4 min read.
I’m going to be completely honest, for most of my life, I feel like I had it pretty easy. My parents put me through good schools, I studied hard and diligently turned in my homework, went to a great university, chose a very lucrative tech career, and now working at a large firm doing great work with great people.
Yeah, so maybe I don’t have the right to worry, or complain, or question my career path that so many people would love to have, but I still wonder, is this really me? Is this all that I can be and all that I am capable of?
I acknowledge my privilege and where I am right now. I acknowledge the fact that I didn’t have as much adversity relative to a lot of kids out there. I have my parents to thank for that because they definitely went through some sh*t. But they didn’t use that as an excuse for anything and did everything they could so that my brothers and I didn’t have to worry about the trivial stuff. I’ll write about their stories in a later post because they’re short of miraculous. But the key lesson was that I wasn’t born with this so-called privilege. My parents left everything in Asia to come to America, and we’ve had tons of family issues because of it. But that didn’t stop them from working their asses off so that we never missed a family meal, and I will be eternally grateful for that.
I hope that if they are reading this, they don’t worry about me, because they shouldn’t. I’m not giving up anything, I’m not going to waste my life, but I do need to spend some more time finding myself.
This was a struggle for me to come to terms with over the last few months. Up until this point, I know that I’ve had it good. I like where I am. I like what I do. I like my friends and family. And being raised in a family that highly valued security, stability, and financial wealth, I’m absolutely crazy for trying to do anything else but my tech job right now.
So why am I questioning this? Why am I dissatisfied? Why don’t I just stick it through to the end?
Well.. let me tell ya!
Let’s first bring you back to my school days.
School was seemingly easy for me. Not because I was naturally smart or talented or whatever, it was because my parents highly valued education and diligence. That’s all it was. But I remember very vividly one day when I received a report card with a comment from one of my teachers. Paraphrasing, “Victor expects everything to come easy for him. If he’s not careful, he won’t be able to handle the adversity and failure when things don’t just fall into place.”
At that moment, I didn’t think much of it. I thought, Well, of course everything’s easy for me, I’m a baller, baby. But now that I think about it, the audacity.. You don’t know me!
Well OK.. maybe she did. I definitely approached everything with a sort of nonchalant attitude. So for the longest time, I shrugged it off, didn’t think anything of it.
But as I reflect back, I realize everything was easy, but only because I was choosing the easy routes. The path of least resistance. The bare minimum for me to get by. Granted “to get by” was still A’s and B’s (to save face for the parents), but that was enough for me. I always hit the minimum requirements, did minimal extracurriculars, and wasn’t very involved with the school. I just did whatever was necessary to get the grade and peace out.
So that’s why my teacher thought everything came easy for me. Because I didn’t care about my work or what I was learning. I didn’t put in effort to really get the true lesson out of anything I did.
Now I understand that she was just trying to inspire me!
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” -Theodore Roosevelt
I never strayed too far out of my comfort zone. I never challenged myself. I never took huge risks. I didn’t even really express myself and my emotions all that much. I just wanted to do what was easy to avoid ever falling flat on my face.
Little did I know, that was just me being afraid of rejection and total failure. And now my life has become stagnant.
Now I know I am on the right path
No more floating by. No more easy routes. No more minimal work. No more disinterested, apathetic, dull, unenthusiastic, careless activity. No more letting life just happen to me.
This was what inspired this personal development journey and to learn as much as I can about emotional intelligence, good leadership, and how to build up my wealth around relationships (more on that later). I want to be able to live out my perceived potential, and to experience more, to learn more, to satisfy my curiosity, to solve bigger problems.
I know, you might be skeptical. You’re thinking, you’re “just another guy” who thinks he can save the world off on his own again. Well, yeah you’re right! I am just another guy and I will save the world in my own way, but I don’t plan on doing this alone.
I know there’s someone out there who is on the same path as me, with the same mindset and mission as me. And I know that’s most likely you who’s read this all the way to this point. So hit me up!
If not, I will just keep writing and podcasting and posting my message, even if it’s just for my past and future self. Hopefully I won’t die from not being able to “handle the adversity and failure” like my teacher thought I would.