Growth comes in phases

After reading through my old newsletter posts I see they are all focused on chaos and withstanding pain. In the beginning this is the growth I needed, I had come from ultimate comfort: the house, the girl, the dog, the hobbies… I needed to learn to be comfortable with change and chaos, and accept not being in control while still being effective.

It started when I drove to Texas with no plan. I lived out of my car, showered at gyms, lied my way into college libraries to work, and survived on tuna packets and peanut butter sandwiches. I learned to adapt to the chaos, and learned to love it. I noticed growth in myself, real change that I became addicted to. I began to correlate the chaos to growth, so I sought it. I would look for it anywhere I could, pushing myself to do more and sleep less. It all peaked when I decided to move to Paraguay, this would be the most chaotic thing I could do.

I sold my car and the remaining belongings that I had, and left myself with a duffle bag and a backpack to fly to a country where I didn’t know the language or culture. It sucked, but there is where I learned to revoke the need for control, and realized that if you control yourself nothing else matters. Nothing external is relevant. I had learned to thrive in chaos, but I lacked the ability to be bored. This is when I began to realize the next phase of growth.

I became so used to pushing and withstanding change, that the lack of it hurt. It physically hurt to sit still to think creatively for extended periods of time, all I wanted to do was go to the gym and pretend that withstanding chaos was me working. The reality was I wasn’t doing anything. I was growing personally, but producing few results in the business. I felt it, but didn’t know how to change it. Because I was stuck in my existing phase of growth. I needed to transition to the next phase. Boredom.

I finally learned to enjoy sitting and focusing on getting a result. I would sit for 12 hours developing software, racking my brain on creative strategies, and producing things. This was the next phase of growth, the only issue is it came with a dark side. I would spend an entire day isolated, focused on producing results for myself in software, content, outreach, design, whatever it was. But ultimately at the end of the day I was alone, and far from where I wanted to be. I extracted all dopamine from my life in order to focus on producing results, but the problem was I had set such a large goal for myself that I would need to withstand years of this this pain to achieve it. Yes, I was content with the work I had done, knowing it aligned with my vision. But I could not shake the void I felt inside of myself.

It was the concept of how long I could withstand the pain before I would break. I would cope with outbursts of binge drinking, going to the gym twice a day, finding a hobby and obsessively doing it. Anything to just fill the void. Something to make me feel good in the meantime of reaching my vision, all while understanding it had nothing to do with where I really wanted to be. It was all just to get away from the void of where I was at compared to where I wanted to be. But that’s the thing with setting ambitious visions for yourself, you must be able to withstand the pain it takes to get there. The larger the vision, the longer and more intense the pain of growth.

Now, as I type this out the new phase of growth is learning to withstand the void. Learning to extend the amount of time I can sit with it, and learning how to channel that void into building sustainable purpose. The point now is to build things that provide purpose and belonging which also are conducive to the main vision of building olooa.

Sitting and talking with the right people, who align with my vision. Creating a conditioning club on Sundays of people who push themselves to be fit, rather than those who just go get drunk at the bar. Creating content, instead of consuming it.

Anything to fill the void.