First Written: 09-May-2023 Tue
Read Time: 16 Minutes

No beating around the bush today, let’s get down to it.

People are wasting lives.

They waste their lives, their time, and their dreams. There’s no damn self respect anywhere around here.

I look around and constantly see people wallowing in their lives. I see people languishing. They’re squandering their time. They’re just existing.

These are all well and good, do as you wish with your life, but I also see a disproportionate amount of unhappiness in those same people.

Nationally ranked students.
World class athletes.
Many, simply stalling out and floundering.

There’s no more passion.
There are no goals.
And there’s no ambition.

Where’d it go?
Where’s the soul?
Where’d the passion to live go?

People are just little shells of former humans. Letting themselves go. Letting their dreams go. Letting the life go.

People seem to just give up.

Post graduation, right?
There’s no more competition.
There’s no fire under the ass.

You end up with a a bunch of people who just don’t seem to care anymore.

Where the hell did the fire go?

A Reflection of Childhood

Growing up we’re given awful direction. We might haves some semblance of morals or values instilled, but do those ever change? Do they ever get
challenged?

It’s so rare to be challenged. Even more so, it’s rare to be challenged consistently. The goals we assume are those of our friends or parents or school system. Too often they become morphed and absorbed in to our own hopes and dreams. And let me tell you, they aren’t ambitious enough.

We’re bred to compete. So we compete.

Growing up, we compete a lot.
We compete in a school system.
We compete in sports. In School. In Hobbies. In Clubs. For positions. For internships. Matches. Tournaments. Competitions.
We compete a lot.

But we aren’t exposed to many different things. I sure as hell wasn’t. I had one sport, 1 job, and no time. It seems like we’re set on a path that we hardly even chose. There’s not a whole lot of deviation from that path in the years that come after. We only go deeper and deeper down the same rabbit hole.

We’re bred to compete for success rather than our own joy.

Successful or not, as children, we aren’t even conscious about our own goals. They’ve been set for us. Because we’re kids. We do as we’re told and just bumble along. Any challenge we face is a result of the path that’s been placed in front of us. Academia. School. Leadership. Sports.

As we graduate High School and move out of the house, we stick to what we already know.

We keep the same hobbies.
We hang out with the same people.
We just keep on keeping on.

Such an awful phrase, isn’t it?

“Keep on keeping on”?

It’s the least inspirational, ‘inspirational’ phrase I’ve ever heard.
Keep on keeping on? Jesus Christ, it’s like we’re trying to breed average. Seeking a meager survival and that’s it?

That sounds like something you tell an old Wall-E wheel chair guy. Keep on keeping on? What in the hell? There’s not an ounce of soul in that life motto. The way we talk to ourselves matters. Words matter. And those are some shitty words.

Keep on keeping on?
If you use that phrase, please do not exist in my life.

Same Shit, Different Day

People I observe mostly just mosey through life. They pick up a job that just happens to be available or they go to college… by default. You’ve got to make money to live, so both are a natural solution.

The issue isn’t choosing a job or choosing college. The issue is just accepting whatever path has been laid in front of you without evaluating and experimenting with other options.

Rolling over and accepting.

The issue is that many people are doing things they don’t want to do. They think they do, but only because that’s all they’ve done. They haven’t truly spent the time to figure out what it is they actually want. And slowly but steadily they slide down the path of what everyone else is doing… or at least applaudes them for doing.

Quit letting people dissuade you from doing the things you want to.

The dissuasion is rarely intentional. A disapproving look. A subtle comment. A closed door conversation.

People don’t approve because what you want is not what they’re doing. So in order to subtly seek their approval, we do what we think they would do:

A degree is chosen.
Career paths are decided.
Different aspects of life just sort of… happen.

There’s no rhyme or reason.
There’s no thought behind the action.

Instead, Life becomes a mere reaction. Life happens. Time passes. We enter autopilot.

Average becomes acceptable. Acceptable equals status quo. And then status quo reigns supreme.

Those who leave, come back.
Old habits become new habits.
New habits never develop.

And what you’ve got left is a society full of people just… waiting.

A Caveat for Credibility

Before I go on, I’d like to note that this all comes from a place of love. I am so passionate about this because I was a victim of my childhood. I didn’t take things in to my own hands. I competed in 1 sport for the decade of my youth and that was it.

