I’d like to start by saying that I do not feel old.
When you’re 18 or 19, 28 seems fucking ancient. Then you arrive at 28 and realize you still feel like you’re 18 or 19. The only difference is that I now feel like absolute shit after a night of drinking, whereas I used to feel stupendous after being absolutely fucking plastered.
I’m writing this to tell the younger version of myself that aging is okay … as long as you’re moving forward. You see if I had fucked about and woken up at 28 living like I was still in high school, obsessing over my next vacation and working a job that sucked the soul out of me, I might feel like dog shit getting older.
I suppose I’d feel like dog shit because I wasn’t doing the things I really wanted to be doing. I wasn’t being the person I really wanted to be. Which brings me to the thing that I realized during my 27 to 28 transition.
To become the person you really want to be may require a good amount of boring shit.
Let me explain. I want to be a successful business person, I want to build enduring brands, and be respected as a real fucking deal entrepreneur. I don’t want to be one of these fly-by-night course hucksters, and I really don’t want to drop ship some garbage made in a fucking shithole in China.
So to be that person I decided I needed to wake up by 5 am every day.
That means I go to bed at 9 PM most nights. That means no social life, partying, late-night NETFLIX binges, nothing. It means I read and go to bed.
Now I’m not trying to hype up waking up early. I understand people succeed being night owls or whatever the fuck. I get it. I’m simply telling you that going to bed and waking up early didn’t come naturally to me and because I decided this was a prerequisite to success I had to force myself to do something that in the short term sucked.
That’s the hard truth. I think that we think that the goal will feel worth the hard work in the moment. We get hyped up about getting in shape and think “Fuck yeah! Going to the gym is going to be awesome”. And then after 3 weeks we quit because we don’t look like Ronnie Coleman yet.
Discipline.
Motivation comes and goes.
Sometimes you have to simply say “fuck it, I’m going to keep going” even when you fucking hate it. Even when it seemingly doesn’t make sense.
Now maybe you read all this and you’re fucking jazzed up. You’re ready to fucking go and do it. Go do it. But remember tomorrow will feel different. A week from now will feel different. It will be harder.
If you stick with it, the only reward you’ll get will come in a year from now when you can sit and reflect on how far you’ve come.
Cheers to future you.
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