The Cold Truth: You’re Not Unhappy, You’re Insecure
You need to define your values.
Two weeks into my first job as an investment banker and I already wanted to quit. I averaged 80 hours both weeks and my VP already chewed me out over a ridiculous formatting issue.
I felt like an idiot. I felt like wasted talent. I couldn’t take it. Why was I here?
I still vividly remember calling my dad on that second Friday. I snuck out of the office mid-afternoon and stood on the Battery Park harbor. I told my dad I needed to quit.
Then, somehow, I completed my two-year analyst stint.
I often felt unhappy during those two years and attributed those feelings to external circumstances — that my bank wasn’t getting enough deal flow, that the hours were too long, and that things could’ve been different had I tried harder in college. But I was wrong. I felt unhappy because I was insecure; insecure because I never defined my values.
Insecurity is an invisible force constantly at our side. It is the consistent veil of personal need to meet our own expectations or society’s expectations of us. It makes us behave in a way to avoid a certain outcome. For me, that was avoiding recognizing investment banking was not for me.
I feared becoming the guy who couldn’t make it as an analyst. I feared my peers chastising me and calling me a fake or an idiot. And so I chugged along, slaving through the 80+ hour weeks to convince myself I was a genuine banker.
I became numb.
Insecurity robbed me of my identity. Every day I felt like a husk — a soulless creature, monkeying away at excel, dancing to expectations set by my insecurity. Six months into the job, recruiting season began for the buy-side (private equity and hedge funds). Everyone wanted to move to the buy-side. The peer pressure got to me and I surrendered what autonomy I had left by mixing in my colleague’s expectations: I was going to the buy-side or I was going to die trying. I began evaluating my own happiness and success by “measuring myself with other people’s yardsticks”.
I was ebbing and flowing to the whims of my insecurity.
But my disdain for investment banking stemmed from something deeper than insecurity. Insecurity was a symptom, not the problem. The problem was not defining my values and framing investment banking within those values.
Let me guess: you’re currently cruising through your job to reach some fluffy short-term goal. Perhaps it’s that promotion, the chance to lateral into another industry, or a big fat end-of-year bonus. You behave accordingly to avoid fucking up. Society and your friends tell you “you’re doing well!” but you still feel unhappy. Well, I’ve got bad news — you’re in the passenger seat, and your insecurity is driving the car.
There is an opportunity cost to everything you do. Every day you spend at your current job is a day you take away from something else. You don’t see this because you don’t know what will happen otherwise. And oftentimes, “the risk not taken is more dangerous than the risk taken”. You are currently paying a cost real-time just so you could live up to other people’s standards. When you zoom out, you will see you’re putting the decision making in the hands of your insecurity.
The worst part about insecurity is that you’re avoiding an outcome that is totally subjective. There is no universal static truth — standards are constantly in flux and their expectations are feeding your insecurity.
If you are unhappy, you need to control your insecurity by defining your values. Start with the following questions below, then ask yourself “why?” five times. This will help you uncover your core values.
What do you deeply care about?
What specifically are your non-negotiables?
What challenges you to become a better person?
What motivates you to keep going when you feel at 0%?
What excites you so much you forget to eat lunch or dinner?
What puts a smile on your face?
Understand that if you’re unhappy, it’s more likely that you’re insecure. Recognize your insecurities and then confront them by defining your values. Once you define your values, you will create a security anchor. You will then know what goals to pursue and what really matters.
And when you reframe your situation through the lens of your values, you may realize the societal pressure to do X job or join Y Company will no longer be attractive because they no longer align with your values.
So let your values, not your insecurities, drive you. They are your North Star and you should behave in every way to follow them.
Inspired by Philosophize This, Andy Dunn’s “The Risk Not Taken”, and Mark Manson’s “How Do You Measure Your Life?”. Thanks to Grace Kim for edits.
We are Tim & Tom, twin brothers sharing personal stories and opinions from millennials on life.
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