A simple thought on how to think about whether you are at the right spot in your life.
I was on the phone with my friend Matt the other day who is in LA hustling on his start-up. He was sharing how hard things are, that he barely gets to be social, and that it feels like a massive roller coaster day in and out – yet also how right it feels what he was doing.
I was fully able to empathize with him because my situation wasn’t any different. Living a life between continents and in unknown cultures is really hard. It comes with a lot of loneliness, setbacks, unfamiliarity and self-doubt. Yet in spite of all this hardship, it still feels 100% right.
Both Matt and my situation made me thing about this intersection of doing something that is really hard, but where you are able to bear that hardship because it feels so damn right. It’s this feeling of not wanting to be in any other place, not wanting to do anything else. It’s almost as if that hardship wasn’t taking away your energy, but it was fueling you. Being at that intersection is like the moment when your sail and the wind are aligned: you gain speed, you move ahead, you become unstoppable, nothing seems impossible, everything starts to make sense.
Are you at that intersection? What would it take to get there for you?
In my opinion, you don't get to that intersection by going towards what is hard. Just throwing yourself at hard things doesn't instantly make things feel right. But you ought to go towards what feels right. Often times, the "what feels right" is what is hard. It's those things that we normally shy away from because of all sorts of blockers we have (risk-averseness, fear of failure, judgement of other people, etc). Yet once you defy those blockers and walk towards the "what feels right" you might find yourself at that intersection sooner before you know it.