You have to be extraordinary. Always.
Six months ago, I set myself a moonshot goal: move to New York to share a new life with my girlfriend, Georgi. I believed she was worth it, and thus I was determined to make it happen.
At the time, I had not a clue on how I was going to do so. I had no plan, nor the necessary means to pursue this moonshot. I didn’t even know where to start, and that’s a pretty overwhelming space to be in. Yet, I had confidence in my own ability to get what I want, if I really wanted it.
And I really wanted it. I really wanted her. So for every day that followed, until this day when I write these words, I gave it my absolute all.
In a few days time, I’ll be moving to New York. Legally, on one of the best work visas one can get. Successfully, into a brilliant job at one of the leading companies in the US. Yet most importantly, into an apartment in Brooklyn with the person I still fall in love with every day.
I got my moonshot, here are some of the things I learned along the way:
The state of ultimatum
Be prepared to put everything on the line. It’s a change of mentality from ‘oh, won’t it be nice if could do this’ to ‘I have to do this’. Simply put, there is no option B. It’s as if there is no other possible reality than the one you’re going for.
This state of ultimatum, if you’ve created it honestly for yourself, can easily be compared to a state of survival. In survival mode, you do whatever it takes to survive. It’s a natural instinct, and in such a state, you often surprise yourself with what you are capable of achieving when your life depends on it.
This was no different. The thought of not having it was always quickly eliminated, and due to such, I was able to give it my all. To be honest, even on the days that I felt like I couldn’t continue, I had no choice to but to do so, for I’d stop at nothing until my goals were reached. You simply have to keep trying.
Trusting your gut
Ask anyone who has set a bold goal for themselves and they’ll tell you that initially there was no clear plan of achieving it, only the strong desire to reach it. You are willingly throwing yourself into the space of the unknown, which is a pretty scary space.
Being constantly surrounded by uncertainty is no easy feat, and without clear plans or progress milestones, it’s hard to always know if you’ll be able to make it. During such times, I could only resort to trusting my gut, and have confidence in my own ability to continue moving forward, even if I don’t exactly know what the next steps are. When I’d say goodbye to her at the airport, when neither of us knew when we will see each other again, I trusted that I’d find a way. When the original visa plans didn’t work out, I trusted that there will be another avenue. When I had to take a risk against all sound advice, I did so knowing that I believe it to be the right move.
Be prepared to lose control
These days, I’m proud to say I do not have many fears. I’ve overcome plenty in my life to build up a fair amount of mental and emotional fortitude. I’m able to deal with most things, and with such comes the confidence to face things I was previously afraid of. Yet, if there is one thing that terrifies me is something being out of my control.
Over these 6 months, there was always a clouding layer of elements being out of my control. Waiting for the visa to be prepared. Waiting for the visa to be approved. Waiting to see if the new job worked out. Waiting to see if your plan to visit her worked out. More than simply waiting, my fate was often sitting in the hands of other people. And when it’s not just your career or your plane ticket — when the fate of your entire life is out of your control — that’s when the fear really hits home.
It’s undoubtedly the most frustrating and nerve-wrecking space to be in. The inability to actively ensure that everything falls into place means that your dream, vision and everything you’ve worked for now sits in the hands of those that quite frankly, do not always have the same drive, will or understanding of your situation and what it means to you.
Thus, again, I learned to trust my gut, to be patient and to be able to focus on the things that were in my control at any given time. I’ve also allowed a small sprinkle of faith in the universe, that for no apparent rational reason, things will just work out like they meant to do, and I believed that this mission of mine was meant to happen.
Be extraordinary
This moonshot, this idea of moving to New York — it wasn’t on my radar for years before. This wasn’t a case of ‘Ah, in 3 years time I want to move to New York, let me start saving up and working towards it’. To say the least, I was ‘caught off guard’. I made a decision and I just had to work with what I currently have to get me there. I couldn’t go back in time and prepare better for the journey that lay ahead.
For the most part, I made do with that reality. Money? I could make more, save more, or work around it. Time I can free up. Job opportunities I can explore and arrange. But there was one crucial aspect of this mission that demanded something that I could not change nor control:
The Visa.
Getting a work visa in the United States is no easy feat. It’s even harder these days under the administration of our favourite orange-haired ‘politician’. To say that I have done enough research into my options is an understatement. By now, I can most probably open my own immigration law practice, but that’s for another article and another time.
