If you don’t come from money, there’s no inheritance cushioning your financial anxiety, there’s no savings as a safety net, money will always be a factor in your quality of life. That’s why people stay in shitty jobs. The stressful relationships that they can’t let go of because their finances are tied to them. And the shitty apartment that they always complain about but can’t leave because that’s the best they can afford.
I used to think that becoming an adult meant having life figured out. At 32, I still haven’t. I imagine that you reading this means that we are in the same boat. We can blame the economy and compare our struggles with those of our parents. The uncomfortable truth is that for every stage of your life, you will have to figure things out. Finances and sources of income are no different.
The Confusion
Because there’s no manual, we figure life out as we go, which can be very confusing. My three decades on earth have seen me go through different titles – mostly related to how I make a living. I graduated university with a good result. That gave me very high hopes for my career. But life had other plans. My first job paid 40 thousand naira ($111), gross. It barely covered my basic living expenses, excluding rent.
My second job was at a bank. Even though my salary doubled, it still wasn’t enough to pay rent. On top of that, bank work was too much financial pressure for money that did not belong to me. So, I resigned.
Then, I started a garment manufacturing business. This time, the income was not regular. I had some really good months, but the money situation was feast or famine. My passion was keeping the fashion alive, but passion doesn’t pay the bills. No amount of forecasting could predict what each month brought. That ended when I moved to a new country and tried to transition into tech.
During my transition, sharing my experiences and knowledge of the process led me to start blogging and creating content online. So far, it has been feast or famine. Except that there’s more famine than feast.
If you followed the timeline up to this point: first job, banker, business owner, blogging/content creator, you see someone who has been moving from one thing to another. You might imagine the struggles. The dip points. The points of extreme self-doubt that sometimes necessitated the need to constantly keep trying out new things. Still, you don’t have the whole picture. And even though it’s my life, I don’t even think the picture I have is complete.
To the untrained eye, they see a rudderless ship. And that is true. For those of us who are capable of a range of skills, learning new things is not a problem. The problem is keeping the interest in that skill alive for long enough to turn a profit.
I found clarity on this pattern when I started reading Dan Koe’s Purpose and Profit book. Dan is one of the YouTubers I admire. He recently trended on Twitter about the possibility of his article winning the X million dollar Top Article prize. What strikes me about his approach to motivation is that it’s not the typical ‘follow these 12 steps’ advice. Instead, he adds the extra layer of pushing you to be disgustingly disappointed with where you are.
Disgust is an intense fundamental emotion that enables you to avoid or escape potentially harmful situations. Becoming disgusted at anything or persons in your life triggers strategies to avoid the person or thing, and also necessitates the need to avoid them in future. Dan’s content typically revolves around how to trigger that disgust and keep the momentum till you achieve the life that you were meant for. I totally agree with him.
Why do people change?
From my observations and conclusions as to why people change, they do so for three reasons:
- External pressure with an undesirable escape route: When the change comes with terms and conditions that are difficult to live with. Which means you’re backed to a wall, your only options are to change for the better or fail. Be mediocre and settle. A good example is students who don’t like studying but know that not studying has consequences.
2. Internal drive: When you are genuinely seeking to change, even without obvious consequences. This is why people who are capable of great evil can choose to be good and stick to that goodness. Not because there’s a God who will punish them, but simply because they want the benefits of the change.
- Survival pressure: When you are forced to. For this type of change, there is no choice. It’s a do-or-die affair. An example is someone who has the beginnings of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking. Or obesity. Or any other such dire situation that requires change on a ghastly level.
The thing about purpose
The problem is that we want change, but our actions are not always consistent with that goal. Looking back on my trajectory over the years, I see a pattern of starting with a strong conviction. Getting good enough. Then settling, till something happens and stirs me to reach for more. The journey starts again.
It is important to note that the reasons for change are not cut-and-dried. The reasons can morph during the course of effecting the change, but if you want an averagely sustained purpose, you need more than motivation hacks.
Aside from the potential earnings from creating content online, I do it because it brings me happiness. I genuinely love researching the topics I write about. I get to learn a lot on my own before I share. I also love showing up on camera for video content. Even editing – as tedious and repetitive as it is – I love it! I love every bit of it.
Some days, that vibe is very low because the numbers don’t add up to the work.
Keep the fire burning
I have something else pushing the drive on those days. To add to the love I have for creating content, I have experienced the promise of earning from it. I would have probably given up if I hadn’t tasted the beginnings of that potential when some of my content earned okay money for a while. This happened after two years of tinkering at my craft. So now I am convinced it’s only a matter of time, and it’ll give me more than I give it.
I already know what to do to achieve that. The problem lies with the execution. I know that if I treat this as a business (which it is, because my motives are partly fuelled by profit), and I develop all the skills I need to become a very good creator by continuously tinkering with my craft, I will get there soon enough.
But the fire has to keep burning till ‘there’ materialises, especially when things aren’t going so well. For times like that, I have learned to fuel my disgust by mixing all three reasons for change together. I am disgusted enough with financial instability to push myself every day, but I am also genuinely drawn to this work, and at the same time, I know what giving up would mean.
It is never a job title
Maybe I needed all that initial confusion to make me the person I am today. The person who is interested in writing about this topic. Every title I ever held, every learning curve I ever navigated, brought me to this point where I’m able to be the person that does the work I do because even when you leave things, the lessons and growth go with you.
In all of this, my goal was never a job title. That is the conclusion I have drawn. The goal has always been to work at something that gives me freedom to live and create by taking care of my financial problems. And at the same time make me happy. Which is a non-negotiable part of the bargain and the only guarantee that I will stick around for a while.
The good thing about the process of figuring life out is that you are not calcified. Confusion is the first stage of solving the problem. If you are willing to move things around to make room for growth, that means you are alive and have that going for you.
Fuel that disgust daily!
My personal takeaways on this journey is that if you have a viable dream (that’s not a title or a position, it is something that speaks to the core of who you are), and you back it up with an unshakable belief, an airtight plan and work like your next paycheck depends on it, you have maximised the odds in your favour. While life guarantees nothing, you have given yourself the best chance at succeeding.
The problem is with settling for the good enough, where dreams and the lives you could have lived die.
