Not knowing what you want to do is the same, I think, as not knowing who you want to become.
Even if you have that, deciding to step forward and push down that path is hard.
Anxiety is overwhelming.
Whether that decision fits you is something you only know by doing — needless to say — but if that decision leads to regret later, the time and mental damage are a big risk.
Of course many people think “regret from trying isn’t that big a deal,” but to assert that so flatly, from my own experience and from people I have been involved with, I have seen many counterexamples.
If results come, the return should be large — so looking back and thinking the cost of that action was nothing much is natural.
When it becomes about yourself, it is still hard.
I agree all the way that to change the status quo (to approach your ideal), action is the only way.
But asserting that taking risk is always right is not something I want to make easy, remembering people I have watched who (in the end) failed.
As a trait, many people feel the mental damage of having made the wrong choice as a heavy burden.
The stance of working hard to make the choice you took into the right one is wonderful, I think.
I deeply respect people who challenged that way and succeeded.
I want to change the topic a bit here.
The talk that “earning money in order to earn money is hard.”
Entrepreneurship is the clearest example, so I will write imagining starting a company — and yes, those people exist.
Leaving aside info-product and fraud-like absurd cases, there are people who can work hard to grow a company and raise sales (profit).
Since going independent I have spent a lot of time with people like that, and their energy is tremendous.
Whether this phrasing is right or not, many of them are very pure and straightforward.
And under the rules of capitalism, that is definitely correct.
Compared to people like me who stand on the sidelines and criticize like commentators, the legitimacy of what they are doing is in a different league.
Respecting them, talking with them, I even feel how small I am.
Cliché as it sounds, the altitude of their view is different.
The greed of chasing results to the end without giving up, and the precision of laying fine execution operations to make it real, are amazing.
I have been an entrepreneur for several years and thought I was on the same field, but gradually I came to feel I cannot do what they do — I am different from these people.
Pathetic as it is, I have to admit it. Sometimes I despair at myself.
For convenience I said “earn money in order to earn money,” but whether they are literally obsessed with money — from watching their daily selves I can say with confidence that is not the case.
Paradoxically, if they were literally money-for-money, customers and team members would not trust them, so it would never work.
Still, people who earn money in order to earn money put earning money (growing the company, raising sales and profit) as the highest priority.
Then many things stop being prioritized.
Moments come where, thinking from the purpose, they have to cut those as unnecessary.
In other words, they do not agonize over low-priority, trivial things.
I do agonize over trivial things, and from both ability and trait, I “cannot not agonize.”
If you say I lack confidence, guts, or drive, that may be the end of it — but still, I cannot.
Totally separate from entrepreneurship: I like combat sports, and when I read a book by Kyoji Horiguchi — Japan’s strongest MMA fighter in history — I felt something similar.
I am a huge fan; in his book, toward his goal (for example UFC champion), he works without hesitation. Even after failure he stands up right away. He does not agonize.
That earnest purity is almost sublime, and it really shocked me. Comparing myself is presumptuous, but the altitude of view is completely different.
Still, I think it would not be strange if someone in the same fighting profession read his book and felt the same hard “I’m different” feeling I felt watching entrepreneur acquaintances.
What I have written so far is not to be self-deprecating: if I fight on the same field under the same rules, I lose on passion.
My environment is wrong — going back to the first topic — the ideal self is not defined, and the environment settings are wrong too.
Talking in wins and losses is nonsense anyway, but what matters most is that you are happy.
Forcibly interpreting the environment you are in to fit your happiness — the environmental variables are too large.
Define the ideal form for yourself, and even if it changes quickly, you have to do what makes you happy.
For that choice you have to decide. That resolve is really hard.
Deciding is hard.
But if the difficulty of that decision is anxiety born from bias felt in environments that never fit you, then you have to trust yourself and decide boldly.
Defining your ideal self and deciding the next action when you do not know how it will turn out — that is truly hard.
So why did I write this blog? Because I too have lately been deciding various things and wanting to change my environment — to move for what is important to me, for what matters to me.
Finally: lately I feel even more how wonderful it is that so many people in the world are struggling to challenge things in their own way.
I want to support people who decide and take their own challenges. I will work hard too.
© 2024 ZUUHE