The Pain Of Chasing Your Dream

On Thursday afternoon I had a meltdown. It came out of the blue and caught me by surprise.

It was lunch time. Right after I’d finished one of my famous Rainbow bowls.

I suddenly felt that I was split too thin. That I wasn’t doing any one thing properly. It created a downward spiral and before I knew it there was no stopping.

I sighed as I watched it come on.

We’ve been here before. Nothing new.

But the pain hurts all the same.

I’m tweeting. I’m making videos for iG and Tiktok. I’m writing my newsletter. I’m trying to make it on Medium. I’m writing a book.

On top of that I’m launching a new campaign for my client.

Wtf am I actually doing?

That’s the thing about ‘following your dreams’.

It’s short for ‘do anything you feel like doing while having no actual idea what you are doing’.

Chasing this dream of creating a content empire that leaves an impact in the world has turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

I thought by now I’d be interviewed on Dan Koe’s podcast.

But no.

A lot of time I’m just doubting myself and learning to fight back a lot of suck-ass feelings. There is no hierarchy. No clear division of labor.

You are the boss.

You are the creative.

You are the entrepreneur.

You are the critic and the cheer leader.

Sometimes it all turns into a big giant swirl and it’s impossible to make out what’s what.

I hate swirls. I like one-flavored ice-cream. 

That’s what really irks me about this whole ‘chase your dream’ business.

1. Your ego and your higher self are constantly fighting each other

I call the higher self Selva. La selva in Spanish means rainforest or jungle — wild, mythical and full of life.

Anyways, your ego and Selva are always fighting.

When I have a bad week — I don’t keep up with exercises, I use my phone all the time, I’m not meditating — my ego feeds on mindlessness like the mosquitos here feeding on my sweet blood.

It gains the strength of Mike Tyson’s and it beats me up like one.

• Nothing you do is working

• You’ve made no progress.

• It’s been over a year and you’ve built nothing

• Should’ve focused on building your agency.

• You think you’re too good for money?

• You have no idea what you want

• Who’s gonna read your book?

Weeks like that, I sleep a lot. There is a mountain high resistance and I am too weak to climb it.

That’s the thing about working on your dreams. At the early stage, it is so ambiguous. There is so much doubt.

There are countless directions you can go; endless ideas you can chase.

When you do go down one path, you’re constantly thinking about the other 999 and wondering if you’re making a mistake.

Once I drove 2 hours up North in a blizzard. The biggest I’ve ever seen. My windshield wipers were going at full speed while my car was moving at 10 MPH. For hours it was impossible to see more than 5 feet ahead.

That’s what it feels like most of the time.

2. It is soooooo f*cking lonely

Nobody can prepare you for this. It doesn’t matter how many times you hear it, it’s like hearing about the pain of a sucker punch and actually getting sucker punched.

What you really want to do — it can’t really be explained to anyone else. Most of the time you don’t even understand it yourself.

It’s constantly changing, constantly eluding you.

It manifests itself when it is ready and only then do you get to understand what the hell you’ve been doing all this time.

Yet this elusive work is your only friend. Because when your actual friends want to hang out, you’re most likely catching up on work from your last meltdown.

The funny thing is it’s exactly what you need.

Only in solitude is your Selva free to speak and help you decide what to do.

3. It requires extreme discipline

I don’t mean just the discipline to do the work. That would be too simple.

Because of how vicious your mind gets when you’re in this phase, you have to be extremely disciplined at nurturing your Selva so she has a chance to fight back. It means cutting out unconscious behaviors like:

• scrolling / watching TV / getting caught up in the news

• getting stuck in the past or future

• overworking

If you don’t, you will be in this constant state of thinking you’re not working hard enough.

Your head is full of doubts.

You constantly seek validation and you’re always comparing your progress to someone else’s.

All of that will kill your creativity. It leads to doing work that isn’t true to you just to escape the hell your ego created.

That’s why a lot of people start out on one path and later find themselves somewhere they don’t recognize at all.

When you’re shaking behind the wheel in the middle of the blizzard, it makes all the difference whether you’re thinking:

holy fuck this is bad. There’s still a long way to go and I’m not going to make it.

OR

this is bad and I need to be alert. But if I focus on what I’m doing, one step at a time, I will get there.

If you’re not disciplined at cultivating positivity and grounding yourself in the present moment⎯

You are always fighting an uphill battle.

That’s the hell an entrepreneur or artist goes through.

Makes you ask yourself why not just go back to that 9–5, doesn’t it?

I ask myself that all the time.

But am I really going to turn my back on something because it’s hard?

I chose the easy thing once and I know exactly what that’s like.

I will be spending the rest of my life pretending like I didn’t take the easy way out. Like I don’t know I’m making excuses, numbing my emotions and drowning out the only voice that speaks the truth.

I will use money to solve all my problems.

I’ll even solve other people’s problems like I’m some kind of martyr desperately crying: ‘look at this. Isn’t this good enough?’

And the answer will always be no.

Because here’s the deal:

Life isn’t at all about making money and giving it away.

If it really is that simple millionaires would be the epitome of happiness.

The leaders of the world would become beacons of sunshine and they’ll hold hands and sing happy songs and teach all of us how to be happy.

What do we have instead?

Wars, manipulation, dishonesty, exploitation.

Money moves the most destructive, evil parts of our world.

You really think somehow on the micro level, within you and I, it’s harmless?

I’m not saying you’re not allowed to make money. You just can’t put it in the driver’s seat. Your Selva needs to be driving at all time.

And yes, that’s hard.

It requires a genuine connection with yourself.

It requires digging for your authenticity until your hands bleed.

It requires exposing the most vulnerable part of you for everyone to see.

But look at the alternative.

The world really needs you to stop taking the easy way out.

It’s time.