As of lately I have found that most of the discomfort that I appear to have with myself, my life, and the world around me all comes from a lack of feeling competent.
A thought experiment that got me there recently was as follows;
“If I were to achieve 0.1% level competence in something (anything, any one thing) would I feel satisfied?”
Walking through the scenario in my head, I tried to imagine myself as a top 0.1-percenter. I imagined what life would be like in multiple different scenarios; as a successful startup founder, an ultra-competitive ultra-runner, a fully self-reliant digital nomad, an absolute beast of a bodybuilder or calisthenics athlete, etc, etc, etc…
As different as all these paths were, they did have one thing in common — I felt deeply insecure when imagining seeing competent people in a field other than mine.
The bodybuilder version of me was extremely put-off by the mathematicians and physicists of the world, eating himself up inside for not feeling as smart or intellectual as these folks.
The successful startup founder hid in his work, his venture capital meetings and Bloomberg interviews, because he couldn’t deal with the fact that there was someone out there (the digital nomad) who’d achieved freedom on his own terms and who was probably playing volleyball in some beach in Sidney whilst getting paid for work he did months earlier.
And even though the ultra-competitive ultra-runner version of me was excelling in races, pushing his limits as hard as he could, and achieving some level of athletic success, he could not bear the meetings with the sponsors and drink companies — it always reminded him of the fact that he never started a business, that he did not have the talent for it. He’d be jealous of the guys in suits making deals.
It’s important to note here that these are just bits and pieces of what I actually think life would be like. They are what I believe to be the most clear cut examples, but life would be much much worse — each of these personas has not one insecurity, but thousands. Each of them is insecure about the fact they can’t dance, sign, or draw (and of the other 997 things I will not list for you), and so life becomes this tormenting scene where that version of me deals with things in the most negative of ways — he shelters in his perceived competence at this one thing. Though he is indeed competent (at that), he plays — silly little — status games that make it appear as if his pursuit is the most valuable, the most worthwhile, the highest order thing one could do. He dances his way through conversations, subtly arguing about the fact that he couldn’t have done it any other way, that his pursuit required all of him. He does this and many other things, all of which are really just his way of avoiding not facing the fact that he feels insufficient, that he feels jealous, that he feels unworthy, that he feels incompetent — that he feels fundamentally incomplete.
The question then becomes, what does one do when the conclusion of the thought experiment is the above?
Well that’s what I am trying to figure out. I have a hunch that the solution isn’t becoming a 0.1-percenter in the thousand things that interest me (or that I deem worthwhile). Rather, it’ll probably look like pursuing a bunch of these things (not at the same time, I’d guess) at a high level, giving it my all for whatever bit of time I want to dedicate to them. My guess is that while doing that I’ll achieve a certain level of competence with which I will be okay with, but more importantly, I’ll develop perspective — perspective on what it is that it actually takes to be the 0.1-percenter in any one discipline.
I think that’s one of the keys. A lot of what (I believe) creates my present state of frustration is the fact that I think that becoming competent at any one of these things is just a step and a hop away from me at any one time. It’s like I’m somewhere in between the peak of mount stupid and the valley of despair (in the dunning kruger curve), and I — for some odd reason — believe that the path toward the slope of enlightenment can’t be that tough.
But the moment I actually start moving towards the slope of enlightenment, then I’ll know just how tough it is. And it’ll be much easier then to understand what trade-offs exist for achieving any one of these things — and thus then I’ll be able to much more easily make a conscious decision to pursue or not to pursue, without the attached insecurities following behind whatever decision I make.
I think there are two conclusions here, the first one being that it seems that I am a multi-passionate, multi-interested, multi-faceted person — this probably means that I do not want to live a life in which I only uncover one side of the world (and consequently, of myself), I want to live one in which I reach out and touch everything that life has to offer.
The second conclusion is that the first conclusion is essentially a recipe for disaster. If not approached correctly it can destroy a person — leaving them in an endless cycle of starting and not finishing things, constantly switching between tasks, dreaming about their could-be life and then having to wake up to their is-not reality, etc…
I take it that being a person who comes to the first conclusion can be a blessing, but as with anything good, too much of it (or not knowing how to handle it) can kill you.
It’ll be up to me to either overdose or to carefully craft my dosing plan so that I get to enjoy that sweet state of nirvana.