You’re Not Broken: Stop Fixing and Start Optimizing

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom." - Aristotle

I’m going to go out on a limb here. Bear with me.

For the past decade (and arguably longer), I’ve been struggling.

Struggling because I couldn’t seem to pick a career path.

Struggling because what seemed to satisfy everyone else didn’t make me happy.

Struggling because when I did get a traditional “job”, I freaking hated it.

I would go in and out of these periods of higher energy and then lower energy. I didn’t take very good of my health and I certainly didn’t track my moon cycle (more on this later).

I knew that alcohol wasn’t helping, but conversely, it often seemed to be the only thing that did,

Recently, I’ve been thinking a little bit differently. I would speak to others and realize that they too were struggling.

People wanted to feel better to live better to read more to be stronger and it’s hard.

The more I listened to myself and to other people, it began to dawn on me… what if there’s nothing wrong with us?

Maybe there’s nothing wrong with us, just with what’s being asked of us.

So, what am I saying here? Am I telling you to go out and quit your job and buy land (actually, do that before you quit your job) and throw your phone in a river and raise goats and chickens? Well, yes and no.

That may or may not be what you want to do with your life.

But what I am saying is this: don’t ignore the voice in your head telling you that there is more to life than this.

There’s more to life than clocking in and out and waiting to be paid and requesting time off and living to work.

You are not meant to sell your soul for someone else’s proper noun. (I’ve been waiting my entire adult life to type that sentence, damn that felt good.)

So, what then?

I’ve been deep in Dan Koe’s work. If anything I’m saying resonates with you, LISTEN TO HIM. He’s got a youtube and podcast and what have you.

Earlier today, on my walk with Nikko, I was listening to this episode and he spoke of the Labor Theory of Value. It’s a central pillar in Marxism. It states that “the value of a good or service is determined by the amount of labor required to produce it.”

At face value, sure yeah that makes sense, okay sure. But then, really though, start thinking about it.

This is the busy vs productive vs effective dilemma. Maybe in the past, something that required a lot of time was valuable, but now, it’s not mutually exclusive. However, most employers are still operating in the mode of thinking.

They want your time, not your effectiveness. That’s what they value.

But I argue, and it’s starting to prove true with the rise of AI and the widespread decentralization of education and information -- what’s valuable is effectiveness.

How simply can you make a difficult or complicated piece of material?

This is not the age of regurgitation, this is the age of sythesization. And I just looked that up, it’s not a word, YET. Just wait.

And here we go, let’s bring this home. The system we live in is a certain way. If we just become cogs in the machine, we will suffer until we die. Maybe we’ll enjoy a nice decade of retirement (three decades if you’re my grandpa. I’m not kidding, he’s almost 100).

What are our options? We can flee. We can go somewhere else, purportedly.

OR, we can optimize.

We can become self-aware.

We can educate ourselves and learn how to articulate and communicate and build community and connection.

We can find what fulfills us and do that, now, without waiting for permission.

Don’t hate the player or the game, learn them both and don’t look back.

BUT, don’t wait for someone to come and save you. No one is coming. I love this Mel Robbins quote and I’ll end here:

“The bottom line is; no one’s coming, no one. No one’s coming to push you. No one’s coming to tell you to turn the tv off. No one’s coming to tell you to get out the door and exercise. Nobody’s coming to tell you to apply for that job that you’ve always dreamt about. No one’s coming to write that business plan for you. It’s up to you. And because you’re only ever going to do the things that you feel like doing right now or that feel good right now, unless you understand that you’ve got to parent yourself, you’ve got to push yourself. You’re not going to make your dreams come true. And there’s a tremendous amount of liberation that comes when you accept the fact that you’re always going to need to give yourself a push.”

And that my friends, is well said. No one is coming. Get to know yourself. Fall in love with the person you are becoming and for goodness sake, don’t hush that voice inside of you asking for more.

If this resonates with you, here’s a free checklist you can download to start optimizing and working toward your goals. Follow for more and share this with someone who needs to hear it. Peace.