Psychology
I've done a lot of thinking about what kind of person I am and how that translates to the relative ease and comfort I take in extremely risky situations. A bit of background on who I am and what I've done in recent years: I graduated college last year with a degree in computer engineering, but no passion for it. There was also a traumatic event that occurred in recent years where I was threatened and quite close to death. A failure to deal with that properly lead to post-graduation depression and a bout of suicidal thoughts and actions taking over my life.
##Using self awareness to double down on my strengths
I didn't really know who I was at the time, but I knew a few things about myself that I couldn't change.
- First, I'm lazy as shit and have ADHD.
- Second, I can't bring myself to work on something I'm not passionate about.
- Third, I had (have?) a rather large ego, and for no good reason.
- Fourth, I had the good fortune of nurturing my self-awareness for most of my life. Since I was quite young, maybe middle school, I had decided there was no point in tricking myself into believing I was something I wasn't. So I've always been quite honest to myself about what I'm good at and what I'm not.
Now I know: some of these qualities aren't the best things to start off with when you've just graduated college and want to make the best of yourself, but I'm stubborn, and I was determined to deserve the large ego I had in some fashion or form, since at the time I hadn't practiced meditation to actively kill/reduce my sense of self. I think the fact that I started with acknowledging negative things about myself are highly important. Many people think that they need to spend a lot of time working on their weaknesses - I simply found a way to make them work for me while doubling down on my strengths.
Knowing I wasn't passionate about hardware engineering was the first step. I decided to take a leap into software engineering to figure out if there was something useful that I could be passionate about. While I did enjoy learning coding, my first impressions of turning it into a career were negative. I didn't want to bug-fix or develop landing pages or integrate back-end systems for the rest of my life. I knew that I could have worked hard at it and become a software engineer, but that's exactly how I felt about hardware engineering. So I jumped ship. Knowing that one of my qualms with software was working on smaller scale problems for someone while not having a say in the bigger picture, I decided to take a logical pivot and take up a position where I could control all angles of my success - I decided to start my own business.
My weaknesses come together to form a huge strength
I bet if I did more research, I'd find that there's a correlation with having ADHD and having shiny new object syndrome, or being extremely interested in new shit over staying consistent with one project or concept. At the time, the 'new shit' with business was running an e-commerce dropshipping business with Facebook ads. Without going too much into detail about the business model, it's important to note that this combined a few weaknesses of mine: Shiny new object syndrome allowed me to stay excited about working on my own business because I felt that I was at the forefront of online business in some way, developing new ways to market products and ideas, realizing that I could literally turn ideas into money if they were executed properly. This also allowed me to massage my ridiculous ego...I'm not proud of it, but I think that the just the pure fact that I owned my own business kept me working on it even when it wasn't profitable. Combining this with my desire to "deserve" my massive fucking ego pushed me to work on the business until it was profitable. And then when it was profitable, the part of me that's a lazy fucking fuck rejoiced, because the nature of Facebook ads and e-commerce is that when you make it work, the shit's on autopilot and money just comes in without you needing to do too much. But my ADHD and shiny new object syndrome pushed me to start a new business simply because I was getting bored of my old business concept and wanted to do something new while getting more into advertising with Facebook.
Yeah, I'm aware that this shit's getting pretty convoluted. I'll try to summarize what was covered and the rest of the story.
Sorry, TLDR
- Depression + lack of motivation to do something I'm not completely passionate about = me starting and quitting multiple jobs in multiple careers. Starting from zero so many times as well as pressure from typical asian parents really made me hit rock bottom.
- Laziness + fat ego = me wanting to start my own business so I can sit on my ass doing nothing while making money. (still can't believe I had the audacity to do that at a time where I was pretty much going nowhere in life) I can't thank a friend enough for helping me orient myself in starting with e-commerce.
- Shiny new object syndrome + boredom + FOMO = starting another business to get deeper into Facebook advertising. Worked really hard despite my laziness because it's almost masturbatory how much I like just the concept of being someone that runs a business, and because I could feel that I was really getting passionate about something useful here, which was a first for me.
- Desire to work on something larger than myself and my business pushed me to apply for a job as a Facebook advertiser. Shit was almost astronomically synchronistic because I ended up taking a position on a brand new Facebook team at a company that's one of the top SEM companies in the world - this company happened to be one I almost took a developer position at when I was hunting for software positions, but didn't end up getting as the position was filled before I could get to the next round of interviews. Situation was highly depressing at the time, but a godsend looking back.
Me now
I still have ADHD, I'm still lazy as hell, and I still have shiny new object syndrome (My current obsession is cryptocurrency - late to the game for someone obsessed with new shit, I know). I think the only thing that's kind of changed is my ego, and I have meditation to thank for that. I've realized that everyone has their own struggles and everyone does the best that they can. There aren't many situations where I look at someone and think of them as a shitty person. My brain always comes up with a backstory for them full of extenuating circumstances, and I think it's good to give someone the benefit of the doubt in a world where most people get triggered to hell when someone cuts them off or changes lanes without a signal. I used to despise people easily; now, I've got love for everyone but genuinely like very few people.
Thanks for reading this fucking mess. I'll try to make a video of this so you can further see how ridiculous my streams of consciousness can be.