Note to Self | The Lonely Chapter

Note to self

No one roots for you when you need it. They want you to do well, just not better than them.

The Lonely Chapter

When you begin to grow, there will be a time when you feel too different to fit in with the people you know and the friends you have, but not successful enough in your desired path to fit in with the people you want to be around - the people you aspire to emulate. It's the lonely chapter.

Flying Solo

Before you really start, and after you've already won - that's when people will root for you, when you need it the least. No one's there when you sleep in the office to save on rent. Nobody claps when you sell your car to make a payment. Be okay with being the only person in the auditorium and clap anyway. Root for yourself - and prioritize the work you've identified as meaningful and necessary to get you where you wanna go, rather than the distant outcomes you're chasing. The work is the goal. If you did the work, you're on the path. The path of the exceptional is one of exception. You expected this to be hard, and this is what hard looks like. Expectations now match reality. There's a silver lining, in that just because you're not in the "in group," you're not in the "out group," automatically, either. Looking at it like you're an outcast doesn't serve you. Feeling isolated and shamed for making an effort to grow doesn't serve you. You're in transition, growing out of one and into another, and while in this metamorphosis you can achieve a disproportionate amount of work, because there are no distractions. Completing that work can get you into the new group, you beautiful butterfly, you. In my last post I said that repetition negates luck. Doing something over and over again will make you really good at it, especially if you review each iteration to identify what went right (and do more of that) and discover what went wrong (and do less of that). But doing something over and over again takes a lot of time. Moreover, you're doing something over and over again while expecting different results. No wonder your friends are acting like you've gone crazy. You can't be both exceptional and understood. Some people will fall out of your life and that's okay. People say, "you've changed" because they don't know how to say, "you've grown." In the end, those who matter won't mind the efforts you're putting forward to make a change in your life, and those who will mind, won't matter.