Build Strength From Struggle | My Story

hey what's going on guys so this is a different kind of video kind of personal so if you don't like that stuff then you might want to just move on to the next tutorial [Music] so back i think it was my 300 000 subscriber video i basically came clean to my audience and told everyone that i was a drug addict or am a drug addict in recovery and was into hard drugs into opiates for for years um from when i was about 17 to 25 years old i'm 40 now um and the reason that i wanted to tell people that in the first place well there's a few reasons one is because i like to be kind of an open book i like people to know me and where i come from and what i've experienced and then i also tell it to give inspiration and show people that you can be in one really really shitty point in your life and that doesn't mean that you're going to stay there you can get out of that and you can do things that you never thought you would you could do so that's the main reason and i was going through some stuff some keepsakes and i found this i'm gonna try to cover the number up but this was my my massachusetts ebt card so this was this is my food stamp card and i was probably about 22 in that picture and this is this is where i come from um you guys see all the nice stuff behind me i've done office tours and all that and it's pretty obvious that i do pretty well financially but it definitely wasn't always like that in fact when i met my wife we had lived we lived in a rooming house so eventually we got a one bedroom apartment but before that we lived in a place where we had one room and there was a bathroom one bathroom on the floor and we shared that bathroom with like four or five other dudes that lived on the floor at that time so um you know when she was pregnant with my daughter at that time so that's where we were at at one point and now we have a a beautiful five-bedroom house that we own uh and i don't say that in like a bragging way but just to show you the you know the stock difference in between then and now and and it's not because i'm special or have any special qualities or anything like that i'm not smarter than anyone else's i'm not a better programmer than anyone else you know i think that that really what what i can attribute the most to my success is is just consistency it's just brutal consistency keeping my eye on the ball for what i wanted and just just never taking it off you know and doing what i needed to to get there and i think that um just about anybody can do that you know and your goal might be different mine was to have my own business that made a lot of money i could keep my my family safe and secure um so that was my goal but you might want to work at a fang company or create a startup or create some kind of sas whatever it is that you want to do and i was looking through some other stuff as well i found this which i thought you guys could kind of get a kick out of which was my booking photo when i went to jail for a year and uh in 20 what was it 2002 and i also have my record here so this is a five page criminal record you can see some of the charges um possession of class a substance which is like heroin opiates class d class a breaking and entering in the daytime so it's all either drug charges or stealing to get drugs which you know obviously wasn't a good thing and i can remember the first time i went to jail i was in the courtroom and i was trying to do whatever i could to for the judge to give me a lesser sentence or get out of it or whatever and i had my lawyer which was just a public defender at the time he had told the judge or i had told him to tell the judge that i planned on going to the local community college here for computer science because i was always interested in tech even when i was younger getting into trouble i i still enjoyed technology you know um so that's something i did want to do but he told the judge that and the judge just looked at me right in the eye and just laughed and he said in a very sarcastic sarcastic voice he said that the computer industry is going to have to wait for mr travesty and basically said you know [Music] a year in jail or whatever it was that that he said um so i think that i think that that was the right decision at that time and and the other times as well you know i was just i i probably would have died and i was just a person you know stealing from people and all that and of course i regret that stuff but i don't regret the overall experience because i think that it helped bring me to where i am today so and the reason i say that is for you guys look at your struggles whether that's money so whether you're you know in poverty or whether it's mental health if you have bad anxiety adhd depression whatever any of that stuff relationship issues social anxiety something else that i've dealt with my whole life try to look at those things as as things that help you rather than hold you back i think that we live in a world where everyone wants to be some kind of victim and i just i don't think that that's a healthy way to be i think that you should take those things and you try to turn them around and use them as your strength you know if that makes sense and i know some people might even get offended by that but that's just the way that that i think and that's my advice to people and and try to use my situation where i was at point a and where i am now at point b and apply it to yourself because again there's no there's nothing special about me uh i i can just attribute it mostly to just brutal consistency you know whether it was when i started freelancing uh and trying to get clients or when i even when i started my youtube channel i was just consistent you know you don't want to just stop you want to keep your eye on the ball and just keep going and and you can imagine with the record that i just showed you trying to get a job with that especially like in the tech industry i couldn't even get hired at wendy's never mind at a at a tech job so i had to just do something else i had to go around the system and create my own business and start freelancing and that didn't that didn't start off very well either in fact they have a video talking about my first gig which was a disaster but again i stayed consistent and and just kept going after that and jobs were getting better and easier i was learning things along the way so you're going to go through rough times you're going to have a tough time getting started but don't let that just make you quit you know you just want to keep your eye on where you want to be and just work towards that goal and i know there's a lot of like cringy um self self help positive thinking kind of thing like this the book the secret or the movie the secret where you know you think if you think positive and things will just happen and that's not how it works but if you do think in a positive way that causes you to do positive actions that can then lead to where you where you want to be you know so you want to try to have some kind of knowing that you will get to where you want to be someday um and try not to fall victim to whatever your circumstance is and i and i know people have a tough my story isn't the toughest i know that i know there's people especially that don't live in the u.s that are in other countries going through situations believe me i know that it's bad i talk to people from all over the world and you just don't want it don't let it tear you down inside you know you still want to keep pushing and keep trying as much as you possibly can um so that's it guys i just i wanted to share more of my story because there's a lot of new people i haven't really talked about this in years and uh and i just want to let the new people know you know let you know where i'm coming from and to try to use my story as as some kind of inspiration and and relate it to your own in whatever issues you're going through i also want to give a shout out to underdog devs on twitter and i talked to rick who is the he created this group which basically they help um people that are incarcerated or have been through the system and help them get into coding which i think is a friggin great idea and i just wanted to give them a shout out that's underdog devs on twitter and they're not sponsoring me or anything like that it's just i thought it was a this is an appropriate place to mention them and uh you know anytime i can help anybody else that's in that kind of situation i want to so thanks for watching guys and i will see you next time

Channel: Traversy Media

Views: 209,975

Keywords: jail to javascript, motivation, programming, success, struggles to success, can anyone code, jail, prison, learn to code, traversy, brad traversy, traversy media, rags to riches, better yourself

Id: XW1aGkzyjQg

Length: 9min 19sec (559 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 08 2022