How to Defeat Desperation
It all started when I finished high school. I only wanted to be a good son.
I thought to myself, “Johnson, you’re an adult now, you’ve got to pull your weight. Mum and Dad have been working themselves to the bone for you. Now it’s time to repay them.”
I had these grand dreams of making it big, making five figures a month, buying my old man a car, finally taking Mum to Sydney. That was in 2008.
It’s now 2016. Dad’s still working, Mum’s retired and looking after my 3-year-old daughter at home and I’m running round in circles.
It’s tiring, running around in circles for eight years. I’m not proud of it, but I thought I’d talk about it with you today so that maybe you could learn something from it.
A while back, there was a thing on LinkedIn where thought leaders in various fields wrote what they would tell their 20-year-old self. It seem ridiculous that a 26-year-old would want to do this, but I have two words to tell myself from six years ago. These two words, while direct in their instruction, are often ignored by anyone wanting to do anything big. I’ll tell you what they are at the end of this piece.
I want to first address why I’m writing this today. I want to talk about a problem that’s been bugging me for the last eight years. It’s single-handedly prevented me from attaining the success I want so badly. Many people suffer from it — some, for their whole lives. You might be trying to purge yourself from it right now.
I’m talking about desperation.
It’s a disgusting feeling, isn’t it? To me, it feels like you’re stuck in a corner. The walls are slowly closing in on you, but not enough to kill you. The closer it comes, the slower it moves. You feel like you have less and less oxygen with every breath you take.
It’s caused by a whole range of things working against you:
- your friends going further in their careers,
- your family putting pressure on you to get married sooner,
- your spouse earning more than you do,
- yourself getting older and running out of time,
- your children growing up… the list goes on.
To make matters worse, our minds love finding new things to feel desperate about, as if hard-wired to make our lives miserable. All you can do is continue doing what you’re doing. Meanwhile, the walls are closing in.
I look back now and think how naive I was. I would put my monthly affiliate marketing income goals on my wardrobe door. I can’t remember clearly, but I’m pretty sure I wanted to hit six-figures a month in revenue at 25.
Yet, I couldn’t tell you what my market’s pain points were. I couldn’t tell you what keeps them up at night or what they wanted to believe about themselves. I didn’t respect the market.
I wanted to be the son who became the central provider for his own family, as well as for his aging parents (don’t we all?). I still do.
Desperation made me impatient. It made me jump from opportunity from opportunity. I knew a lot about a little, but I’ve been in the same spot. Like Greg McKeown says in “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less”, I took a single step in 1,000,000 different directions.
Now, I’m at a fork in the road. I could keep doing the same thing as I had been for the last eight years, or I could do something different. All I knew was that I had to defeat desperation once and for all.
I can’t say that I’ve got a complete handle on it, but here’s what I’m doing to fight back against it and regain some control in my life and finally start moving in the right direction:
Stop sabotaging yourself.
There is a quote you might have read being attributed to Einstein:
The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Man is incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation.
It’s actually believed that Leo Cherne an American economic, public servant and commentator is the person who first said this.
If you stop and think about it, our minds truly are brilliant. How can this 3-pound glob of matter feel such a vast range of emotions, from love to hate, envy to generosity, tranquility to desperation?
For many of us, we’re trapped in our minds, a victim of the maelstrom of hormones surging through our body as it responds to thoughts and external stimuli. For those more self-aware, we know it’s just this 3-pound mass of matter messing with us.
Desperation doesn’t serve any functional purpose. Sure, it might make you more vigilant, but when it drags you down, what’s the point?
Anyway, this is how I nullify the effect of desperation when I feel it creeping in. I make sure I’m aware that I’m feeling it. I let it surround me. Then, once I know how it feels, I summon positive thoughts that help me exorcise these desperation demons.
Like conjuring a Patronus in Harry Potter, it’s important to have strong thoughts. It’s even more important to acknowledge the feeling. If you can’t, then it’s consumed you.
The interview with successful you.
Pretend you already are the successful you. Someone from a magazine, podcast or blog wants to interview you to find the secret of your success. what do you tell them?
This is not only fun, but it forces you to think about what’s making you feel desperate and truly holding you back. I’ve thought about this a few times and this is how the interview with me might go:
Interviewer: “Hello and welcome to ABC Podcast! Today, we’ve got Johnson Kee! In 2016, he decided he’d commit to his dream of being a writer. A mere 12 months later, he’s been published in Huffington Post, Inc and Business Insider. Not only that, he’s got a Kindle Bestseller that’s been in #1 for four weeks now. Welcome to the show Johnson!”
Johnson: “Thanks for having me.”
Interviewer: “Johnson, I’ll ask the number one question people have on their minds: how did you do all this, while still working a full-time job?”
Johnson: “I wish I had a secret, but it really came down to one thing: I had to change my mindset. From the day I turned 18, I put myself under pressure to start hitting six-figures in monthly revenue within five years. Never happened. My sense of desperation and worthlessness only compounded after I had my first child. The turning point came one day when I realised I’d been going around in circles until that point. I needed to stop, breathe and accept it wasn’t the end of the world if I didn’t reach my goals.”
Give yourself 3 years to succeed.
3 years. Seems like a long time. 1095 days. Still seem long? Cut it any way you would like, but to do anything worthwhile, you need to think in terms of years, not days, weeks or months. Every single brand you know and trust took years to build. Authors whose books have shaped who you are took years to write.
Some people don’t even get the luxury of three years to achieve what they want. Maybe they’ve been diagnosed with aggressive stage 4 cancer. Maybe they have been incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit. You can do anything you want with your time. Take three years and make them the most productive, life changing three years of the rest of your life.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Oh and the two words I would tell a 20-year-old Johnson about success: BE PATIENT.
Thanks for reading! I write for people in their 20’s who, like me, find adulting needlessly painful. If you could ❤ this article and share it with a fellow turd muffin who finds it hard to adult, I’ll think the world of you. Comment and I’ll write back within 24 hours… if I’m not on Netflix.
