Women want to cuck you, see you out of shape & simping for them
Your family wants you safe, with a good job, not some crazy superstar
Your friends don't want you to shine brighter than them
You have to want it more than everyone else.
You're alone in this war bro.
I think ambitious people should treat life in “seasons” rather than trying to balance everything every day.
A few years massively overallocated to work. A period getting seriously fit. A year or two nomading. Then family takes priority for a while. Then maybe at 35 you go completely insane again and spend four years building a new company, and so on.
The mistake is thinking every metric needs to stay green all the time. Most great outcomes (building a company, writing sth serious, training for an event) need uninterrupted runs, not daily moderation. Sometimes work should suffer cause you’re travelling, sometimes your social life should suffer cause you’re building, sometimes career progression should slow cause family matters more. That’s fine.
And tbh it probably makes life more fun too. You get actual chapters and completely different versions of yourself instead of spending 40 years maintaining the same perfectly optimised routine. A few intense years in one city, a weird nomad phase, an obsession that takes over your life, then something completely different. Probably much more memorable than one very long well-optimised Tuesday.
It's why I encourage everyone to think of balance in years, not days. A good life can look horribly unbalanced on some random Tuesday and still be very balanced over 10 years.
Probably because the people who genuinely “love their work” are usually obsessive enough to sacrifice at least one of the other four.
A perfectly balanced life often just means nothing in it is compelling enough to disrupt the schedule. Eight hours of sleep, daily gym, perfect meals. No idea, project or obsession pulling hard enough to ruin the routine.
And the people loudly claiming all five online are usually selling you the sixth thing: coaching, supplements, courses, content, etc.
We should all stop with this modern obsession of having a perfectly balanced, optimised life (8 hours sleep, daily cardio + gym, eat well, deep work, etc.)
Most exceptional lives are heavily overallocated somewhere and any pursuit of greatness (in business, art, sport, research) requires big sacrifices.
Online gurus love selling this perfect recipe of life but reality is you only have a 24h day. No way you can sleep 8h, do 10k steps, gym, morning sunlight, read, eat perfectly, do 9h of deep work, see friends, maintain a relationship and somehow be happy through all of it.
I think a better thing for ambitious people is to think of life in seasons: a year obsessed with work, then a period focused on health, family, travel, etc. You can be massively overallocated to one thing for a while without deciding that’s what your entire life should look like. Balance probably makes more sense measured over years than every single day.
I genuinely DO NOT get the endgame. If the plan ends with a ruined planet, collapsed economies, and no working class left to spend money. What are billionaires actually hoarding wealth for? To sit in a bunker with numbers on a screen that don't mean anything anymore? Like what is the actual point? 😭
I am reading these replies, and some are laughing about spouses slamming doors and blasting gospel music while you sleep.
You are treating a fundamental lack of respect like comedy.
My wife knows my sleep is a non negotiable boundary.
Early in our marriage, my rest was disturbed exactly once.
I addressed it immediately, and it never happened again.
Today, if I am upstairs taking a nap and a child even tries to walk up the steps, she drags them back down.
I enforce the exact same protection for her when she rests.
The reality is most of you accept this chaos because you lack the spine to establish rules in your own home.
Peace in a marriage is not a coincidence. It is the direct result of unapologetic boundaries.
Set the standard early, or enjoy the noise.
Selah!
The white man comes to legally work in your land, you call them expatriates.
You go to legally work in their land, they call you immigrants.
Taking note.
tupac recorded 501 songs, but only 2 became top ten hits.
van gogh painted 2,100 paintings and only sold 1 while he was alive and it was 6 months before he died.
sabrina carpenter released 67 songs and five albums over the course of 10 years before she had her big hit "espresso."
glen powell spent 19 years trying to become an actor before "top gun: maverick" made him a star. 19 solid years.
and connor story spent 8 years waiting tables and he was ready to quit acting for good. and the day he almost got fired, he got an email and he found out that he got the lead actor role in "heated rivalry," the biggest acquired hbo show in history.
and you are giving up because you tried twice? or maybe 10 times?
look, a winner is just a loser that tried one more time and that's just it
winners lose more than losers even try.
You should study what makes you defensive. The topic you avoid, the joke that irritates you, the question that feels insulting, the feedback you instantly reject. Defensiveness is usually the guard dog sitting in front of a weakness you have not trained yourself to face.
get addicted to neuroplasticity, subconscious reprogramming, delusional optimism, game theory, and quantum physics. i promise it will change your life.