Your Life Sucks Because It’s Too Easy
The mindset holding you back from what you truly want
Ironic is an overstatement for the situation I found myself in just 3 years ago working 40 hours a week, making “good money”, forcing myself to fall in love with spreadsheets and numbers (as someone who had a hard time calculating my waiter’s tip).
I was 22, graduated, and living a life headed for the American dream, but few of my own. I had an upscale corporate job, lived in a boujee neighborhood, and had a partner who I could have a nice potential marriage, house, and life with.
Except, one year in, it hit me that I had a career that gave me “everything” but made me feel absolutely nothing.
I knew this wasn’t my forever because I had a vision that was the complete opposite of the life I was living, but I was hesitant to change everything I had worked for because this is what everyone promised was “the way”.
The dilemma
If I left my job, worked in social media, documented my cute outfits on Instagram all day, and got lattes with my friends like I really wanted, I’d risk the corporate business path I’d worked four long years for (so I thought).
What if, when I was put to the test, I would amount to nothing?
In March of this year, I came across a TikTok (by @karahalderman) I stitched, that reminded me of the dilemma I, and most of the young people I know, tend to be in.
We either choose our dreams or we choose financial stability.
We get to live out our passions and eventually die from no income, or dread our day to day, but survive. There’s no other option.
Not in this economy, right?
Life is hard (no one said it’s supposed to be easy)
If young adulthood has taught me anything, it’s that being alive is effort. Realizing I’m alive (again) is the first hurdle I overcome each morning.
I know, it sounds depressing but think about it. We have consciousness, trapped in a brain wired for anxiety and fear, and have to lug around a body that has to be fed, exercised, bathed, and rested everyday.
If you’re asking me to do more than that, it better be damn worth it.
In this perspective, by nature, life is hard. It takes effort to be alive, let alone be happy.
Fortunately, but unfortunately, we’ve evolved past survival to the very point that we can get resources like food and water as well as information through the internet so easily.
Not to sound like a boomer, but it’s fascinating how most of the tools we use in daily life were a “problem” that a human being had to work to solve, possibly everyday.
Writing a piece of work, like this blog, and attempting to show it to as many people as I’d like to see it, would have been a year’s worth of ink, paper, mailing, and transportation.
With all the convenience and innovation around us, it makes sense why we tend to think everything in life is supposed to be as easy as ordering a meal on UberEats.
Even when it comes to our desires, our passions, and purpose.
In other words, I think are dopamine and reward systems are f*cked.
Our lives are too easy
The more you fight it, the more that statement is probably even more true for you.
I think this misconception that life is supposed to be a checklist, just like grade school is what is keeping a lot of us extremely unhappy.
- Go to school until you’re 18
- Make it into a university and pursue a degree that people like (bonus if you do too)
- Work an “okay” job for a nice paycheck that will get you the next checkpoint 👇
- Buy a house and car that you may or may not be able to afford
- Have an alright amount of time to spend with your family and friends after you’re done (and hopefully a few passion projects)
That is what is common, yes.
But it’s also common to be depressed, unhappy, overweight, and anxious.
“The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015.”—Gallup
In the U.S. specifically, 50% of workers reported feeling stressed at their jobs on a daily basis, 41% as being worried, 22% as sad, and 18% angry. — Gallups’ Global Workplace Report in 2022
One thing I think we fail to realize, because it’s so easy to forget in a world made for convenience, is that good things take time and a whole lotta of effort.
Unfortunately the “blueprint” for a happy life doesn’t exist off-the-shelf. You must create it, custom and specific to you.
And you guessed it, it’s most likely going to be hard for a while.
But it doesn’t have to be hard forever. What I find harder is choosing an “easy” one-size-fits-all lifestyle and wondering if you could have ever done or been more, for the majority of your life.
There’s no point in living if you’re just surviving
It’s supposed to be confusing, it’s supposed to be hard, there’s supposed to be risk.
We’re designed for it, and we actually used to thrive on it.
We still can. It’s really the mindset that is killing us more than any financial instability can.
There’s no way that a corporate job, a cushy office, and heck, even a really good manager is supposed to be peak level fulfillment and self actualization for all 8 billion of us.
Ironically, like Kara mentioned in the TikTok, when we strive to go on this “paved” path, we end up in a new version of survival. Except, this one most likely compromises our dreams and passions.
Yes, we achieve comfort and we’re at least surviving, but are we truly living?
Are we being challenged for our specific and unique skill sets and interests? Are we fully maximizing our strengths?
