Most people unconsciously waste years of their lives.
It makes me emotional. I wasted 10 years of my life, that I can never get back, stuck working in a bank treading water until I magically felt ready, worthy, or courageous.
All it led to was overthinking.
I lost those 10 years. They’re gone forever.
If I’d known these short ideas back then, I would have had the balls to be myself and not waste a decade of my youth. Use these ideas to prevent the same fate.
Drowning in excuses is the real pandemic
You’re not supposed to talk about people’s excuses.
Apparently, it shows a lack of compassion if you point out that most people are drowning in them. “You don’t know what’s really going on, Timbo.”
Yes I do.
I talk to 1000s of people every year via DMs and email. The pattern is always the same. It’s easier to make excuses than it is to admit you’re wrong and, ideally, agree to change your ways. We’ll do anything to avoid it.
How do I know? I’m the king of excuses.
I wasted every year of my life until age 28 saying “I’ve got mental illness so that’s why I can’t do X.” Turns out the illness was all in my head. It was learned helplessness. I was a victim of a crime that never happened.
Then I told myself I had an eating disorder. Wrong again. I turned normal life into this anxious nightmare in my head, then I tried to eat and threw up. That’s what happens when you’re anxious for no reason.
When it came time to get promoted, I told myself “I’m not a leader.” I believed you were either born a leader or you weren’t. Turns out if you act like a leader people treat you like a leader and you get promoted.
I told myself Americans don’t like Australians like me. Now I run a business full of Americans and they love my silly hillbilly accent and how I say “mate” too much.
Whatever excuse you’re telling yourself about why you can’t have what you want, it’s a lie. It’s made up. You can have whatever you want if you’re prepared to do what it takes. And if you’re willing to change.
Because the person you are right now isn’t the person you need to be to get what you want. The dream is on the other side of discomfort, change, and hard truths. The solution isn’t to stop making up excuses.
It’s to ask yourself this question:
Are you willing to change or are you happy to stay the same and accept the consequences?
Only when you agree to change will the excuses start to go away.
Feeling fearful is a feeling you should pray to experience
Wait, what?
Yep, fear is a gift. Fear is the feeling you get when you’re attempting something new or about to face a big change. Fear is the sign of future growth.
If you never feel fear and let it persist, you’re not truly living.
You must want fear. You must redefine what fear means to you. You must use fear instead of letting it use you.
I learned this lesson when I wrote down everything I feared (snakes, planes, women), then I began facing each fear. I found none of these fears were real. Yes, I still get a few nerves when I fly on planes, but that’s not a sign I should never fly again.
Fear is a compass that tells you what goals to pursue.
If you want to get back 10 years of your life, then start facing every one of your fears. Ask yourself: what’s the worst that can happen?
When you assess the downsides you’ll see that what you fear is holding you back. The consequences are imaginary. Face them to see this truth yourself.
Once fear stops running your life, the next question naturally appears: What should I actually do with my life?
“What can I sell” is really “I don’t know what I want to do with my life”
This is an odd one.
In my field, I encounter a lot of people who want to build an audience online or start a business. Many of them will say some version of “I don’t know what to sell” or “I don’t know what my offer is.”
When I saw this phenomenon en masse, I got confused.
How do people not know what skills, experience and passions they already have? When I went deeper I found the problem isn’t “what business do I start”. The problem is “I don’t know what I want to do with my life.”
It’s an existential crisis. It’s a lack of meaning. It’s an admission of boredom.
This is a question that must urgently be solved. If you have this problem, like I did, you’re overthinking it. You know what you give a sh*t about and would do online.
You’re just thinking:
I’m not good enough
The market is saturated
It’s not weird or special enough
I don’t know if I could really do it
I’m not the best at it
People waste decades experiencing this problem. Most never solve it. The solution isn’t to think about it more. The solution isn’t going to find you one day in the shower and magically kiss you on the buttocks.
The only way to know what you want to do with your life is to try it. It’s to back yourself and assume you likely can make your business, offer, or passion work. People much dumber than you are already living whatever dream you want.
Why not you?
Waiting for the right time
This one’s a curse.
I wasted most of my youth waiting for the right time. Right now I’d like to take up playing drums again. I’ve thought about this for the last 5 years.
