So I pulled some strings… Tapped into my network… Hollered at some of my people and was able to get in touch with 4 historically significant people to give some graduation advice. Watch the video to see what I mean.

Ok ok ok, so maybe I played all of the parts in the video. I know right? I am a master of disguises. And accents.

Anyway…

You’re graduating. Congratulations! Do realize what that means? It means from here, right now, you must decide. Nobody else can do it for you. What will you have? Where will you go? What will you do? Who will you be?

I have seen it happen too many times. Students who are getting ready to graduate. They have all of these amazing ideas about what they will do, how they will conquer the world and do something that has never been done before but then something happens. They spend their first summer doing the same things they’ve done every summer before that. That slowly becomes the fall, where they do the same ting they’ve done every other fall. Eventually, they forget about the things they used to want to have and the places they used to want to go.

You are standing at the beginning of an incredible adventure where you get decide every part. Are you going to stand around and do the same things you’ve always done? or are you going to carve your own path? Find your own way? and Make Your Own Lunch?

Nobody else can decide this for you.

I hope that you take some time and plan what your future will look like. Decide that it’s realistic for you to have and then decide to get it, no exceptions.

You have spent the past few years to make it here, for this moment where you get to decide, for yourself, what you will do with your life.

Decide. Decide to Make Your Own Lunch.

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Make Your Own Lunch TV: Episode 004 from Ryan Porter on Vimeo.

There are a ton of people out there who completely live for the weekend. They spend the first half of their week talking about last weekend and the rest of the week talking about next weekend… and that’s because most people don’t love what they’re doing.

They are working in jobs that they aren’t passionate about or are studying programs at school that they have no interest in whatsoever.

One of the things that every person I have interviewed has in common is that they all love what they do. It’s hard work, a lot of hard work but they don’t mind working their butts off because it’s doing stuff that they love.

Find what you love and then find a way to do THAT.

I am not trying to make it sound easy. It’s not. It takes hard work, heart break, setbacks, failure and more hard work but the payoff is better than you can imagine.

This week I hung out with one of Canada’s fastest rising photographers Jaime Hogge. He is completely passionate about his work and shared some insight into how he became a photographer and what he thinks about doing something you love.

“That’s how you know when you are really doing something you should be doing… when you want to do it all of the time.” – Jaime Hogge

For more on Jaime, visit www.jaimehogge.com

Join the Make Your Own Lunch Facebook fan page here and follow me on Twitter here.

Ok ok, so I haven’t posted in a while. My bad!

I have been working on some awesome things for YOU! So don’t get too crazy.

Here’s what I want to get off of my chest:

Everybody deserves to do exactly what they want to do for work.

Imagine this: A job where you get to travel to some of the most amazing places on Earth. On your days off you can go scuba diving or snowboarding. You can volunteer in local communities or learn how to speak another language. You could go whale watching or paragliding. Basically, you get paid to be on vacation.

Sound too good to be true?

It’s not.

It’s time I introduce you to a little job known as a Club Med Gracious Employee. (Kind of a corny name, I know).

In case you don’t know, Club Med is a company that has vacation resorts all over the world. Usually in exotic locations like Brazil, the Caribbean, French Polynesia and Australia.

Club Med hires all kinds of people for the resorts. They hire DJ’s, scuba instructors, snowboard instructors, lifeguards, and archery instructors.

Honestly? Archery instructors?

Yup. Archery instructors.

They hire butchers, bakers, nurses, plumbers, excursion guides and many more.

Of course there’s a lot of work involved for these jobs and things can be tough working, living and spending all of your free time on the same resort but it can also be a lot of fun.

One of my closest friends worked for a Club Med in the Northern part of Japan. She worked as an organizer of Children Events. She got paid to organize tea parties and costume-themed days. She finger painted and played dress-up… Did I mention she was getting PAID for this stuff?

On her days off, she took snowboarding lessons and made friends from around the world.

How cool is that?

This post isn’t meant to be a giant advertisement for Club Med. It’s meant to open your eyes to the possibilities that are out there.

There is NO REASON why any of us should ever work jobs that we hate. There’s always a way to do what we love and a way to get paid doing it.

It takes hard work, a lot of focus, a lot of drive and a ton of dedication but it’s so worth it.

Of course there will be parts you don’t love. I mean, I love the work I do but sometimes the late-night flights and different time zones, rental cars and haunted hotels can suck (see pic). But getting on stage and speaking in front of thousands of students, reading their emails and getting to hear their stories makes everything worth it.

