The Antidote to a Wasted Life.
How to get your life together.
Did any of you watch Pokemon growing up? Did you play RuneScape? I know I did. The reason that these stories and games resonate with us is that they mirror our lives. Ash, the protagonist of the Pokemon series takes on villains and travels the world with his friends trying to capture as many Pokemon as he can.
Similarly, you’re on a journey with a bunch of people that help you conquer your problems and capture as much success as you can.
Do you ever feel like you’re wasting your life? As if you’ve never achieved anything?
You’re the unlikely hero of your journey, much like how Ash Ketchum or King Arthur are the heroes of their respective journeys.
Meet Darius, I know he’s got a cool name. Like you and me, Darius is stuck in the middle of a pandemic and is a recent college graduate who fears losing his job.
One day he gets the call that he’s getting laid off, crap.
He’s lost and frustrated, he doesn’t know what do to.
After eating ice cream and loathing about the economy, he starts to write to vent his emotions, Darius used to write all the time, he used to have a blog which would review the movies going to BlockBuster, after surfing on the internet for a while he stumbles upon his old blog.
It turns out he never shut the blog site down, he kept it as a reminder of his childhood, the last movie he reviewed was The Hangover. Now that BlockBuster went bust, he’s left with reviewing movies on NetFlix, Amazon Prime Video and HBO Max.
So he starts to review Extraction, then he reviews Uncut Gems, so on and so forth. He had created a mailing list which helped him reach out to his the followers of his blog, he uses it and can build his blog again.
He uses his paycheque to pay rent and it is enough to eke out a month more. His blog fell from 5000 people who were paying 2 dollars a month to 1000 people, so he still has an income.
He consistently writes and within 3 months he can get back up on his feet. Life’s good.
Here’s what you have to do.
Okay, I get it, this is a fictional story, and you’re probably saying:
“Bobby, what do I do now? Help me dumbass!”
I got you.
1. Get into a Time Loop.
Imagine if you could travel through time? You can’t.
You can meditate and imagine. So, sit down and meditate, if you were to keep doing what you are doing, where would you be in the next 20 years?
Be critical of yourself, would you be living a meagre existence having basic problems or would you have a cool life, solving better problems doing stuff you like and enjoy?
Would you be successful or would you feel like a failure?
I borrowed this concept from the Stoics, specifically, Marcus Aurelius, who said:
You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. — Marcus Aurelius
Another technique, which is written about in the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people is imagining you’re driving to a funeral, you park your car and walk to the coffin, and you see yourself. Your friends, family members and colleagues are there and all of them give speeches.
What would they say about you? If you lived and behaved as you do now, what would the people you love say about you when you are dead?
Do this exercise in a quiet place, where no one can disturb you. I had to do it repeatedly before getting a full image of my funeral.
2. Recognise your passion.
Do you remember when you were a kid? You would play in the park with your friends and if you got bored, you would do something else.
There was no guilt in quitting swimming classes or looking at bugs. You never asked yourself about the monetary gains of trading Pokemon cards or whether society approved of studying bugs for a living.
My cousin asked me about finding his passion and I said I don’t know.
You don’t go out and find your passion. I don’t think it works that way, your passion is not this mythical sword that will change your life and bring you infinite amounts of happiness and money or whatever you desire.
What do you do every day? What can you talk about for hours without stopping? That’s your passion.
Your passion lies in front of you, you have to recognise it.
If you think your passion will lead to happiness, you won’t always be happy. 25% of the time you will hate it, and be annoyed by it.
The key is consistency, you only become better if you work every day.
You don’t have to travel the world and meditate in the Himalayas, you have to do something and stay interested in it for a long time.
3. Have a Protocol.
It’s not as complicated as it sounds, all you need is a plan, it does not have to be perfect, it just has to be a plan. The problem with ambitious dreamers is that they dream, they don’t work.
Trying to make the perfect plan will take ages, and even if you make the perfect plan, what’s the guarantee of it working?
Do you think JK Rowling had a plan? She sat and she wrote, that was her plan.
A protocol is an actionable plan.
Having one gives you a standard of how you’re supposed to work and function. Don’t fake it till you make it, do it till you become it.
To add to my point about passion, you don’t meditate and wait for a voice from heaven to tell you what to do, you do something, if you find it interesting, you do it.
Passion doesn’t exist, passionate people exist.
After you have made a protocol, take action.
Success doesn’t Happen Overnight.
People want an amazing physique, we all want to look like a movie star, but do you know what it takes to look good and have a great body?
You have to spend hours in the gym and calculate every meal you eat. You have to plan out your life in tiny plates.
There’s probably a guy on YouTube telling you that you have to “want it enough.”
I call bullshit. Everybody wants, they just aren’t aware of what it is that they want. If you want to chill on a yacht, you have to put in the hours of work, you have to take risks and be willing to piss a few people off.
You probably know that success doesn’t happen overnight.
“Yeah, it does Bobby, there’s this guy on YouTube telling me that you can have a BMW, a mansion and a supermodel girlfriend by paying $599.99 for his course!”
Seriously how stupid are you? You can’t buy a course and get rich, you could use one to help you, maybe.
The Takeaways.
Here’s what you can take away:
- Create a time loop, meditate about your future if you were to live the way you do now.
- Recognise your passion, in most cases, it’s something you can’t shut up about.
- Have a protocol, you’re plan doesn’t need to be perfect, it has to exist.
- Show up every day, success does not happen overnight.
In the words of Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter:
“Be Excellent To Each Other And Party On, Dudes.”