How to Enjoy the Process - A Lesson to My Younger Self

Foreword: This is the first piece of writing I ever put out into the world. It came out via email newsletter on May 22, 2020 to a close group of friends who signed up.

Welcome to the first edition of Practical Ponderings.

Before we get into anything, I’d like to make it clear that I am by no means an expert. I do, however, know things that would have benefited my past self, so that’s really who I’m writing for. The reason I’m sharing it is because we all go through incredibly similar experiences, so my specific lessons learned can easily be applied to your own life.

It all started a few years ago when I used to be normal. I would play drums, watch Youtube, do well in school, and more or less not think about much. I was pretty happy, too. Life could be better in certain ways, but there was no reason to complain. Then, the internet introduced this new word to me: entrepreneurship. And, to me, this was synonymous with my discovery of self-development. I see them as the same thing. It was this whole idea that you could do and be whatever and whoever you really wanted to. Freedom. Possibility.

I began to realize that in many ways I was living in a self-imposed (false) construct, that painted myself as an operant within the world, which I’ve simply been born into. It’s like you put a little mouse in a maze. He is confined by the (real or imagined) wall that will knock his little ass to the floor. However, once he discovers that the maze was built by other mice no smarter than himself, and that most of the walls are actually just projections from his somewhat stupid little mouse brain, he can recreate the entire maze to be his own mini-castle. Life is a lot different for our friend after this. Most of us don’t realize that we are this mouse. Our primal psychology makes it easy for us to imagine walls where there are none because of the strong role fear plays in our decision-making, and because of the way we have been trained growing up by other mice. Now, none of this means you have to start a billion-dollar company. Personally, that’s one of the last things I want to do. It does, however, mean that we need to seriously reevaluate why we believe certain things are possible and others are not.

All of this is very exciting. We like to be told that things can be better than they are now. We love imagining perfect futures where everything is great and we’re super happy. And, if you’re like me, you begin equating happiness with productivity. Because, after all, you have to work to reach that perfect future. But it’s not the act of working that you love, it’s the belief in the happiness you think that work will bring you at some arbitrary point in the future. Just not now. “Of course I can’t be happy now, I’m just not there yet.”

This is a double-edged sword. I’m willing to bet every single person reading this has, fundamentally, absolutely everything needed to be an extremely happy person. The problem is, our own psychologies prevent us from naturally reaching a point of satisfaction. This is good for productivity, but bad for happiness. As Naval Ravikant says, “If you want to be successful, surround yourself with successful people. If you want to be happy, surround yourself with unsuccessful people.” Our minds naturally play a constant comparison game to anything that can be compared, including our vision of our “perfect” lives and selves. If we aren’t aware of this, every moment of our lives will be in the shadow of our image of “perfection”, and we will never actually be satisfied or fulfilled. I don’t think I have to tell you this is a terrible way to live.

The answer to this seemingly paradoxical situation is, as far as I can deduce, to fall more in love with the process of changing your behavior than the actual imagined end result. If you ask someone who has stayed in great shape for a long time how they do it, they’ll tell you it is because they ultimately found a way to love working out, despite its difficulty. If you want to make consistent, sustainable, positive change, you need to find a way to enjoy what it is you’re doing. You can brute-force your way through it temporarily, but this isn’t sustainable, and for the most part we should only care about what works over the long term.

So here’s my lesson to younger Ryan: Fall in love with where you’re going, but also where you are. That end result of “happiness” that we believe arrives at some arbitrary point in the future once certain boxes are checked is often far less tangible and predictable than we may imagine. The surest way to have a good life is to enjoy your life right now. Happiness is a decision we all can make and the sooner we realize this, the sooner other people start asking us, “How are you so happy all the time?”

This decision can and likely should start on the micro scale. Simply notice something you’re happy about once a day. Train your mind to be optimistic, just like you would your body. They’re the same thing. Try this: ask yourself, “What is lacking in my life that truly prevents me from being the happiest person in the room today?” Then, compare your answers to that question to your answers to this one: “What are all the reasons I should be the happiest person in the room today?” If you’re honest with yourself, your answers to the second should blow the first ones out of the water.

“But Ryan, I do have problems in my life that need to be fixed.” I agree wholeheartedly - we all have things that need to change, but that does not mean you have to be miserable in the meantime. Realize that everyone, even people at “the top”, have problems. The only thing that separates the happy from the unhappy is the ability to find joy despite them.

That’s it for the first episode of Ryan’s Practical Ponderings. If you have any feedback, please reply to this email and let me know what you liked or didn’t like!

Until next time,

Much love, Ryan