Molly Duff and Jonathan Francetic - *Sleuthing Spoilers*

Yes. She. Is. #MAFS pic.twitter.com/pc7FJ8QidN

— Kinetic Content (@KineticContent) January 10, 2018

My brother said “if you call her sexy one more time I’m going to throw up!” Hahaha fortunately for him the episode is over so he can get his stomach under him and prepare for next weeks #MarriedAtFirstSight

— Jonathan Francetic (@JonFrancetic) January 17, 2018

BachCanada1967 wrote:I was just looking at Twitter and I noticed that Molly follows John but he does not follow her. I’m never sure if we should read too much into such things though.

I swear I didn’t make @JonFrancetic wear his Husband shirt, we are just cheesy    Tonight at 9! @MAFS_Original #MarriedAtFirstSight #lifetime pic.twitter.com/vG30zFJzOz

— Molly Elisabeth Duff (@mollyduff92) January 23, 2018

BachIsMyGuiltyPleasure wrote:@natik aww!  Thanks for posting, I feel positive vibes, yaaay!

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-got-here-jonathan-francetic-mba-msf/?published=t
How I Got Here
Published on Published onFebruary 24, 2018
Jonathan Francetic, MBA, MSF

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The decision making process that has taken me through war, to living in four countries on four continents, earned me two masters degrees, and took me on the wild adventure of being Married at First Sight; all before the age of 30.

The Man in the Arena

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

-Teddy Roosevelt April 23rd, 1910

The Data
First things first, I firmly believe that people make rational decisions, but the problem lies in the fact that we often lack the data to understand their rationality. People often tell me that they don’t understand why I make seemingly haphazard decisions that dramatically alter my life time and again. Well, here’s the missing data to fill that gap.

I remember being fifteen, standing in a Target with my family, but left alone to browse through the DVD’s. A beautiful girl appeared next to me. We stood there for what seemed like forever. I was so good with girls back then that I didn’t say anything and ended up walking away, shell shocked and clueless as to what I should’ve said. My dad called me out for not talking to her and then told me, “It doesn’t matter what you talk about, she clearly didn’t care, and just wanted you to say something... anything!” Being too nervous to talk to her was embarrassing enough, but having my father make fun of me for it made it that much worse. I quickly got over it, though, and I learned an important lesson that day. Even baseball couldn’t teach me this as quickly, or as profoundly, and it was that striking out swinging still feels a hell of a lot better than watching it go by.

The Big Decisions
Here’s a short list of the life changing decisions I’ve made, and I’ll only explain the interesting ones.

1. Joined the Army

2. Stopped speaking to my father

3. Moved to Boston... for a girl

4. Moved to Australia, then studied abroad in Sweden

5. Got an MBA and then a Masters in Finance

6. Married at First Sight

The Army
My parents divorce took three of the four years I was in high school. This problem, that wasn’t mine, tore my family apart and destroyed my life. I, begrudgingly, went through three therapists who told me constantly that I was depressed. My grades plummeted , and I even almost quit baseball, which was admittedly the only thing I had left at that point.

I chose to travel for college, mainly to get away from the hated memories of high school. My parents told me that I was to focus on school and forbade me from having a serious job. This lead to several instances of having literally ZERO money in any account, always having to call to ask for money for food. There was one specific instance where I was told on a Saturday night that money would be transferred to me the following Wednesday if I could just wait. I lived on campus and had no food at home, but wait four more days I was told.

At the end of February in 2009, I called home to get money for March rent; $400. My mother told me that my father was suing her, the money was in an escrow account, and that I should “call your father to get it.” When I called him, he said a similar thing, but it ended with “figure it out.” That was quite literally the last straw for me. I had to free myself from their divorce.

I started basic training three weeks later, on March 18th.

The army taught me many invaluable things such as:: how to continually improve at being a leader, how much weight I can carry (physically, mentally, and emotionally), the difference between saying you won’t quit and actually not quitting, and how to push through pain in pursuit of the most important thing a person can know about themselves: why.

Why. It’s a complicated question. I don’t believe that there is a ‘right’ answer, but I do believe that there are wrong answers. For those times when you’re experiencing true difficulty and all you want to do is quit; your ‘why’ is the thing that keeps you going. Whether you quit or not will tell you how strong that ‘why’ is. Now please don’t believe I’m some rock solid soldier who can’t be broken, I’ve quit many times before. Those experiences have helped me to determine what drives me; they have formed my ‘why.’

