Where Do I Go from Here?

By Nick Sorrenti

“Mom, what should I do with the rest of my life?”

“Dad, how did you learn how to save your money?”

“I feel like I'm going through the motions lately. I have no motivation to do anything.”

“I feel like I did everything right. I worked hard, graduated from school, and now I don't know what to do. Where Do I Go From Here?

Does any of that sound familiar? If so, let me ask you a simple question:

If someone came to you and simply said, “follow these directions and you will double the amount of money in your bank account” would you do it?

Well, I am that someone, and I AM NOT saying I will double the amount of money in your bank account. However, what I am saying I can do for you is to teach you life skills that we all wished we learned in the classroom - Skills such as: 1. Creating a weekly plan, and how to execute them with five easy steps. 2. How to properly save money, and set yourself up for the long haul. 3. How to balance being a student-athlete or working a fifty-hour work week while still making time for yourself.

These are all questions that have never been answered for us - so why is that we have to go through these tough times for ourselves in order to learn these valuable lessons? The answer is, we don't!

Throughout this book I will be teaching you how to create your own system - a system where you control the outcome and more importantly, a system that allows you to put yourself in the right direction in order to accomplish the goals you have always dreamed of. Join me on this journey, and let’s change your life!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796086461

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Nick Sorrenti.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2020902144

ISBN:           Hardcover                   978-1-7960-8631-7

                     Softcover                     978-1-7960-8632-4

                     eBook                          978-1-7960-8646-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/09/2020

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction

Chapter 1   Finding Your Why

Chapter 2   Life Goes On

Chapter 3   Self-Discovery & Forgiveness

Chapter 4   Discipline

Chapter 5   Financial Planning

Chapter 6   Mental & Physical Health

Chapter 7   Accepting & Fighting Love

Chapter 8   Comfort Zone

Chapter 9   Relationships & the Power of Networking

Chapter 10 Opportunity

Chapter 11 Accountability

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to all of those who have helped educate, and teach me lessons through life experiences. Without you, this book, and my dreams would not have become a reality.

To my players, and to all individuals on the younger side of the spectrum, understand that this book was created for you. It is a book filled with lessons; lessons that you don’t necessarily have to learn the hard way. Listen to those who are older and wiser. Ninety-Nine percent of the time, older and wiser people will not lead you in the wrong direction.

To all, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to complete this book. I hope that it was read with respect, humility, and an internal desire for a better life.

Sincerely,

Nicholas S. Sorrenti

Introduction

Getting to know the Author

First and foremost, you may be wondering why I chose to name this book Where Do I Go From Here? Over the years, from high school through college and now, into the real world, I have heard people say, ‘School does not prepare you for the real world’. After graduating and taking on something we adults call bills, I started to believe what everyone was saying. I mean, we were always told ‘Go to school, study hard, get your degree and you will score a great job’. Am I right?

This is something I have heard countless times and I honestly believed it. This, however, was until I graduated from college and the bills started to kick in. With that, my stomach started to growl and my bank account was not where I wanted it to be. After going through many trials and tribulations following college, I started to realize a few things about school and the real world…They ARE NOT RELATED!

That last statement might confuse you. What I mean by this is that schools and education systems were designed to prepare you for secondary education, jobs, a career and/or potential trades. The education system WAS NOT designed to prepare you for bills or the challenges that come with adulthood. In all honesty, that sounds more like a parent or sibling job!

With that, is it really fair to blame the education system for something that was never truly its intention or goal? What it did do was, educate you on how to learn, how to retain information, and how to incorporate that information into a tested format.

Even though we may not agree that this benefits all of us, myself included, the education system, ‘most of the time’ executes its game plan, which is to prepare you for higher education and to put you in a position to be able to follow directions and get the job done in a career setting.

Now, don’t get it misunderstood; throughout this book I WILL NOT be talking about how great the education system is, even though it can definitely be beneficial for a large number of people. But, what I will be discussing are topics that I believe all people, especially millennials should have a better understanding of, and the reasoning for this is so that we as individuals can put ourselves in a position to fulfill three objectives.

1) Live the life that you want to live.

2) Understanding that your purpose here on earth is not just to live day-by-day and pay bills, but more so, to thrive and exceed our own expectations of ourselves

3) Finally, the importance of understanding the reasoning behind your actions and how consistent actions over time can and will impact your life in ways you cannot imagine.

To give you my perspective on the pros and cons of the education system, I want you to think about what it has done for all students since pre-k. From the ages of five, all the way potentially to our mid to late twenties, the education system has thrown an astronomical amount of information at us. The information that we are learning or have currently learned has been structurally organized so that each student is learning particular subjects at the time that the ‘system’ feels is appropriate for each student. This is the sole purpose behind grade levels.

If you did not realize, the key word throughout the last few sentences was ‘system’. The reason why I want to emphasize this word is due to the impact that the education system has on us throughout the first two decades of our lives, without us consciously taking notice of its long-term, positive and negative effects.

To be clear, I am not here to put down the education system by any means; but what I am here to do is to give you my personal opinion and perspective on how I view their system. The pros of the education system is that by rule, if an individual passes first grade, they will then level up to second grade and so on; eventually graduating high school and then ‘hopefully’, college. As you can see, the education system is wonderful. However, it is only wonderful if it works. For instance, say you graduate from college and you find a fantastic job and you’re able to obtain all of the happiness and materialistic items that you’ve always dreamed of. But on the contrary, what if you don’t? I have come to the conclusion that many people do not think about this until it is too late.

Say you don’t want to go to college after high school, where do you go from there? Say you graduate from college and don’t get a great job, where do you go from there? Say you do graduate from college and find a great job but six months later you get fired and cannot find another job, where do you go from there?

What I am trying to get to here is that formal education I believe is a necessity and can be extremely beneficial for all of those who participate. However, what the education system does not prepare you for is how to create your own system, outside of theirs! What I mean by this is that we have been following one system our entire lives, and if that system does not work, where do you go from there? I’ll tell you the scenarios that I see usually happen. An individual usually ends up finding a low-income job, hating what he or she is doing, or even worse, they end up homeless and not being able to provide for themselves.

A total of 55,830 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2018. This number represents 17 out of every 10,000 people in the United States. HUD’s Annual.¹

With the statement above, I am not saying that this is the education systems fault, but what I am trying to show you is that homelessness is a potential reality for anyone. I am almost positive that those 55,830 people that went to school did not expect to be homeless. With that being said, all I would like for people to do is to begin thinking about how we are going to utilize what we did learn from the education system, if school does not work in our favor.

The question you are going to have to ask yourself is: even if education is not for me, how can I incorporate what I have learned from their ‘system’ and implement it into creating my own system. A system where you can create your own rules, with the end goal that you would like, and ultimately, a system that you believe is the best fit for you! Throughout this book I am going to be explaining how all of this is possible: a life where you control the outcome and do not have to rely on others for your future success.

Before going into detail about my life and what I have personally been through to get me where I am today, I want you to ask yourself one more question. If you can start with one consistent action, right here and now, that can potentially impact the rest of your life, would you?

With this challenge, we are going to see if you are truly willing to make the sacrifices you need to in life in order to accomplish the goals that you set out for yourself;