I Quit My Job and I’ve Never Been Less Motivated

Learning a new way to live

Mentally, I’ve been all-in on my dream since I was 17.

I started reading business books before I knew what half the words meant. I started writing life advice and self-help articles just months after I’d graduated from college where I got a useless degree and spent most of my time wrestling with grown men in bathrobes.

I’ve competed in martial arts all over the United States, and I’ve taught martial arts everywhere to anyone who would pay me. I taught martial arts for free. I paid to compete in competitions that no one will ever know I won or participated in.

I wrote articles for basically no one but my mom. I won a world title and no one noticed. I wrote a book that no one bought.

Yet somehow, I figured out a way to make my passions my full-time living.

Now, I’m one of the top 12 Jiu-Jitsu athletes in the world in my weight class, I’m a professional writer, and my writing has been viewed more than 5 million times on the internet.

I don’t like to toot my own horn that much, but I’m doing okay.

Yet, I’m still a nervous wreck. If anything, the nerves are worse now.

Now that the only thing responsible for paying my rent is my passion projects, I’m having a hard time getting out of bed. I’m sick of reading complex books. Competing and training are destroying my body.

I’m beaten up.

I don’t want to hustle anymore.

I worked so hard for so damn long, and now, at the point in time where I need to focus most, I just want a fucking break.

I love my job, I hate the stress, and I’m terrified about the future.

I’ve never had such a hard time with writing.

This article has 2 components, one about each section of my career (writing and martial arts).

Honestly, writing is something that I’m still kind of new at.

I actually think I have more potential as a writer than as a fighter, but no matter what it is you are trying to do, it isn’t potential that helps you build a career doing something. What helps you make a career out of something isn’t talent, skill, or even effectiveness.

What helps you make a career is consistent effectiveness sustained over a long period of time.

This is something that I have not struggled with yet in writing, but I am definitely struggling with it right now. I am currently physically unable to maintain the rapid output of content that allowed me to take the early steps in the career that I just decided to go “all-in” on.

I just quit my job to become a full-time writer and fighter, and now my wrists are so sore constantly writing (from “over-writing”) that I can’t write much at all.

In the past, I was able to write 3000–5000 words per day, and now I can hardly manage 2000. I have to grind twice the time to write less than half of the content. Worse yet, the pain in my wrists makes it nearly impossible to find the “flow” that has allowed me to create what I feel is my best work.

I’ve written so much that I constantly get messages from people telling me about how something I wrote somewhere moved them, inspired them, or gave them hope, and I can’t do anything but cry. I can barely muster the words to type a response.

I’m overwhelmed with gratitude that anyone thinks anything I have written is worth a damn, but I’m terrified that I won’t ever be able to write something like that ever again. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, because I can’t write right now without severe pain in my hands and fingers. It hurts, and I can’t tell stories the way that I feel they should be told.

It breaks my little heart.

My body is breaking too.

Jiu-Jitsu is notoriously hard on your body.

Over the last 9 months, I have created an approach to training that works for me, limits injury, and still allows for maximal growth in both the technical and physical departments of the sport.

The problem is that this approach is a little bit different from the approach to training that most people are using. This itself isn’t a problem, but the anxiety associated with it certainly is.

I get worried that I am not keeping myself up with my competition (oh, and my competition is literally the best Jiu-Jitsu guys in the world), and even worse, I worry that I am wasting my time by taking a different approach to training than most of the people in my division.

I started to feel guilty for listening to my body instead of pushing forward at all costs, and so this week I decided to go visit some friends, immerse myself in their training, and do everything that they do.

This was a bad call.

2 days in, I aggravated an old injury, and now I can’t even bend over without severe pain.

I know these injuries are my fault because all of the injuries that I have right now are not from freak accidents or mistakes, they’re overuse injuries. My injuries could be avoided if I continued the approach to training that has been working for me, but instead, I decided to try something different, and it backfired.

Now, here I am writing this article at 15 minutes intervals because I can’t sit for more than that long without back pain, and my wrists are burning. I’m also taking intense medication that makes me tingly, exhausted, and gives me mood swings.

I fucked up, and I can barely train, teach, or write, and as a result, I feel like a blob.

What do I do about it?

I’m sorry if I bored you with my sob story, but there is a lesson here.

This isn’t my first rodeo.

Every time I deal with periods where I’m unable to work and prepare the way I want, I have this initial internal struggle where I’m constantly trying to fix everything that is “wrong with me”. I will continue to live in a way that hurts, just because I want to stick with my routine.

However, over time, I have sort of learned to accept that these periods where I experience low motivation are just that — periods where I am experiencing low motivation.

Sure, right now I am feeling a bit more anxiety than normal about my motivation levels, but this isn’t because I fear that my motivation is gone forever. This is because I just quit my job, and when you quit your job to go all-in on your passion, you’re supposed to be extra motivated.

That’s not the case with me, and as a result, my goal now must not be to force myself to work. My goal must be to allow myself to recover.

The truth is that your dreams do not die when you run out of money, they don’t die when you take a break from working, and they don’t die when you struggle with your discipline.

Your dreams only die when you quit.

Every doubt you experience before you actually quit is a fiction created by anxiety. Do not allow anxiety to push you to quit. Motivation is fleeting, but it comes back around.

Don’t forget that, and I won’t either.

Closing Thoughts

Hard work often pays off, but it also has a price.

The price is your time, your health, your sanity, and your peace.

You spend your attributes to achieve stuff, make improvements, and make money, but eventually, you’re going to run out of gas. You’re going to have to rest. You cannot constantly grind toward your goals and expect continued progress and improvements.

Resting is good.

I quit my job, I’ve never been less motivated, and for now, that’s okay, because my motivation always comes back.

For now, I’m hoping my discipline will hold me over till then.