A Letter from Chris Suarez
LET ME SAVE YOU THE TICKET PRICE
This week my message will be a bit shorter, which I felt appropriate given the topic. People have called the last six months many things: a great reset, a pause, a time to reflect, a detour.
Many have taken the time to reflect and make sure that what they are doing, who they are doing it with, why they are doing it, and where they are going really matters. These are critically important to your happiness and overall fulfillment. We all need to confirm that the path we are on is that path to our preferred future.
More often than expected this year however I have seen people tap out. Somewhere in the past few months they have decided that they didn’t love what they were doing. They decided they were spending too much energy on things that they weren’t convinced actually mattered. They decided they were tired of doing the same thing for so long.
Where this may be the reality and the right decision for a few, more often than not, widespread exhaustion has set in. And after we allow exhaustion to set it, rationalization begins to take over. We rationalize that since we are tired and feeling disconnected, then we must need a new path. We must have gotten lost on our personal journey.
So we decide to go on a journey of self discovery. We buy a ticket down a different path. And that path is wide open, its smooth, it's filled with light, and it feels great.
But let me save you the ticket price for that journey. The same reason why that path is wide open, and smooth, and filled with light is the same reason why it's filled with people right now. It’s easy.
Unfortunately, the ticket price is high.
We waste six months, a year, at times many years of our life going down an easier path only to realize much later that easy never leads to success or fulfillment. We call it discovery. We call it "a pause". We call it "self work". The price of that lost time is, well, priceless.
The path you were previously on was cramped, and bumpy, at times dark… and when you looked around, you felt alone. It’s why you took the detour. And the same reason why that path was cramped, and bumpy, and dark is the same reason why it was lonely. It’s hard.
The path to your preferred future will be hard and boring all at the same time. If it was easy, then everyone would be at the same level of success. You will do the same thing over and over and over again, hundreds if not thousands of times. Building anything worth anything is difficult and boring. That path is also much longer than you thought it would be when you first got on. Our drive for immediate results and quick endings leads to impatience. Impatience leads to quitting. This year it's easy to disguise quitting as “pivoting”. Put simply, you may be bored.
Boredom doesn’t mean you need to find more meaning in your life. Boredom doesn’t mean you need to find a different path. At the end of that different path you will often look back and realize you had plenty of meaning, and your path was leading you to where you were supposed to be. The reason you will be forced to look back is that new path is a dead end. Its a dead end of taking it easier, of laziness, of self-coddling.
Let me save you the ticket price for that journey.
Stay the course. Keep taking steps forward. Embrace the boredom. Be patient.
Chris
