Three events changed my life.
Three.
Not 1, 2 or 100.
Just 3.
Well… OK, there is also marriage, my son birth, etc.
But let’s say that three events shaped my thinking, my mindset and, with that, my life.
I remember them vividly, perfectly. They are engraved in my brain.
Thinking of them sends an intense shiver down my spine. Goosebumps. Then a half-smile.
The first one was when I was about 6-7 years old. I don’t remember my exact age, but it must have been around there, 6-7 years old.
It was in the square, in “la plaza” of my town.
I was playing soccer with my friends and my football.
It wasn’t an older kid bullying me. It was a group of older kids.
Blond. Blue eyes. Fat, very fat. Obese, I’d say. The new kid in town and on top of that, a nerd and a know-it-all.
What more could you ask for?
I had it all.
The perfect target.
They came straight for me.
Slaps, shoves, more shoves. A couple of well-applied slaps, or “tortas bien dadas”, as I’d say in Spanish. Then, a couple more. And more.
They took my ball and played football themselves in the middle of the square.
Of course, there were adults around. But those were different times. Kids fighting was normal. It was expected. Even older and bullying kids to younger ones.
And it was a small town. Why intervene and get into trouble?
I felt humiliated. Crying with rage and pain. With a lump in my throat of indignation that wouldn’t let me speak.
I ran home.
To hide. To I don’t know what. But I ran away from there.
But halfway home, I stopped. Suddenly.
I stopped and thought.
A few seconds earlier, my head seemed like it was going to explode from rage and suddenly… calmness.
I started counting seconds and then a few minutes, mentally, in my head. I was calculating the time it would take to get home and back.
I took a deep breath and ran back to the square.
I came out of the corner, stood in the middle of the “plaza”. I pointed at them and started shouting, looking at the street I had just come out like lightning.
“Dad, dad, hurry, hurry. These are the ones. Run, run, they’re leaving.”
I still remember their eyes. Their expression of fear and bewilderment. They didn’t expect the father of the kid they had just beaten up to appear there and give them a piece of his mind.
They fled in terror, running as if there were no tomorrow.
I grabbed my ball and ran home satisfied while the bullies looked to see if my father was coming around the corner.
I wish I could say that bullying stopped from that moment on. That from that day on they would leave me alone. But no.
They were waiting for me at the school gate the next day. And as you can understand, they weren’t very happy about being tricked and humiliated in public in front of my friends and the adults who still didn’t lift a finger.
While they beat me up that morning, I can tell you I felt good. Screwed up but happy or “jodido pero contento”, as they say in Spanish. Knowing that no one would take away that won battle from me.
That day I learned about the power of thinking, intelligence, strategy, and calculated risk over brute force. I can tell you that nothing was the same after that. The bullying ended in a few years, and I can also tell you, satisfied, that the trick I played on them the day before was not the last one. I also learned that in this life, you have to pull your own chestnuts out of the fire. And that I could, and I had to.
The second moment that changed my life is much less epic.
Just arrived in Montreal from Spain, expatriated by my company. I arrived with nothing but the clothes on my back. It was one of those “you have to leave now, right now” orders, as we say in Spanish.
I liked the adventure and the idea of seeing the world.
I started work at 8 and finished at 9 or 10 at night, non-stop.
I ate alone at the hotel every day.
And one night I was fed up with eating the same hotel menu for so many days.
I said to myself, today I’m going to a restaurant.
Back then in 2008, it wasn’t so easy to go to Google and search. So I asked at the hotel for one that could be open at that time.
They recommended an Indian one, and I went out.
On the way, it started to snow.
I didn’t have boots, just some sneakers… I had arrived with what I had, as I said.
I slipped once.
I slipped again.
And again.
I said to myself… Joder, I’m going back to the hotel.
I started walking back to the hotel.
And suddenly, again.
I stopped and thought.
It took a second.
I said to myself: “Are you really going back to the hotel? If your goal is to stay in Montreal for a few years and it snows here, how are you going to go back to the hotel at the first snowfall? Keep going and go to the restaurant.”
And I arrived at the restaurant. I was the only customer. I had dinner and went back to the hotel. I slipped a few times. Some of them might still be affecting my body. Jodida espalda…
That day I learned the importance of not giving up, determination, and having a clear goal.
That’s how silly, how banal my second event was.
The third one, however, is more emotional. Much more.
It happened about 8 months before August 1, 2022.
It was the day I found out I was going to be the father of the most beautiful and funniest child in the world.
After hugging my wife, being overjoyed, and all you can imagine, it happened again.
I stopped and thought.
This time it was a little longer.
I thought about what kind of father I was going to be. What legacy I was going to leave to my son. What I was going to teach him. How I would like him to be. What I was going to do to not have to work 12 hours a day and be able to spend more time with him.
I was trembling. Distressed.
That day I discovered that my life was not sustainable, that I wanted to work for myself, to have more time for myself and my family.
I had been doing “sidepreneurship” for a long time, trying A, B, C, and D until I had managed to find what I was good at and what made me money. I had also been working hard, very hard as a project executive for billionaires, making others rich. In the end, I was doing an 8-10-7, not a 9-9-6 like in China. Now it was time to take control.
Because of that third moment, you are reading these lines.
Thanks to my “on the side” businesses, I had been building that freedom. Almost without realizing it. Now I want to keep building it with a new “on the side” business, this one, teaching what I have been doing all these years as a sidepreneur.
If I could do it. You can too.
Vicente Valencia
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