How to Destroy Your Life

When I was a freshman in high school I took some intro to personal finance class

Where we started to learn about careers, money management, how to write a check, etc and I remember being handed a sheet of possible careers after graduating college

and the sheet would show the career and then the rough salary range for the career, and one by one I slid my finger down the paper going through the top paying careers

“surgeon: $300,000 - $500,000/yr” well I am def not going to do that much school to try to become a surgeon

“lawyer: $100,000 - $300,000/yr” well again, too much school and not interested

and finally I landed on investment banking, the range was $100,000 - $200,000 where you only had to do four years of school, and then you could be making up to $200,000/yr within your first 5 years of starting

I’m looking into this more, if I went to a target school, and then moved to a big city after, sure the hours would be 80-100 hours per week but I’d be raking in money

I finally had a reason to care about school (I did very “eh” in middle school, think I had maybe a 3.0 GPA at best)

I decide to lock in on school, my freshman year I have a 3.9, I end up graduating at the top of my class somewhere around 30th out of 500 kids

I did everything right, I got into some good schools, I went to a relatively good school, I began taking some finance classes

but there was a MASSIVE issue

I didn’t want to be like a single person I met and I couldn’t care at ALL about what I was learning

no one around me had the same ambitions I did, I didn’t want to wait until I was 50 to get everything I ever wanted, nor did I want to wait to live a life that I’d love

so how do you destroy your life?

by settling for a “good enough” life

had I continued on my path, my life would have been “good enough” — I would have gotten a good enough job, a good enough apartment, surrounded by people that were good enough

and with that — you slowly start to extinguish the flame that was burning inside of you

at this point I had to decide, do I push all my chips in and go all in at building a life that I love, or do I settle for a “good enough life”

and for me that decision was possibly the easiest I had ever made, because I couldn’t imagine the regret later on of not doing it

and if you’re at the cross roads of making a decision right now, it’s actually probably a lot easier of a decision than you think

and in fact, you probably know the answer, but you’ve been waiting for someone else to give you permission to go after what you want

you don’t need to think about it as much as you think you do, when you flip a coin you know what side of the coin you want it to land on

when a river forks the water flows in each direction seamlessly — friction is self created chains you place in your own mind

good enough is not good enough — you don’t need to love what you do, you need to build a life you love

good enough is where dreams, ambition, and the fire inside of you go to die

don’t let it die

hope this lit a fire under you on this Monday

Alex