Your Perseverance May Actually Be a Form of Self-Sabotage
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” “Grind it out!” “Never give up on your dream.”
These are all common phrases echoed throughout your life meant to inspire and hold you accountable. It’s all fine and well, until one day you find yourself doing what you love, and you’re still fucking miserable.
The fact is, when you have a dream, you don’t always see the bigger picture of what that exactly entails. How could you? Ignorance is crucial to having a dream. If you didn’t think gigantically and fantasize, you’d stop before you ever begin.
So what happens when you reach your dream, and something still feels…. off?
It’s very common to get what we want and still feel unfulfilled. There’s nothing wrong with you, and there’s nothing wrong with the dream. The reason may simply be that dream, in its entirety, doesn’t completely align with you.
If you’ve ever experienced this feeling before, you know how shitty it is. In my late-twenties I realized I wanted to be a working stand up comedian, but I was too afraid to start. (another form of self-sabotage) I agonized over this for ten years. Yes. Ten. When I finally got the right blend of courage and opportunity, I seized it. I worked hard, stayed out late, mingled and networked my way around the LA comedy scene. I got a job featuring on the road, and for three and a half years I traveled the country featuring on a national comedy tour. Money, travel, real audiences, my dream realized.
However, about a year in it started becoming harder for me to get out to the clubs to hang out. I didn’t feel connected to most comedians, I didn’t enjoy being out late; not at home with my awesome wife, and I hated going to open mics to work out new material almost as much as I hated constantly asking bookers and producers around town for spots. Did I hate my dream?
When you face this dilemma, it’s crucial that you take caution with whom you confide. Trust me. The common responses—“Just keep hustling.” “Just post more.” “You just gotta show up.”—are often the least helpful. After all, it’s common because it works for the majority of people, but you’re not the majority of people. I know you’re not, because you’re reading this blog and you follow my work. You’re like me. You want something bigger for yourself but find that traditional pathways to getting there lead you to frustrating dead ends.
So what happens when you force yourself to do work you hate for something you love? For me, it taught me that the thing I love (stand up comedy) is actually not that appealing as a career, but more of a really rad hobby. The feeling of being on stage and connecting with an audience is what I love. Not the late nights, 10:30AM hotel check-out times, obnoxious drunks or being in the public eye. I want to cook great meals for my wife, cuddle my cats, wake up early and have meaningful conversations about complex ideas with people who are willing and able. Moreover, I want a career that allows me to be funny, not requires me to be.
When you’re told that you just have to put your chin up and do the work, it plants a seed that you’re not good enough or cut out for the dream you’re pursuing, or in some cases, currently living. So maybe you were wrong about your dream. I was. But through learning that, I boiled the sauce down to the reduction of what it is my dream really looks like. A life of abundance, peace and meaning.
Persistence is doing the work despite the challenges that work brings, pushing through the obstacles to reach a higher, more fulfilling way of life.
Self-sabotage masked as persistence is forcing yourself to do work you hate, which continuously leads to you to a dead end of feeling unfulfilled and miserable, all because you feel you have to.
The difference then, is the outcome.
Sometimes the dream isn’t the dream. People who want a lot of money don’t just want the money, they want what that money could bring to them: freedom. When you find yourself feeling tortured by the work, ask yourself these questions. Then a year from now, ask yourself these questions again:
Does the dream offer you what you want or does it offer you what you think you want?
When you think about what the dream entails, how do you feel? Does your body respond with a “hell yes!” or a “meh”
Are you forcing yourself to show up to the dream or are you intrinsically motivated by it?
Make a list of all the things you love about your dream and don’t love about your dream to see the larger picture.
How would you feel telling people you quit the dream?
What’s the reason you’re sticking it out? Is it because of others’ expectations, because you “said you would”, or because you’re committed come hell or high water?
If you have reached your dream, are you happy?
All of these questions are meant to help you tune into the motivation behind your dream, not to dissuade you from it. Remember: Dreams change and that's okay. The point of this is to support you in getting clear on what it is you really want for yourself. The ego is often very committed to what it thinks you “should” be doing and can talk you out of following what it is you truly seek for yourself.