It’s not impossible, just unlikely that one job or even a series of 4–5 over a lifetime can truly do that for us.
Fulfillment is lifelong journey that you can’t get on a silver platter
Once you realize that money is a means to an end, what you can afford starts to change no matter what it’s your bank account.
What I’ve decided for myself is that my values of freedom, authenticity, joy, achievement, and growth are much more than a job can pay me.
They’re what brings me happiness and if you analyze your life hard enough, you’ll realize there’s usually three to five values that always guide you in a better direction than what society tells you to do.
If you want to optimize just having more money, go for it, but you can’t always guarantee you’ll be fulfilled.
Ironically, the more I went towards my passions, values, and interests, I attracted more money than I ever had before. Leaving corporate based on my passions for Marketing and experimenting my way into Social Media Freelance got me 3x my monthly income in just 6 months.
“Coincidence? I don’t think so.”
We can’t all live the same life
In my opinion, each of our lives are supposed to take us down these strange paths with twists and turns unique to us.
It makes sense how back then you heard of people having these really niche jobs like “shoemaker” “blacksmith” and “farmer”. Just like now, I am pleased to hear when people are sneakerheads who collect and sell shoes for a living, or create content about their love for productivity, or even make professional sounds for movies (i know right, it’s called a foley artist).
This makes sense because we want different things out of life and our definitions of happiness are not the same.
Don’t just take it from me…I took it to TikTok and this is what they said:
Why are we pretending we’ll all find it at a huge corporation? It’s not that no one there is living through their purpose but is it realistic that everyone is fulfilled?
I don’t buy that we think we’ll find happiness at a desk job. I think it makes more “sense”.
It’s practical, it’s logical, and it’s safe. In a way, it’s easier…at first. It’s safety, what we all crave on a psychological level.
But we want happiness, adventure, and fulfillment, which most of the time require risk, loss, challenge, uncertainty, and temporary pain if you do it right.
“Okay yeah, I’m unhappy at my desk job but I can’t afford to live off my passions right now?!”
Kara mentions in her video that every time she went toward corporate desk jobs, she noticed she just wasn’t as happy, but financially stable.
When she went toward her passions and hobbies, she was happy but financially unstable.
Although it might seem like a never ending compromise, there is a world where you can have both.
The issue is that when we go towards our passions and our interests, we expect to be able to pay bills with it immediately, as if we were being paid by an employer.
Your employer pays you immediately because you are doing something for them (and hopefully for yourself but that isn’t always the case).
When you work for yourself or create your OWN work, you are doing it for YOU. There’s a natural price to pay for it and that is patience, time, and uncertainty.
Most of us are unwilling to sit in this for longer than a few weeks and automatically default to the norm.
“Successful people” are really just willing to endure that uncertainty for a little longer than others because it never lasts forever if you’re determined and aligned with the work you create for yourself.
What is a few years of discomfort, effort with little results, and living paycheck to paycheck if you live the next 20–30 years reaping all of the rewards?
Not to mention, those few years of uncertainty and discomfort actually might shape you into the person you want to be. You may not even notice how little money you have or views you have on your video because you’re excited, vibrant, and mentally stimulated.
Let’s be honest, some of us are just using our corporate job salary to make up for the joy and purpose we lack on a day to day.
“So what do I do? I’m not ready to start.”
This is going to sound silly, but just do. Literally do more.
The pain isn’t so much in the financial instability (even though it feels like it — and if you’re below poverty lines, this message isn’t for you), it’s in the lack of action, the regret, and the existential dread from considering so many possibilities that you’ve never even attempted to realize.
Financial stability only leads to one thing unless you still actively fight it.
Comfort.
Nothing worth having in life is comfortable all of the time. So start, even if you can’t leave your job or afford that gym membership right now.
Start doing anything that gets you closer to that goal. If you’re like me, you’ll need to bask in the joy and fulfillment after work or in your free time to realize how much more alive you feel doing that thing instead of what you spend 40 hours of your week on.
For me, it was making videos and writing content like this. When you know what you’re leaving on the table for 40 hours of your life each week, that rush of excitement when you’re in flow doing what you love will slowly start enabling you to rearrange things in your life.
You’ll start to realize that the dream life you always think and talk about actually isn’t that far away — and if you don’t start today, the pain of not knowing will be worse than the discomfort of starting.
If you want to keep up with my journey and advice about entrepreneurship, Marketing, content creation, and life in my 20’s, follow me on my platforms or set up a chat!
I’d love to get to know you and see what we create together. 😉
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