What Is Your Why?
I was a typical ‘good’ student.
It ended up screwing me in life.
I showed up to class.
I got good grades (even in Science, which I hated).
I did what I was told, when I was told.
I passed through the system pretty effortlessly, not stirring up too much sh*t, not getting into too much trouble, just looking to get on with it.
I don’t say this to impress you at all. I say it because in hindsight maybe I should have been a little different.
I never had problems with motivation, or getting my homework done, or showing up on time for tests. So people naturally assumed that I would be successful in life — they described me with words like “hard working” “disciplined” and “self-driven.”
And then an interesting thing happened.
I got my first real, full-time job after university and suddenly could not care about life, money or work.
My motivation flew away, my ambition was non-existent, and in general, I kind of inherited this “Ehhh” quality of life that scared the f*ckin’ life out of me. This wasn’t me. So I quit 5 years after landing that role, which I have spoken about before.
It’s extremely common to suddenly lose your fire, and not give a shit about life, when you get into the real world. It’s no accident. It’s actually all about how life was designed in those years of school. Everything was structured. School always has goals and deadlines for you. There’s always a goal, always a next step, always a plan, always a WHY regarding why you need to go to the next level.
There’s a little bit of motivation built into the system.
There are milestones.
Enter “Reality” — And bye, bye Motivation.
When you get your first job at first, you’re like “Yeeah, man!” Making money, relaxing on the weekend, and having a good time. But by year two usually the “awareness” moment hits you.
Well, it hit me at year two anyway.
I realised that this (job, lifestyle, etc.) is not what I wanted.
Earning extra money and bonuses wasn’t really that appealing to me because it didn’t make my life any more exciting or any more fun.
Getting even a £20,000 raise didn’t do shit to help me get out of bed any easier. The reason for this is because there were no milestones — so naturally as humans we start introducing artificial ones.
Some of us get sucked into the money illusion. We chase higher pound signs on the paycheck, others get married to help give life some meaning and purpose. The last group of people simply create random challenges and goals such as lose 50 pounds or run a marathon and so on. But the bottom line is that the real world leaves people unmotivated and listless because there is no structure. There is no story.
There is no why behind it all, unless you give it one.
So what is your why? What makes you get through your week? For me it’s my family, well specifically my nieces.
Love lychee
x
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