Summary

The author shares a personal journey of overcoming the feeling of unfulfilled potential by setting more meaningful goals, embracing writing as a creative outlet, and emphasizing the importance of accountability and habit-building to start living a fulfilling "big life."

Abstract

The article discusses the author's struggle with the sense of not living up to their potential, despite being surrounded by success stories and having ambitious goals. Realizing that their goals were not truly aligned with their personal desires, the author delved deeper to understand what they genuinely wanted out of life. This introspection led to the discovery that the act of creation and expression, particularly through writing, was the key to feeling accomplished. The author advocates for starting with small, manageable commitments to regain self-trust and build habits that contribute to a larger purpose. By envisioning their ideal everyday life and taking incremental steps, the author encourages readers to work towards their unique version of a "big life."

Opinions

The author believes that cookie-cutter dreams are unfulfilling and that personal ambitions should be deeply aligned with one's own values and desires.
Setting unrealistic goals can lead to a cycle of disappointment and loss of self-respect, which is why starting with achievable tasks is crucial for building confidence.
Writing is presented as a transformative tool for channeling thoughts and achieving a sense of accomplishment.
Accountability is seen as fundamental to self-respect, and the author suggests that consistently meeting small commitments can restore faith in oneself.
The concept of a "big life" is not tied to financial success or material possessions but rather to the feeling of doing something meaningful with one's thoughts and time.
The author promotes the idea of joining the Part-time Creator Club as a resource for creators looking to balance their passions with other aspects of their lives.
A recommendation is made for an AI service, ZAI.chat, as a cost-effective alternative to ChatGPT Plus (GPT-4), highlighting the author's endorsement of practical and accessible tools for creators.

How to Finally Start Living Your Big Life (When You’ve Tried Everything)

And you feel like giving up

I’ve been there.

The constant shadow of ‘that feeling’. The feeling that you could do better, that you could be trying harder, that you’re not living your ‘big life’. The life you envisioned for yourself.

For some reason, you just can’t make it happen.

Everything stays the same even though the conversation in your head repeats daily. You know what you need to do, you know how, you just… can’t.

A life full of unreached potential

My biggest fear 4 years ago is that I was wasting away. That’s what happens you build yourself up with success stories (I used to listen to Guy Raz, How I Built This on repeat).

Every day I indulged in somebody else’s success. It filled me with excitement, energy and envy. Almost immediately after the podcast ended I’d braindump all my goals, this was it, this time it was different:

To make $1 million by the end of the year.
To build a company with an HQ down the road.
To publically trade that company within 5 years.

Lol. The trouble with these goals is 2-fold. First, they are, as you’d perhaps agree, ambitious. Being at $0 and trying to make $1 million in a year, with a full-time job and no idea of what I wanted to build was, well, a stretch. The other thing is that there was little thought in these goals, they were cookie-cutter dreams. And cookie cutter dreams are empty.

The cookie-cutter dreams

The mistake I made for the longest time was not looking deep enough into what I wanted. Not the world around me. Me. Instead of getting to the bottom of my ambitions, and asking myself what my dream day actually looked like, I would take the same cookie cutter and chop out my goals.

It meant that sure I had a list of goals, but I didn’t really resonate with them.

What did I want $1 million for? I wear $40 trainers.
What did I want a big company for? I don't like managing people.
Why did I want to publically trade my company? Literally, no idea.

What I needed is some cold, hard honesty.

Getting real

The truth is, what I really wanted is to feel like I was doing something with my life. That I was building. I had all these thoughts about things in the world you see and they just spiralled in my head.

They had no outlet, I had no way to funnel my thoughts, they just got tangled together and caused my bother every day. Beyond the money, and the material things, what I really wanted is to feel like I was doing something with my thoughts.

That’s it.

I needed a way to feel like I was doing something about all these thoughts I had in my head. And that’s when I found writing.

If you’re sitting reading this, thinking the same thing, that maybe your dreams were just a regurgitation, that’s okay. The trick is to use that to dig deeper. The best question I’ve come up with to ask is this:

What does your dream (everyday) day look like?

I’m not talking if you had 1 day to live and how would you spend it. If you had thousands of days left to live and you had to do something, be somewhere, what would you be doing? You might not come up with the answer straight away but keep asking.

Accountability

The one thing that erodes self-respect quicker than anything else is not taking accountability. For years I’d got into this horrendous cycle of saying I’d do things but never doing them.

It was awful.

I had no faith in myself. The years had decayed an ounce of self-respect I had left. I had to start from scratch. I mean really small. Like tiny.

When I started writing I started by saying I’d write for 10 minutes a day. It was so small, so insignificant, so easy that I did it. And then, because I actually enjoyed it, I kept showing up.

If you’re used to telling yourself you’d do things and never actually do them, step one is building back your trust in yourself. You do that by starting unbelievably small.

Don’t tell yourself you are going to write a book by next week, you’re setting yourself up to fail. Be kind to yourself, start with 10 minutes today.

And then build a habit

Slowly, over the weeks and then months, you can steadily increase the time you spend on your writing. Like a marathon runner starting training, you don’t go and run 16 miles on day one, you pace yourself. You start with a little warm-up run for 10 minutes.

The same goes for writing. Take it slow. Increase over time. Build up your ability.

Closing thoughts

Here’s how I think about it: I have one life and I’m not sure when my time will run out. Dramatic? Maybe. But I have this reoccurring thought that on my deathbed, I’m telling my grandkids that I wish I’d just started writing or built that business.

I transport myself there often. When I’m feeling demotivated or restless, I ask myself what I think the price of a big life was. It’s going to be hard work but it’ll be worth it.

If I want to live this big life, with all the things that go with that, I have to work harder than I ever have, enjoy it every day and make myself proud.

If you want to start working on your dream life, join the Part-time Creator Club. Read by 8k+ creators. 100% free (over 50% of my followers subscribe).