If You've Ever Been Overwhelmed

Please read this.

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Something to Read: A Story About Running Yourself Thin

Has there ever been a time you feel overwhelmed by both work and life?

That feeling of mental buildup like a clogged kitchen sink.

With no understanding when or how it started — we may feel hopeless.

You’re not alone in the journey and that’s where many of us go wrong.

High achievers tend to lean on themselves in rough patches without seeking any help from outside resources or people.

They take on more & more tasks and set higher goals just to reach this state of success.

And to further explain the implications of this hustle culture ideology, I’d like to introduce an example.

The series of quotes below was written by one of our private discord members on the perils of being over-ambitious.

Hope his new found perspective can impact at least one of you:

I spoke to a private equity guy that asked me what I wanted and why.

He was like "why do you need to work long hours?"

"Why do you have to make globs of money, for what?"

It made me realize how much I just don't need half the shit I was working for. I don't need to run a company that profits millions of billions of dollars every year to be successful or happy.

I literally would like to earn 250k residually. That would allow me to do everything I want to do and more.

I had such a roundabout way of getting to what I wanted through operating a Sisyphian business that would require active participation to continue operating.

He was like "bro, just raise capital and be a GP on a PE fund. You don't even have to be the operator. You'll get paid, you'll get experience, and you'll build relationships with a lot less effort."

I said...damn. that's facts

Also, I realize I literally just need to put 5M in a mutual fund and get 5% interest every year to live how I want to live. Period. That would get me 250k/year that I want.

It can be so simple. I was just making it complicated with a series of pointless ambitions.

A lot of the time I felt like I would be missing out on some big opportunity and that's true. I can't help but miss out on opportunities. It just is. We're all missing out all the time. I just need to be happy with my lot in life and cultivate my own growth.

It's like without a host of ambitions to make an absurd amount of money I've lost my compass. That's not the highest priority to me anymore. I can literally accomplish everything I want to in life in the space of a year to a few years. It's crazy.

I never thought life could be so easy but it just doesn't have to be a difficult thing. We just make life difficult because of the decisions we make.

Now Enter You

Where are you in life? What’s missing?

Is your desired future depicted by you and only you?

Or is your desired future a cumulation of opinions from friends and family?

Are you taking on multiple projects to speed up the process to your definition of success?

And do you try and keep up with the Joneses?

Now you have to ask yourself what’s the root cause of your burnout.

Where and when did it begin — then reverse engineer out of it.

Anecdotally speaking, my burnout was rooted in impatience along with letting others define success.

So hustle as much as you want or as little as you want.

Just make a promise to yourself to never be a slave to your ambitions.

Something to Watch:

The Other Side of Burnout | Matt D’Avella

This is a conversation between two business owners and the peaks of success along with the valleys of burnout.

I found several translatable takeaways from this ~9 minute clip.

A Song to Listen to:

Brent Faiyaz - Trust

Listen to this track and many others on La Fórmula, a playlist by Modern Analects

A Tweet to Think About:

If you enjoyed anything above — make sure to share with others and spread whatever you feel was valuable.

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Until next week,

Burak from Modern Analects