I am 100% in love with the work I do and everybody else should feel the same way about their work, their school and their life.

So if Archery is what you love, do THAT. Shoot those arrows straighter than anyone else. And teach others how to do the same and get paid doing it.

Bullseye.

For more info about working from Club Med, check this out

4. Get Qualified

A gap year isn’t just a year to waste away in hostels. It’s a year for you to get some experience and qualifications.

Get your TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate or your Dive Master scuba diving License. Learn some new skills while volunteering on a farm in Australia or gain work experience while working for a winery in France. Learn how to cook at a restaurant in India or guide English tours through the pyramids in Egypt. I have personally met somebody who has done each of the things I have mentioned.  All of them are always employed and happy because they’re doing what they are passionate about.

These types of qualifications and experience(s) will definitely make you stand out in any pile of resumes or school applications.

Use your gap year to build your resume, gain qualifications and increase your experience.

5. Expand Your Comfort Zone

At home, in your daily routine, you are pretty comfortable. The older you get, the less likely it is that you will break out of that zone or expand the things you are comfortable with.

That’s why your parents won’t go to your favorite Japanese restaurant or why your uncle thinks deodorant will give him armpit cancer and refuses to wear it.

A gap year is an awesome time to stretch your comfort zone to the limit.

Meeting new people, navigating foreign places, communicating in foreign languages, eating strange foods and sleeping in new locations will totally force you to expand the things you are comfortable with.

Why would you want to do that? You want to do that so you can experience all of the great things out there.

If I didn’t live in Japan, I would probably have missed out on all of the amazing sushi places I have eaten at. I wouldn’t have the Japanese friends that I have or be able to speak Japanese. If I never took a year off to push my comfort zone, I probably never would have traveled to the other places that I have been to or experienced the things that I have experienced. If I never went to Japan, I doubt that I would feel confident getting up on stage speaking to thousands of students at a time.

Pushing your comfort zone makes you a stronger, more confident, capable person.

6. Learn About Yourself

Sometimes we are fed the same thing everyday that we actually start to believe it and even worse, we think it’s the only thing that exists.

Imagine living a life where everyday from the day you were able to eat solid food, you ate a bagel for breakfast. Even if you go to a restaurant for breakfast, the only thing available on the breakfast menu was a bagel. I am sure that you would think that’s all that exists and you would probably even like it.

But imagine one day after years of eating bagels everyday, you stepped into a restaurant with a different breakfast menu. You open the menu and there are eggs, sausage, hash browns, and pancakes. French toast, crepes, Belgian waffles, donuts, croissants and a ton of other delicious breakfast foods. You would go crazy!

I bet that after you tried a few of the other breakfast foods you would find that you don’t even like bagels.

You have probably heard the same things about yourself for your entire life. You’re so clumsy, you’re so stupid or you love working with people, you are so good at math, etc. You’ve probably heard these things so much that you believe them.

By taking a year to yourself, you are opening a whole new menu, a menu of YOU. You will learn about the things you really like. You will discover what you are really passionate about. You will learn what you are really good at and what you really want to do with your life. You’ll finally get the chance to learn about the most important person in your life, YOU!

7. Decide on a Direction

The best part of your year off is that you will come home with a plan.

You will get to take what you learned from your experiences, your new friends, your qualifications, your new comfort zone and your new knowledge of yourself, to decide what you want to do.

You can use this new information to decide what school to go to, what to study, where to live, what kind of work to do and who to hang out with.

A gap year isn’t to be wasted. You need to treat it like education. You are heading out to learn a whole bunch of stuff that no school on earth could possibly teach you.

Use the things you learn to push yourself ahead. Use it to show other people what’s possible when you leave the comfort of their own home and most importantly use it to create the story of your life.

Taking a year off was the best decision I have ever made. Because I took that year off, I met some of my best friends. I became inspired to see this amazing planet we live on and most importantly, I’ve been able to use the experiences I had to inspire tens of thousands of young people to Make Their Own Lunch.

If you are considering a gap year, here are some good places to start:

Why take a gap year?

Gapyear.com

Work for your gap year

Volunteer on your gap year

Gap Year Blogs

Gap Year Blog

Ben’s Travel Adventures

Preparing for a gap year

My gap year (the name of the blog, not actually MY gap year)