I didn’t join any clubs. I didn’t expose myself. I never read books I enjoyed and only did what I was told. I ended up doing quite well in school, but was singularly focused. I didn’t follow my passions and I never stopped to question where I was going. It wasn’t until Junior year of college that I actually stopped to smell the roses every once in awhile.

I always knew that I didn’t enjoy the path that everyone was on, with just one foot in front of the other, but I didn’t know where to turn. I was so blinded by my own ignorance and fear of failure that I never stopped to enjoy myself. And I was terrified of failure. Excellence had been beating in to me as a kid, so rather than risk failure to find enjoyment, I took the path of least resistance and kept working.

I am sharing with you what I have learned in the past 5 years of my life, because I look around and fear that many never learn it at all and just keep working.

Now back to my high horse.

More Observations: Overgrown Children, Undergrown Adults

The super social, lucky, or driven ones are the ones that stumble across new lifestyles. These people purposely seek out challenges. They try new things. They grow. They visit new places. They do hard shit. It’s rare to stumble across one of these rare Pokemon.

And I’m not talking about merely successful people. I’m talking about people that purposely challenge themselves. They get ovsut there and step outside their career field. They seek out new hobbies.

They venture in to the unknown.

That is not most people.

It takes a rare breed to break the mold. It’s hard to do hard things.

More importantly though, it’s hard to do new things.

Living and Getting to Knowing Yourself vs Living TO Know Yourself

The longer you live life, the more you experience by simply existing.

If you’re lucky, you may just so happen to stumble across an experience or group of people that truly push you. This experience or group can guide you to an improved life just by happenstance.

This probability of stumbling across things you enjoy, increases with your sociability and willingness to try new things.

The downside though, is that this sociability puts you at the mercy of the group’s interests.
Out of our universal desire to fit in, we’re more willing to settle in to some mediocre position just to feel included.

It’s bullshit.

Continue to try new things. Continue to not feel included. Continue to push yourself.

To live a life of continuous improvement, you have to analyze the way you react to different situations… this means you have to experience different situations.

Step 1: Experience new situations
Step 2: Analyze likes and dislikes
Step 3: Iterate

What makes you feel good?
What makes you feel bad?
What social settings do you gravitate to?
Are you a natural leader? A thrill seeker? A problem solver?

What part of society are you optimized for?

You never uncover these hidden parts of yourself without the exposure to them. This exposure oftentimes results in discomfort, but that same discomfort helps you figure out what you do like.

Once you uncover and acknowledge the things you enjoy, you also have to have the courage to pursue them. Step 1, really, is incomplete, because it leaves out the emotional roller coaster of trying new things. Really, the process should look like this.

Step 1: Force yourself to experience new situations
Step 2: Experience extreme discomfort
Step 3: Find the courage to keep going
Step 4: Keep going some more
Step 5: And some more
Step 6: Experience growth
Step 7: Realize your comfort
Step 8: Analyze what you like and don’t like about the process
Step 9: Another New Situation
Step 10: Iterate

It’s not common to find those with both the courage and willingness to suffer.

The people that I do see with both of these traits, I find, are often the ones who are enjoying the path most.

An old physics teacher encouraged the same – Figure out what you enjoy and the money will come later. Dude doesn’t get paid a whole lot and has been offered jobs valued at multi-six figures, I asked why. “I enjoy it here. I enjoy teaching and helping other people out”. He skiis with his family and got to explore a ton when he was younger. Now he’s got a family and can provide them everything they need.

Some base jumper I met in Moab, Utah – “This, all this stuff right here, it doesn’t matter. Every time I jump I realize this is all the small stuff. Your health and your family are the two things that matter”. I’ve extrapolated this to mean your most valued relationships.

A business consultant with 4 kids whom I met in Colorado also figure this out. He retired early and became a real estate agent on the side. Now he’s a bit of a ski bum and learns things for the sake of learning things. By the sounds of it, he’s loving life.

I might have had a way-too-much-consistent childhood. But I also had a craving to explore. I always wanted to try new things. I would try new foods. I vocalized my adventurous spirit. I wanted to learn new languages. I wanted to travel to new countries…. So as I got older and the capabilities to do so, I did.

A Possible Why: Resistant to Change

Most people don’t expose themselves. Period. They never taste new flavors or try new things. It’s all because they’ve gotten too comfortable.

Either fear or the desire to fit in dictate their actions. Neither are acceptable.

