My friend,
You’re going through a time where it feels like your life has been robbed from you. You had an aspiring future planned for you and I say this as a person who’s known you over time, you did the work for the future when others wouldn’t for whatever reason.
Then “life” happened and all your plans went down the gutter and you’re deprived of your opportunities. But in the midst of this, what I still love and admire is you’re not giving up. You haven’t declared your life as unsalvageable, you’re still going to work for your future; but ironically this is giving you the difficult experience of the feeling of loss.
The progress you would have made if you hadn’t had these events! The money, the relationships, the family, and everything else. I feel like I keep telling you about my life stories you didn’t ask for, but I hope you’ll let me entertain you with another life story.
After my military service I got a job at Apple. Now, the me back then was very different from the me you know now; I was deeply insecure and masked my insecurity with arrogance. I looked down on everybody with judgment and made myself feel good with the fact that my life was better than theirs.
I didn’t know this at the time but this was the root of my suffering. Since my confidence is based on living a good life with a good job, I needed to make sure the good life was sustained. I had just started working at Apple so I’ll need to get promoted quickly, preferably quicker than other people who are at my job level.
I’ll also need to buy a house quickly. I’ll need to not buy any house, I’ll need to buy a big house as a symbol of my status. I’ll also need a big car, many big cars. So on and so forth, you get where this is going, right? I was ramping up all of the things I needed to check off in my “list of a good and powerful life”.
Then out of the blue I got a really wild news: I was fired. I suddenly lost my job and everything that I held as important for myself. More importantly I suddenly lost my entire future. I was practically doomed.
But like you I held on to some kind of a hope, perhaps it was more of a desperation at that point. I needed to get my life back. I needed to get another esteemed job and I need to get back on the plan to buy my house and cars. The universe must have really wanted to teach me a lesson because I couldn’t find a job for the life of me.
Months passed and I couldn’t land a job. I perhaps would have had better success if I had lowered my expectations but there was no chance that was going to happen, I wasn’t going to go work at a job only “losers” work at. It sounds ridiculous but this is really how I used to think back then.
Every moment not with a job was a delay in my life and it made even the destination of a good life less desirable. I don’t want a good life when I’m 60; I want a good life as soon as possible and this delay is reducing the value of my good life every second. I hated myself for getting fired, I hated myself for not passing the interviews and continuing to incur delay in my life.
Eventually I got a job and landed in a decent place in life, but the suffering didn’t let me go easily. It kept on reminding me of my failure in the past. “If only you hadn’t!”. The firing was way in the past at this point but I was still suffering from its echoes.
There’s a big assumption here that keeps fueling the suffering. There’s a fundamental presupposition that gives rising to this constant rumination. Can you tell what it is?
The assumption is that I’m right about what’s good for my life.
I was so fucking sure that this version of life was the best that was available for me. But now when I think about it, that just couldn’t be more wrong. If I was living that life, there is no way I would even consider being a life coach. But you know how much I love being a life coach. I can’t imagine my life not being a coach.
I wouldn’t have met you. I wouldn’t have started a YouTube channel. I wouldn’t have written books, I wouldn’t have taught classes and ran programs that changed people’s lives. Most, most, most importantly: I would still be suffering in my life. I hate suffering and I wouldn’t wish suffering onto my most hated enemy, and thanks to how my life had unfolded I am able to be happy now.
It sounds ridiculous to my past self, but I wouldn’t be the happy me today if I wasn’t robbed of the happiness I thought was right for me. And I believe the same is true for you too. Plenty of people suffer with a family, or rather because of their family. Plenty of people suffer while being rich. Plenty of people suffer in this life where they already have the freedom to be happy, because they misunderstand happiness as something they don’t already have.
There is nothing delayed, there is nothing to catch up on. That is the wholehearted truth I believe in for me and for you.
Billy Seol
July Life Coach
julylifecoach.com
