You're in this situation because you got distracted. You lost focus. You gave up your dreams and delighted in the comfort someone promised you. You stopped focusing on the path you were on. You went to school, got the job, and now what? Your thoughts are dominated by bills to pay, work that means nothing to you, and the lack of time or energy to take care of yourself, build something of your own, or truly engage with life. These thoughts multiply endlessly, imprisoning you in a stressed, survival-driven mentality. Life loses its zest. Days become robotic. Opportunities become scarce.
You may be in a rough spot in life right now. The reason you can't tap into a higher state of consciousness is stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and distraction. You lack intention. You let habits slip. You went unconscious for a bit and found yourself in a cloud of responsibilities and cheap desires. You let the thoughts and emotions reproduce and take over. You lost sight of a vision that pulls you to channel the entirety of your energy into it. You lost connection to a higher version of yourself. You lost the why that fueled your ambition.
The first step out is to become disgusted with how far you've dug yourself in. Use that potent negative energy to slingshot out. Commit that it will never happen again. Deeply realize what you don't want and you will discover what you want. Find your why. Hold onto it. Live with intention. Filter all thoughts, advice, opinions, and emotions through your vision. Channel the entirety of your life into it.
"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new." — Socrates
Start completely new. Clear your calendar. Fill your time with learning, building, and experiencing as much as possible. Try everything until you find the one thing you can't pull yourself away from. Then, do it all over again, because you will get lost, and that's okay.
Write it all out — clarity brings direction
You need to reset your life. Because obviously, you aren't going to get where you want to be with who you are right now. You need direction. Intention and curiosity. Intention is what you're stretching toward. An aim for your life. Curiosity is your inner compass for navigating the unknown. Get all of your thoughts and worries on paper. Map out all of your forgotten dreams and goals. Remind yourself of who you want to become. Become brutally aware of where your life will end up if you keep doing what you've been doing.
Write it all down. Your vision. Your anti-vision. Your goals. What skills you need to acquire. What you need to practice. What you need to build. Write out a framework for the next year of your life. Read this every morning. Add to it. Subtract from it. Use it as your frame for noticing and acting on opportunities that would normally pass you by. Condition your mind to run on a new operating system. One that you programmed, not society.
Slowly, then all at once, your mind will transform. Confusion will turn into order. Distraction will turn into clarity. Your mind focuses on a singular goal and the world feeds you the resources to achieve it. You feel invincible. You feel clear. Everything clicks until you achieve the goal and find yourself lost once again. When that happens, repeat this process.
How To Do A Hard Reset On Your Life
As children, we are open. We want to explore the world. But our parents projected their beliefs on us. Our teachers corrected us through negative feedback. They encouraged conformist behavior with good and bad grades. Eventually, we lost our zest for life. Learning wasn't fun anymore because we'd been forced to learn things we didn't care about. Creating wasn't art anymore because all we could think about was if we followed the rules well enough to get a good grade (if we didn't, our parents would scold us, making us hate the things that were meant to set us free.)
Time went on. You continued to trust blindly in those who didn't care what was best for you. You worked hard. You got the degree. You got the job. And all it left you with was crippling debt, work that had nothing to do with what you studied, and a mind that didn't have the skill to do something different. The responsibilities piled up. You struggle to find the time to grow or improve. You silently despise the learning and creating that allows you to take back control of your life.
I beg you to muster up the strength to commit. Commit to one hour a day. Set a meaningful goal. Remind yourself of how much you despise the default path that got you here. Channel that negative energy into a positive creation. Acquire the skills that allow you to produce something of value. Become so good that you can be yourself full-time. Give yourself a year. You can do incredible things in 365 days.
Most people wait for the "right time" to change their lives. There is no right time. There's only now.
If you feel overwhelmed with tasks in your brain, overqualified, unappreciated, underpaid, or stuck at a job that doesn't appreciate your skills, talents, or uniqueness — you are undervalued.
You need a life reset.
This is a process I run through when life gets a bit too rogue. Like when you're constantly thinking back to a time when "life was better." Or when your routines fall apart and all of these little tasks pop up that drain all of your energy in the day.
1) Take Note Of How You Feel
Pull out a notebook and write down:
- Exactly what you are doing on a daily basis
- How you feel morning, afternoon, and night
Take 10 minutes and get specific. This is important for identifying unconscious parasites (time and energy suckers).
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." — Albert Einstein
You need awareness before you can create change. Most people operate on autopilot, wondering why nothing improves. Write it down. Make the invisible visible.
2) Prioritize, Remove, & Restructure
The reason you aren't getting the results you used to is because:
- You feel pressed for time
- You don't have energy to get results
- You stopped doing the things that got results
Look over your list from above. What can you change?
Prioritize the things that will get results. Remove the things that snuck their way into your day (and don't deserve to be there). I can think back to a time I wanted to learn new skills to increase my income. Netflix, soccer, Friday night outs, parties — all off my list.
Restructure specific tasks and obligations to free up more time. Understand that there are enough hours in a day if you prioritize. The rich and the poor have the same 24 hours in a day.
Get the chaotic structure of your mind on paper and reorganize it.
3) Create A Week-Long Plan
You are in this chaotic spot in life because of entropy. The organization of your life (and therefore the mind) tends toward disorder if you don't perform mental housekeeping.
This is dangerous, because you can pick up bad habits along the way. Habits are difficult to break. But you can make the process easier with clarity.
Take 10 minutes. Write out every single thing you are going to do for the next week.
This shouldn't sound crazy or difficult. For example, on my new study calendar, my waking hour was 4am throughout the week. I had the skills I was learning plastered in my weekly schedule. Not a single day without.
This is how you reduce the friction of making better decisions.
Write out:
- Your morning routine
- Your focused work routine
- Other tasks and meetings
- Nightly routine
You will have to experiment as you go. If the routine doesn't flow, go back to your notebook and write what you're going to do the next day.
This is how you create a system for your life. It gets more efficient with time if you make this 'mental housekeeping' a regular practice.
"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." — James Clear
Your life won't change because you want it to. It changes when you build systems that make the change inevitable.
If you have no idea how to structure your days, or want a seamless process to do this, use my Life Reset Planner. This is how I create a balance of work, rest, and play in my daily routine.
Build your own thing for the first hour every day. See where it takes you. Commit to it. Produce something of value that you weren't forced to produce to pay the bills or because your parents or teachers told you to. Your future self is begging you and I know you hear that voice.
Thank you for reading.