Never scaring yourself is a surefire recipe for complacency.

As a species we’re incredibly resistant to change.
We like consistency. We like what stays the same.
We want our variables constant and don’t like new ways of doing things.

The status quo of human behavior is accepting the status quo.

It’s rare to find someone so driven and motivated to consistently improve. Those people that constantly push themselves to try new things are hard to come by. It is terrifying, afterall.

But the alternative of that fear is 10x worse:
Stagnation.

Stagnation:
It’s the epitome of the average human. We value consistency. Matter of fact, we reward things and people that stay the same over time. Robert Cialdini discusses it in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Those who stay the same – the same opinions, the same habits, the same tendencies are rewarded with our confidence. We like consistency. It’s predictable. So those that are consistent, receive our praise. We know how to react around these people. They don’t challenge us, neither figuratively nor literally. And that’s easy for us.

Once again. Bullshit.

Back when we were hunting buffalo, a taste of the new berries could get you poisoned. Swimming in a new swamp could kill you.

But in modern times that stability has turned in to a liability.

Complacency has been dressed up and renamed confidence.

Year after year, look left and right. All around you’ll see the same people doing the same things. They’re not living, they’re just existing.

Where’s the uncertainty?
What about self-doubt?
The challenge?
The growth?
What about self-discovery?

People are so content to just accept whatever their life has become. They take the path of least resistance and settle in to a coddled mind. Their lives still aren’t easy. No. But they’ve accepted whatever life gives them.

The wonder and the dreams? They evaporate.

It’s like once the external competition disappears so does the ambition. Where’s the competition with self? The strive to be better?

I’ve found it comes from setting you’re own goals. If you don’t set them for you, someone else will in the name of pursuing their own goals.

A Possible Why: Pressure to Perform

There’s an external pressure within society to perform. There’s a status that comes with being ‘good’ at something. So the moment that we find something that we’re remotely interested/good at we accept.

We accept the path we’ve been given, but that’s just a short term solution. Sooner or later we’ll end up incredibly displeased.

I look all around though and see people petrified because they don’t know what they want in life, but they’re frozen in place. They haven’t even tried to figure out what it is they want because they’re so terrified of ‘starting over’ despite their apparent unhappiness.

Be bad.
Humble Yourself.

We end up on this linear path, the path that our parents put us on and rarely do we deviate. Success is expected of us so we continue rambling along this path that we already know. You may be successful, but this isn’t how you find happiness. It isn’t how you create a life you want to live.

Broad exposure isn’t celebrated in our culture. Only success.

But you’ve got one life and it’s damn 80 years long. You have time to mess up. If you didn’t mess up and be humbled in your 20s, you’ll end up unhappy later in life, stuck even deeper.

It only gets worse from here.

You don’t enjoy the field you’re currently in because you don’t have any idea about the field you dream of being in. So you don’t have long term goals and you don’t know what you’re working for. Instead, you just keep on bumbling along for a pay check.

If you haven’t done the exploration as a kid, you won’t know what you want in your 20s.
If you haven’t explored in your 20s, you won’t know what to do in your 30s.
See the pattern?

The perfect life doesn’t just magically stumble upon you. You’ve got to go figure it out yourself. Nobody tells you the perfect life to live. You have to go figure out what that is and then live it.

Hard things aren’t easy.

But that choice is yours. There is no easy path. You either choose your own suffering or your intertia chooses it for you.

Link
Song: Champion

A Possible Remedy: Start Early/The Roaring 20s

“I don’t know what I want to do with my life”

You’re not supposed to have it figured out.

That’s why people say to expose yourself to as much as you possibly can in your 20s.

What works? What doesn’t?
What and who do you like?
What don’t you?

I’m 23 and have no clue what I want to do with my life… but I have a much deeper understanding of my passions and interests than I did 5 years ago.
I know I like languages.
I enjoy the outdoors.
I enjoy physical activities, particularly those involving adrenaline.

I gravitate towards these activities.
I add more of them. I try new ones and cycle out old ones. I make friends within each of the areas.

I then optimize my life and cycle in new ones yet again.

I set up exposures, trips, problems, and experiences that allow me to explore my mind and figure out what I like. Races. Hikes. Saying ‘hi’ to random people. Laughing at arbitrary scenarios. Travelling. Solo Travelling. Camping. Travelling with friends.