5 years ago I worked a corporate job. It wasn’t the right time. I had very little free time. Then I went full-time to run my business. That wasn’t the right time either. Then I had to prepare for a wedding. Wasn’t the right time. Then I moved house twice. Wasn’t the right time. Then my daughter was born. Hard to play drums with a newborn baby in the house. Then a close family member got blood cancer. Bad timing. Then I spent 2 years in the legal system fighting a bad neighbor. Hard to find the time then as well. Now, my wife is about to give birth to baby number 2. Not great timing to play the drums now either.
See a pattern here?
If I wait for the right time to start playing drums again, I’ll be waiting the rest of my life. It’s never the f*cking right time to do anything.
It’s never the right time.
It’s never the right time.
It’s never the right time.
It’s never the right time.
It’s never the right time.
The right time is today. Because if it’s not today, it’s never (just saved you 10+ years).
Burnout is disguising a deeper problem
I used to think I was burned out.
I even wrote a nice little clickbait book about it. Now I realize I was wrong. Burnout isn’t real. We only feel burned out when we’re doing work we don’t give a damn about.
It’s work we wish we weren’t doing. And that’s every job I’ve ever had.
When what you do each day is in line with your zone of genius and your passion/obsession, you don’t want a break from it. You want it to consume you.
When you find work like that, you end up in some of the most powerful flow states imaginable – some of mine last 12 hours.
The goal isn’t to recover from burnout. Or take a holiday to the Greek islands and let a load of steam off. It’s to pivot your life toward what you actually love doing and stop doing bullsh*t work.
The gurus don’t talk about this because it’s taboo.
It doesn’t sound as good as “Embrace self-care Maxine and go sit in a hot tub for a week and have a w*nkfest because you earned it, honey.”
Avoid burnout by changing your work.
Spend more time with family until you feel guilty
Among the dying, one of the biggest regrets is not spending enough time with family.
We’re achievement junkies. Every goal in life has now become a video game with never-ending levels that lead nowhere. Yet time with family is what will bring the most happiness and remind you why you do what you do.
I sound like a cliche Instagram therapist by suggesting this tip. But I don’t care. True happiness is long periods with family and lots of free time. Everything else is part of the Achievement Economy to get you to trade time to achieve someone else’s goal.
No Slack notification will ever beat your kid falling asleep on your chest.
Talking to free mentors is a waste of time
In the corporate machine, mentors are seen as angels from above.
Everyone wants one. They want to ask their special little mentor if what they want in life is real. A mentor is just the term for “asking a stranger for permission.”
Who cares what a free mentor who’s earning $0 from you thinks? Do you want to live their life or your own? They’ll likely just project what they wish they’d done with their life onto you anyway.
What matters is what do you think, Freddy?
Most people know what action they should take already. They’re just afraid to take it. They want certainty. They want to know the outcome before they start. If you can be smart enough to avoid these traps, you don’t need free mentors.
Just follow your own wisdom and experiment your way to whatever the good life looks like for you. Sound good, amigo?
Worrying about what people think is wasting your life
Opinions are like a**holes. Everyone’s got one.
But who cares what people think. Some guy a few months ago tried to tell me I’d look more professional if I wore a suit to my live workshops. F*ck him. I hate suits.
They itch my balls and make me feel like a slave in a clown suit. I don’t ever want to wear a clown suit again. Having itch-free balls was a massive incentive to retire from banking at 34.
If you let your balls get itchy to please another person, what else are you willing to do? Dance naked in the street? Cheat on your partner? Rob a bank?
I will never keep everyone happy (and neither will you). Someone will always want me to fit their cookie-cutter view of the world so they can feel safe and wrap themselves in a blue blanky with a hot chocolate while they finger bang themselves.
No thank you, man.
I’m most proud of being myself. It’s the biggest compliment I get. “There’s no bullsh*t with you, Denning.” Dang straight. I got my life back when I stopped trying to impress strangers, family, mentors, and bosses.
Live your life for the diehard fans who respect you for who you are. And forget about everyone else living in the peanut gallery who are probably miserable sons of b*tches at home behind closed doors.
None of us has mind control powers. So stop trying to control what people think of you. It doesn’t matter how hard you try and build a personal brand to shape your reputation. Some flogger is always going to think you’re ugly, entitled, or have bad opinions. Let them.
Closing Thought
Now you’re free little birdy.
Use these facts of life to get your life back. Become a today person. Quit overthinking. Forget about opinions or making mommy proud. Listen to yourself more. Do what you feel you’re uniquely positioned to do. And live for today because you could be dead tomorrow.
That’s how you can save 10 years of your life.
