You Are The Bag. Secure Yourself.
This was taken at the beginning of a huge turning point in my life. I became so focused on my career, thinking it will fast forward my life and get me closer to my goals. Though it was much needed, I was all over the place. I also became more closed off than I already am. I’ve always had troubles knowing when to rest, or how to communicate my feelings. What you see is what you get with me, I forget that I need to articulate how I feel as well.
10 years deep in my career and I never had any troubles separating my work life from my personal life. It felt necessary so I can enjoy the things I enjoy and still be taken seriously at my job. Like, I am a multi-tasking optimizing machine at work but regular me is carefree and ditzy AF. I originally believed that I could have it all, I could excel in my career (both work and business), and separately have a careless approach to my fun personal life - I work hard, I deserve to play hard right? Wrong. In 2019 I started feeling burnt out and I couldn’t understand why because my social life was basically nonexistent. I had a great new job and my personal relationships were better than ever.
After 2 months of spending time alone in a box operating as my home, office and warehouse. I finally have clarity that the feeling of success and contentment can only come from developing systems not setting goals. I felt exhausted because I was chasing something that’s never going to end because your goals evolve with you. I felt inauthentic because I kept my personal life separate from my work life when I should’ve been more concerned about how I can align them together. My approach made me incapable of appreciating my growth and the triumphs I earned along the way. Suddenly the power of essentialism makes sense to me now. When you want to have all the good things and do all the right things, you don’t make progress that way. You just keep spreading your efforts so thin that you make no impact at all.
Never feel bad for saying no or needing a second to pause and recharge. Make it a point to get to know yourself and the things that bring you peace. Use that knowledge so you can fall involve with the process not the product. Don’t worry about the prize, worry about staying in the game. Keep putting in the work to meet your potential. Your trajectory is 100% more important than where you are at.