Sports. Hobbies. Jobs. Homes. Girls. Cities. Cultures. Lifestyles.

You have to explore each and every one of them.

But if you didn’t do it in your 20s, you’ll have to do it in your 30s.
If you don’t explore in your 30s, you still won’t know what you want in your 40s.

And I guess if you never go down the path of struggling to figure out what you like and don’t like, you’ll never know.

Again, don’t take my word for it, though. These dudes lived past 100. Surely they’ve got to have it somewhat figured out.

A similar sentiment was echoed in this book Top Five Regrets of the Dying, which brings me to my next antidote.

This, is arguably on of the fastest ways to expose yourselves to new worlds and live a more fulfilling life.

Another Possible Remedy: Read

Most the time, people are not intentional about their exposure. They instead accept whatever experiences come their way:

• ‘Yea, me and my family took a trip to Mexico one time’
• ‘Yea skydiving sounds rad, but I’ve never gone’
• ‘I like history but the internship I did last summer sucked’
  
  

Resistance to Change. Pressure to fit in. Both are huge limiting factors. One of my favorite ways to combat both of these – Reading.

Most people either don’t have the knowledge or they don’t have the motivation to do a thing.

Reading addresses both quite nicely.

We often don’t even know the possibilities that exist in the first place. Some people rely on hyper-sociality for the exposure, but there’s a hack that doesn’t require permission from other people.

READ, mother f%@ker!

We are only aware of the opportunities we have at our disposal. If we’re unhappy with our current circumstances and don’t see a way out, we simply haven’t exposed ourselves to enough possibility.

Historically, much of this exposure has come from your birthed socio-economic status.
This exposure still happens to a large degree (watch celebrities take selfies with celebrities at the Grammy’s) but is no longer nearly as restrictive.

Modern history has done away with this to some degree, but your exposure is still largely based on your social network.

The Internet has made it easier than ever to tap in to and exposure yourself to this network.

You do not attend a convention or be birthed in to the world to be exposed to an incredible activity such as Ice Climbing or Sea Kayaking.

There is no longer any gate keeping of information. You don’t have to wait for Gordon Ramsey or Bruce Springsteen to stumble in to your life to be exposed to world-class cooking or enjoy the pleasures of guitar.

The know-how is right there at our fingertips. Sometimes I have to remind myself to utilize it to it’s full potential (Hint: Life changer – Audiobooks during commutes)

It certainly makes exposure easier to know someone personally involved in one of these hobbies, but you can create the on-ramp by already forming a basis yourself. The interconnectedness and exposure is not as far-fetched as is once was.

Conclusion: Just Maybe

Motivation should come from within. It HAS to. It needs to come from the desire to outperform self, the desire to look back in a year and realize
‘Holy shit, I’m, a totally different person’

If you don’t choose your own goals, they’ll be chosen for you.

For far too many, consistency exists only as long as praise is received. But that’s not how the world works. If you work for the validation of others you’re in for a long, tough, deprived life. In the words of some rock climber, ‘that’s a shallow well to pool from’.

The only way you get that awareness and self-validation is through exposure and figuring out what you enjoy.
It comes from trying new things and seeing new people and experiences and places. It comes from discomfort.

Discomfort = Growth

You’re doing the same things day in and day out, so you’re experiencing the same things day in and day out.

You’re consuming the same inputs, living in the same places, and worst of all,
hanging out with the same damn people.

If your friends aren’t challenging you to be better, what kind of friends do you really have?
If friends and partners only make you feel good about yourself, you’ve got the wrong partners.

Friends need to call you an asshole. Relationships need to challenge you. We should be doing the same for them.

If your friends don’t call you out, well, shouldn’t they be? It sucks in the moment, but the alternative of complacency is far worse. We have got to get some better friends. Relationships work when you want what’s best for each other…

But best is rarely easiest.

People talk about wanting more out of life, not knowing what to do with their lives, wondering where to go next…

Try some shit, first. Them come back. Every time I start to flounder in life it’s because I have not done this. I have stopped learning, and stopped growing. I have stopped exposing myself.

So I’ll go try some shit.

The reason we don’t know what we want out of life is that we haven’t yet experienced what we do want.

We haven’t taken the time to expose ourselves to figure out the things we love…So how the hell would we know the things we do love?

We don’t know because we haven’t explored.

Exposure yourself to explore yourself.
If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for the world.
We needs your expertise.