At no point in quitting have I ever thought “man I literally could not have gone a step further.” No, I always could have, it just felt like I couldn’t. Quitting, for me, is always followed by immediate regret, and then an intense desire to get back into the fight. This led to a realization that the regret of quitting would drive me to continue on beyond my mental limits. To me, surpassing your physical limits is called death, and seeing as I’m still here, clearly those limits were all mental.



Moving to Boston... For Love
When I was leaving the army I was dating a woman; whom my mother has often referred to as the one I “screwed it up with.” That woman was what brought me to Boston. I remember thinking how much I would either regret if I didn’t at least take the chance on love.

Within two months of moving to Boston, I had broken up with her. To this day, I still don’t regret taking the chance and uprooting my life to see what would happen.

Do you see what just happened there? My decision making process was solidified.

In this situation I uprooted my entire life based on a chance event in hopes that I would find something truly great. It didn’t, but I didn’t regret the decision because I knew that I tried. I also got to know a new city, and life was great for reasons other than what I originally come for. In the end, this type of failure feels more like a success than if I had never taken the risk.



Moving to Australia, and then Sweden
There is a beautiful sense of freedom that comes with only having to answer to yourself. After joining the army, I had a mental shift from “there are limits” to “there are NO limits.” That’s why you can’t easily tell me that I can’t do something, especially if I’ve already told you that I will.

When deciding to pursue an MBA, I applied to a grand total of 0 schools in the US. I had made the decision that, because I had never gotten to study abroad, I would do the entire degree overseas. After receiving numerous phone calls from people telling me, “you can’t just move to another country,” I did just that.

Moving to Australia taught me things that I couldn’t have imagined learning when I first arrived. From this I regret nothing of the decision, and am so glad for all of the memories I have down under; decision making process reiterated!

After a year of fun with kangaroos, reverse seasons, and awesome accents, I decided I didn’t want to stay in Australia forever. With a semester left on my MBA, I wanted to study abroad in Europe and had no shortage of options.

After some deliberation I decided on Uppsala University in Sweden. I would be lying if I told you that decision didn’t have to do with the fact that Sweden gets consistently rated as having the most beautiful women in the world. In retrospect I am still dying to live in France, and wish I had chosen there (given there were three options in France). Not to contradict my decision, because of the courses I took there was a three week span during the semester that I had off. Those three weeks were spent in five different countries, and during that whole abroad trip I visited something like ten countries and checked off multiple bucket list items.

From this I come to a split decision: I wish I had studied in France, but if I had I probably wouldn’t have had the time off to visit all of the places I did. Regardless I wouldn’t have been able to stay in France; so at most I missed out on learning French, but got to drive a couple of Ferrari’s in Italy so it evens out. Overall, my decision making process held up, I don’t regret taking action; even if I go back and forth on whether it was the best action.

Married at First Sight
I’ll skip over getting a second master’s degree, and tell you that moral of the story is that it brought me back to Boston and got me into finance. I will, however, reiterate that I like the city, and clearly that decision to move here initially paid off again.

When first debating applying for the show I remember a conversation with a friend who told me “you can’t seriously be considering that! It’s ridiculous, you’re going to get fired, and what if it doesn’t work?” Unfortunately for them, my decision making process doesn’t compute failure as being worse than the regret of “what if?” As for the job, I have two masters’ degrees, I’ll be ok.

This meant I had to ask myself which I would regret more, not knowing or not trying. If you’ve been reading this, then you’ll know where it goes.

Conclusion
If you forget everything else, please at least take this: know the triumph of high achievement, and fail while daring greatly. Moral of the story, go and do things that scare the hell out of you; because those cold and timid souls will never know what could have been.

At some point you will realize there is no “right” decision; its life, and a moving target where you can never know which choice was the right one. When it comes to those scary, life changing decisions, I simply ask myself “in the end which will you regret more, doing it or wishing you had?” In answering that question I can guarantee you one thing: life is more interesting when you think outside of your comfort zone, and just do it. From my experience, even the decisions that don’t work out as planned, still end up working out well enough.



Thank you reading.

Jonathan Francetic