Good Morning Mr. Clear!
My name is Dan and I’m the oldest of twelve children. I grew up in a family that travelled constantly throughout southeast Asia. We lived a life of never ending change and extremes, so much so that I decided to leave home at 14. After four years of planning, I finally left home in 1986 at age 18, moving from the Philippines by myself to the United States with no help, just the determination to chart my own path. I believed that I could create any life I dreamed of, but only if I made the right decisions.
I became obsessed with decisions and to keep myself balanced I created a decision-scoring system from 1-10 to help improve my decisions. I came up with a way to rate my decisions, mainly because I didn’t trust my decisions as I had no real life experiences or much education.
Before leaving the Philippines in 1987, I found an opportunity in advertising to make $30,000 in a few months and used the money to fly myself to the United States. The first challenge after arriving in the United States was with locating my grandparents as I had no contact info for them. In an era well before Google, I knew I would have to make some good decisions to find them. Amazingly, I was able to find my grandparents in less than two weeks, moving at their invitation to North Carolina to live with them in their modest house in the hills of Burnsville NC. I was enjoying living with my grandparents when I faced a problem where I felt there were no good options. My decision-scoring-system didn’t help and it felt like there were no good decisions, only less bad ones.
For the first time since leaving home, I felt I would be forced to do something I didn’t want too, that I wasn’t in control. I had made some tough decisions, especially the decision to leave home at 18 in a foreign country with no money and without the consent of my parents. But this felt different because the previous challenges in my life where my choice, my decision. Now my life was going to change and I didn’t want it too.
I made what I felt was the least-bad-decision and drove 32 hours without sleep from Burnsville, NC headed to Los Angeles CA. I ran out of gas and money in Indio, California. I had burned through the $30k and now only owned a bag of clothes and a 2-seater Mazda that was so small I had to sleep sitting upright in the passenger seat. Where had my decision-making gone wrong? I was now the guy standing outside the gas station asking people for money to buy gas. I was 20 years old and flat broke, in a new town with no friends and no plan. Ironically, I found survival made decisions easy.
I’m happy to say that great decisions not only overcame a bad circumstance, I was able to quickly go from survival-mode to opportunity-mode. I have since used this mental “decision meter” to help not just with big decisions but all the little decisions we rarely question but on balance can have enormous impact. The good decisions I made turned into good habits and the good habits ended up producing great outcomes.
I first listened to Atomic Habits on Audible earlier this year and was so hooked I listened to the book three times in a row. I had developed habits like most people but didn’t really understand why and your book did the best job of breaking down how habits are formed. I was drawn to the title of your book as I started writing a book on decisions after opening a racing business in Los Angeles, CA. To support my new business until it was profitable, I waited tables at a seafood restaurant in Malibu CA. I decided to title my book Atomic Decisions after serving some Japanese tourist at the restaurant and talking about a brand of wasabi called Atomic. We went from taking about wasabi to the power of atomic energy and I knew immediately what I would call the book.
Still, even once I had a title and vision for the project and started writing, I eventually stopped not due to a lack of time, but because I didn’t really believe anyone would want to read what I had to say. Who was I? What had I done that was special? I was still struggling like most other people to get ahead and now I’m going to give people advice on making better decisions? In my mind, you needed to be successful to write a self-help book. You needed proof that your advice would work. While I had come a long way from leaving home at 18, I didn’t feel like I had the credentials to write a book.
Listening to your book Atomic Habits has changed my thought process and inspired me to finish what I started. I’ve learned from you, success should be measured by the ability to reach your potential, not by measuring your results with others. I would love the opportunity to share this book idea with you as I feel it could compliment your mission. If it turns out you like the idea, I would want to help in any capacity and look forward to the opportunity!
Dan Dietrich
(818) 207-3604