine's Day message of all time. But just No, the Zerky Show is here to stay every single day, and that will not change. Do the things that bring you joy, and don't sweat the future so much. It's good to have a plan. It's good to have an idea.

But sometimes the best journey in life is the one where you don't even know what your next step is, but you can always connect the dots looking backwards, not forwards. So do that. Don't sweat it. You got this. I believe in you. Go out there and do it. Zirky Show, I am sending you plenty.

of love and peace.