5 Hard Lessons Wish I Knew When I At 18
If I could do it all again.
Earlier this week, I stumbled across a picture of when I was 18 years old and living in Eugene, Oregon.
I was a freshman in college, and the life that I am now living wasn’t just an impossibility, it was so far removed from what I was doing at the time that I couldn’t have dreamed it up if you had given me all the shrooms in the Cascades.
In the last 8ish years, I’ve learned and grown a lot. I’ve had some really cool experiences and I get to keep having more because I keep trucking down this path.
But still, it hasn’t been the smoothest sailing to get here. There have been countless defeats, depressions, failures, and moments where I’ve contemplated giving it all up and becoming an accountant (something that without a doubt I’d be terrible at).
When I look back at the last 8 years and try to reconsider my options, there are really 5 main lessons I wish I’d known.
Let’s dive in.
You either need a supportive partner or no partner.
While trying to do Jiu-Jitsu for a living, I have struggled in many different ways.
I’ve struggled financially, I’ve struggled with anxiety, I’ve struggled with injuries, and I’ve struggled personally as well. It’s just kind of a hard thing and this lifestyle involves a lot of struggling.
Granted, these are mostly struggles I’ve chosen, but they’re still struggles. They still weigh on me and wear me out from time to time.
To make matters worse, I decided to become a writer on top of Jiu-Jitsu. It’s kind of like trying to be a pro wrestler and a painter, or a rockstar and a lacrosse player. It might be noble, but the chances of profit are not guaranteed and the chances of stress are very high.
Because of this, you need to be careful about the kinds of people you allow into your life. This is especially true for romantic partners. I’m lucky to have a very good one right now.
In general, you want to avoid people who cause you added anxiety, who put pressure on you and make your already challenging life more challenging.
If you want to deal with a crazy partner, don’t get a crazy job.
And, perhaps most importantly, if you find yourself in a streak of partners that are a bad fit, you are probably the problem. This means no partner for a while.
Figure your life out before you try to make a life with someone else.
It’s hard to feel good about yourself when you’re not good at anything.
We live in a world where we’re taught that we should have self-esteem.
But should you really have self-esteem? Should everyone really believe in themselves?
I’m not so sure.
People seem to feel uncomfortable with the idea of other people struggling to believe in themselves, so instead of actually teaching people how to build confidence, a lot of people try to “manufacture confidence”. This is how the whole self-help industry gets to exist. This is why motivational speakers make so much money.
They literally feed off the doubts of others.
The problem is that the “manufactured confidence” that you get from self-help books or those stupid alpha motivation videos is not real confidence. It’s synthetic. True confidence comes from seeing positive results in front of you. From doing something, building a skill, and seeing yourself improve.
So yes, there’s going to be a period of any endeavor when you’re not going to believe in yourself, and maybe this is a good time to read some philosophy or a self-help book. But if you really want to be confident (like, truly confident), you have to earn it.
No one can give it to you.
You’re never going to “get there”.
I’ve always worked tirelessly at writing and BJJ, and in the early days especially, I was doing this work because I thought there was some grand, end goal I was chasing.
I thought that the choices that I was making were in some way going to lead to some sort of end goal that would make me feel secure in myself.
At first, it was winning a major IBJJF tournament. Then I did that. Then it was becoming a high-level black belt. Then I did that too. In my experience, no goal ever fulfills you for more than a couple of weeks.
All of the goals and accomplishments over the years are great and cool, but they have never made me feel complete or whole.
Once you get one, you need another.
At first, I thought this was because I wasn’t really being compensated for winning BJJ tournaments, but the same has been true for writing, which is how I make most of my money right now.
When I hit X amount of subscribers on my newsletter, it didn’t change my life. Neither has going viral on Medium or Quora or Twitter, becoming a ghostwriter, or making money just from my words.
Goals in general are great things to work towards, but you’re never going to reach “the promised land”.
This is why it’s best to chase goals that involve a process that you truly enjoy. This leads us nicely into the following point.
Take yourself less seriously.
I don’t think I take myself too seriously now, but that is a direct result of years of taking myself extremely seriously.
From having a stick up my ass, all the time, from the time I was about 12 until the time I was about 24.
In the pursuit of trying to prove all the things I’ve wanted to prove to myself and the world, I’ve realized that the best things in life are better when you’re not taking yourself too seriously. You need to be able to take a joke — especially at your own expense.
This is a good way to make friends, be less nauseating to be around, and ironically, improve your skills in different endeavors. People who don’t take themselves too seriously also tend to get frustrated way less than people who take themselves extremely seriously.
I don’t have any science on this, but I’m definitely right.
Don’t believe me? Do your own research. Life is better when you don’t care too much because you have the energy to care about the right things.
Go be funny. Go have fun. Make the world a better place simply by being positive.
You have to work really f*cking hard to be good at something. Harder than you think.
This is a weird one, especially because so far today I’ve told you to not care too much, that all your hard work is going to lead to basically nowhere, and that self-esteem has to come from working on something.
I’ve kind of contradicted myself a bit.
It’s no wonder it was so hard for me to keep a girlfriend when I was younger because I can barely figure this crap out now.
Basically, I’ve found that in order to become highly competent at something, you need to work your ass off. You need to push yourself.
Also, in the process of doing this, you aren’t going to believe in yourself. There’s going to be a period of time (probably longer than you think, unless you’re naturally very gifted or naturally very confident) where you’re going to think you suck and your results are going to tell you you suck, but you need to persist through this period and “not care too much”.
This is why it’s so important to enjoy the things that you want to do well.
Unless you’re a complete masochist, you probably won’t do the work to be exceptional at something that you hate doing. You’ll probably give up when the going gets tough because the act of practice is more miserable than the predicament of being bad at the thing.
This is why a lot of blue belts quit Jiu-Jitsu — they can’t handle that they’re not good “yet” despite putting in a lot of time at building their skill. They lack persistence, despite thinking they have it.
It’s tough to get good at stuff. It takes a while. You have to kill yourself a bit to get really good at something — especially when it’s something competitive.
However, if you choose the right thing, this hard work will never feel like an option, it’ll feel like an obligation.
That, I think, is the most important lesson I’ve learned in the last 8 years.
The best things in life are never out of reach, but they almost always take a bit more effort than you think.
Closing Thoughts
With this article, I tried to be as black and white as possible.
There are no shortcuts, life hacks, or bullshit. Everything in these words has been a part of my experience in the last 8 years. I’ve done all this stuff, and it’s given me strong frameworks to live on. I don’t feel that I’m a weak or insecure person anymore, and I certainly was when I was younger.
The 5 lessons again, before you go:
You either need a supportive partner or no partner.
It’s hard to feel good about yourself when you’re not good at anything.
You’re never going to “get there”.
Take yourself less seriously.
You have to work really f*cking hard to get good at something. Harder than you think.
None of these lessons are easy to apply to your life, but they’ve all been true for me. All this article really is is a catalog of my experience of being a mess when I was younger and being a bit less of a mess now.
I hope you have learned something from it or at the very least, were entertained as you worked your way through this article. I hope I at least gave you something to think about.
Also published this week:
A bit of a lighter week because of the holiday, but I’ll be back with the next long-form piece early next week! Hope you had a great Thanksgiving :)
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