I actually found myself very surprised when I got a failing grade on the first quiz in my freshman psychology class.
This surprise doesn’t make a lot of logical sense. Had I studied hard and failed, that would be logically surprising because my studying hard would have me expect a good grade. Had I known I was going to half-ass the quiz and got a good grade, again that would be logically surprising since based on how I prepared for the quiz I should have failed.
Against logic I half-assed the quiz and expected to get a good grade. I got the quiz back and I didn’t just fail, I recall I got something like 20/100. I did abysmally bad, probably because I prepared abysmally; but I wholeheartedly believed I would get a B or something since I didn’t really try. Like I was entitled to an A if I actually tried.
I dropped the class that day out of embarrassment. I had taken it together with a few friends who were a lot more studious than I was. I remembered how arrogantly I flaunted to them, “Oh the quiz wasn’t that hard”. They passed with flying colors and I was never found in that psychology class ever again.
I clicked the drop button but I didn’t feel the relief I thought I would get. Something about this experience shocked me, and in the face of this new experience I found myself reevaluating the way I lived life. Why did I expect to pass? What about it was so obvious, that a failing grade would shake me this much? Why did I fail so horribly? I had never gotten a grade lower than a D before, and I think I apply more or less the same amount of effort every time. What was different this time? What should I take in place of this class? Shit, I thought I would be pretty good at this stuff. What major do I consider now (up until this point I had considered majoring in psychology) ?
I didn’t answer all of my questions but time didn’t wait for me. By the end of freshman year I had gotten used to failing, and all of my conscious effort went into not failing. I couldn’t drop every class at the first failure, since that would mean I would not have any classes to take! After all I was a student and what else should I be doing instead of studying? By the end of sophomore year I got a glimpse of this idea of, ‘Hmm, maybe I needed to apply myself more. When I don’t apply myself, I seem to be headed towards failing but when I do apply myself, I pass at the very least’.
I took a semester off in junior year to spend some time in Korea with my family, and when I returned to Ithaca some social networks have shifted and I found myself hanging out with a new group of people. Through these new friends I learned how to actually apply myself, and with their help I got into grad school and finished my degree. At the time I felt this sense of confident peace. I knew how to sit down and apply myself until I got things. Things would be difficult in the future but as long as I know what to apply myself on, I can do it. I knew I could do it.
Twelve years passed since I graduated college and that sense of confident peace had helped me find a job when I got fired. It helped me pass the life coaching certification process. I had everything I needed in theory, and in the great expanse of possibilities of owning an online small business with no defined form I found myself paralyzed. What do I apply myself on now? Some teachers offered “solutions” and I applied myself to them but always found a mysterious blocker that seemed to prevent me from getting it.
Spending a few years just applying myself to my limits to be able to confirm to myself “I did everything I could” ended up being a great experience in hindsight, but at the time it gave me a very hard to swallow pill. It taught me this valuable lesson: not everything is about me. Just because I applied myself doesn’t mean I’m entitled to get all the things I want.
Why is that?
On one fall evening like tonight I was preparing an elaborate recipe for an upcoming potluck. Involved recipes are more time consuming than cooking instant noodles but it’s always worth the effort. Instant noodles don’t require a lot of effort because it has only a few steps, but I found myself asking this: isn’t an elaborate recipe like a longer instant noodle?
Completing a longer recipe is up to many different parts of the cooking process, but each individual part follows an established step-by-step process. Getting all the requirements of getting a job or running a business was like following this long and arduous process. At the completion of the recipe I found myself not knowing what to make next because there was no recipe for post-completion. Now that I have a job, what do I do? Do I just… Work here? That feels so empty. Now that I have a registered business, what do I need to do? Do I get another certification and another license? Then when does the actual business begin? I had this vague idea that I needed to work towards happiness and success, but couldn’t find a good recipe for it.
As confusing as it was, this was precisely the reason I didn’t get all the things I want even with effort and application: some things don’t have an established pathway to arriving at it. I can run to downtown Los Angeles if I really apply myself, but arriving at the moon with just my body — that isn’t really something that’s dependent on my effort in jumping really high.
Time after time I see clients and students struggle when they work on their version of success and happiness. They have the good jobs, they have the results; but because these are not truthful indicators of success the good jobs, the plentiful money, the well-rested body doesn’t feel satisfying. What hurts them the most is, it’s not like they’re not working hard. In fact, they’re likely to work way harder than the average person not working towards their individual success and happiness. But because individual success and happiness isn’t something you work on with effort to eventually arrive at it, the hard effort feels disappointing and even deceiving.
The onus is on you to create your recipe for success and happiness. Others can influence your next step and help you in parts of the recipe. But they cannot be responsible for your recipe because the recipe can only be written by you. The only way to know if the next step is the right step is to actually walk it with a curious intent to see what happens when you take that step. Should I write a fiction book or not? “Should” questions like these are meaningless because nothing can come out of this question unless it is enacted upon.
When you’re frustrated at the lack of success in your life, the first, the last, and the only thing you have to do is take ownership of your success. Don’t rely on the paths that other people have created, because while they look like pathways towards absolute success it is actually the product of their own ownership of their success. It is not for you. At best you become a replica of another person’s success. It is a good thing that they succeeded in their own terms, and it is a good thing that it is not for you.
This knowledge is, in all honesty, the only piece of external knowledge I can give you. You have everything you need to get started with living your life. This cannot be mistaken for “never receiving anything else from another person ever again”. Teachings from others can be a helpful tool in your journey, the mistake we want to avoid is considering the tool as a desired end result. Hammers help build houses but they are not houses.
What is your moment of surprise that started the introspective journey for you? For me it was my first failure in freshman psychology. What will you learn, and how will it help you arrive at your life?
You can work with me today by emailing me at billy@julylifecoach.com. I am taking 1:1 clients.
Billy Seol
July Life Coach
julylifecoach.com