My options were, to say the least, rather limited:
- H1B — the standard professional work visa that can now only be applied to once a year (in April), and I have just missed the last round and wasn’t going to wait until April 2018. Even if I was eligible, it is subject to a cap of 65,000 visas a year, which means they run a lottery between 200,000+ applications every year. I didn’t like the time frame, nor these odds, so this was out of the question.
- The L1A Visa — is reserved for inter-company transfer personnel; people in executive, managerial or specialized knowledge positions in foreign companies who wish to come set up shop in the states as a branch of those companies. Whilst it was a potentially viable option, it wasn’t aligned with the job offer that I had lined up, and would have taken further time, money and planning that I had at my disposal.
- Which left me with my third and only option , and certainly the hardest one: the O1 Visa — reserved for ‘Aliens of Extraordinary Ability’.
If you read the criteria for it, it will start with the intimidating lines of requiring the petitioner to have won a Nobel Prize. The last prize I won was a plastic trophy at a weekly amatuer soccer league. If you didn’t win a Nobel Prize, you had to fulfill at least 3 of 8 other criteria, shown below:
After reading through the criteria, as well as some lengthy sample petitions, the fear crippled me. I didn’t think I have the credentials to satisfy these requirements. I didn’t think I was on par with the type of people that get this visa: the PHD scientists, the cancer researches, the internationally recognized filmmakers and professional athletes. I’m a 28-year old dude from humble Cape Town with a bachelor’s degree, 5 years worth of work experience spanning a range of roles and a dream that was now perhaps too big to fulfill.
I needed this visa, it was my only way in, to this life, to this job, to this city, to my girl. But it demanded things now that I have yet to do, and I can’t go back in time to change them. It required me to be extraordinary NOW, not tomorrow or in 5 years time. Simply put, I had to hope that everything I’ve done up until now in my life was impressive and extraordinary enough to meet the criteria. I looked at my resume and reviewed my entire life, and that night, I went to bed feeling beaten, somewhat hopeless, as I didn’t think I’ll make the cut.
The next morning I woke up even more determined with a hightened sense of pride. I may have not done much, but I’m fucking good at everything I’ve done thus far. Everything I’ve been involved with I’ve given my 110%, and I’ve been involved in a lot of different things. I needed to tell that story. It might not be as long a story as the doctor who wrote 100 academic papers, but I’m going to tell a pretty compelling story of why I believe I am extraordinary.
So from that day, and every day for 3 months straight, I went on to write that story. I collected and presented every piece of notable work I’ve done. I’ve gotten testimonials from people I’ve worked with that vouched for my persona and skills. I’ve drafted cover letters, and convinced international unions that I am extraordinary. I wrote articles and published them on international platforms. I went through nail-biting silent periods of reviews and patiently waiting for responses that I never got. By mid September, with the help of some great lawyers, I finally had a 180-page binder file sent to the Vermont Immigration Service Center. Four days later, I got an email saying my O1 petition was approved. No requests for further evidence, no delays, just a straight up approval.
If you ever wanted to see a man cry, let him go through the above, and watch his face when that approval email arrives.
The important takeaway here was my future life was dependent upon my past accomplishments. How I interacted with others, the work that I’ve done, the initiatives I was part of, the ventures I shared — these were the puzzle pieces that will decide whether I get to move forward or not. I was fortunate enough that my past journey was sufficient, but it opened my eyes to an obvious factor:
You never know when this situation might arise again, and you should always be ready to progress when it does. One way of doing so? Be extraordinary, always.
You have to really want it
I think by now it’s quite obvious that none of the above would have worked out if I had only given it a half effort. A moonshot should not only be an ambitious goal, but a personally vital one. It has to be something that you really want, almost to a stage that you absolutely need it, to justify that there is no other option and that you must have it.
This journey was the hardest one I’ve ever undertaken. It tested me through my lowest lows and highest highs. It forced me to deal with sleepless nights, intense anxiety and overwhelming fears. It forced me to deal with failures and the need to continuously get back up to try again, or find another way. No matter the hardship or the steep price at every milestone, it taught me to move forward, and only forward.
Forward towards the one aspect that made it all worthwhile. Forward towards the reward on the other side. Forward towards that which supported me and fueled me every day to overcome and conquer every step of the way. Forward towards the person that was and always will be worth it, enough to justify my will do this all over again if need be.
Forwards towards a new life. Forwards towards her:
Find someone that makes you extraordinary, and be extraordinary for that someone.
