What are you doing to add value to other people?
What are others doing to add value to you?
Do you have a plan for personal growth?

What question do you wish people would ask you?

Have no interest in the things around you?
Disinterest in the people around you?
Don’t see a point to it, whatever ‘it’ is?
Sounds familiar?
Maybe then you’ll find similarities with my story:
My family showed little interest in me or my interests. Always felt like whenever I was excited about something, they were just there to tear me down. I hadn’t connected with physical people in a long time. Became more and more of a shut in. I could not find a like mind, and I became increasingly “lost”. The few people who I could occasionally talk to and get something resembling a conversation began to chastise me for being out of touch with reality.

Little blog post for you, Jas. (This is more or less my mindset throughout the climb out of my emotional hole.):

I found some books and blogs of successful people. Dale Carnegie and his incredibly cheesy titles were so offputting I actually picked up his most famous “How to win friends and influence people”. After reading that my self image had gone to crap because I was doing a lot of things wrong according to the book. So I changed. I put on a show for people. I cared less about me and more for others. I became a hollow kind of happy while searching for ‘my purpose in life’. This hollowness was punctuated by ‘unexplained outbursts completely uncharacteristic of you’.

I became perpetually mad to fill the hollow happy show I gave everyone. It felt like everything I did was to help someone else in their endeavors when I had zero clue how to access what it was I wanted to do. I put together a metaphor of walking around a walled kingdom that was mine with no way to get in. Where everything I did was the equivalent of walking sideways along the wall looking for a way in, collecting things along the way in the hopes of eventually scaling this proverbial wall to gain access to my kingdom. I’d go do jobs and help other people in their kingdoms in hopes of gaining help to gain access to what belonged to me, but I always found myself alone when standing at the edge of what was mine.

Inadvertently, I kindled a fire for personal growth. It began to seep into everything. My job handed me promotions hand over fist. People loved me. I became a people person. At least in public. In private there were still many nights that ended in tears because I was not headed in the direction I felt called to. I didn’t see how what I was doing that day pushed me over the walls into my kingdom. I felt like a king, a leader, without anyone to lead. I’d fallen into such a habit of listening to what everyone else wants, I’ve literally forgotten how to even think about what I want.

3 months ago I was approached by a man who had a vehicle for leadership and wealth. I have never wanted anything more than this. Yet I still struggle in taking it and I don’t understand why. I wonder if I simply have to relearn how to want something and take it for me. Either way, I have never felt so much joy and frustration as when I feel like I’m finally making progress.

TLDR: I digress. Happiness is overrated, progress and growth are far more fulfilling while figuring out how to leave your mark on the world. leave the haters and naysayers in the dust.

When you start doing what it is that you feel you have been called to do, there is nothing short of ceasing the pursuit that can take away your joy.