How Betrayal Leads To Success
Jacob Kountz
Got ADHD? Pay What You Want for my products. (ADHD at Work course coming soon)
These weekly newsletters will have therapy deep dives, effective coping skills, mental health tips, psychology info, LinkedIn tricks, and business bits. For some reason, each of these areas appears to connect in my mind and I'd like to share them with you. Cheers to actionable insights!
This week's focus is a therapy deep dive?for those who are willing to make the right change for the best outcome.
Today I'm going to get a little personal and share one of the biggest aha moments in my life. I'm hopeful it will help guide you.
Here we go.
The Observation
When you’ve been doing therapy as long as I have, you begin to notice things passively.
Remarkable things.
It used to be the case that I felt like a nobody...
A loser. Not talented. Lonely. Misunderstood. Tired.
Not to mention the anxiousness. Oh, the anxiousness.
I felt as if I was on edge all the time.
Then 2012 happened. An interesting year for sure. Why?
Because a lesson was born.
But I wasn't aware of that lesson until a decade later.
The Talk
I had a conversation with my wife a few nights ago that led to an intense amount of insight.
We were reminiscing parts of our past and something slipped out of my mouth that I had to write down.
You see, the person I was 10 years ago was unrecognizable:
He was lost
He was timid
He was stuck
He did the same thing every single day:
-Went to work
-Went to school
-Went back home
Did I mention that he was failing in all 3 of those areas?
Just because I went to these places doesn’t mean I performed successfully.
And that’s what dawned on me while I was talking to my wife.
How did things get to where they are right now?
The answer:
Sacrifice
The Look-Back
You see, back then I was exhausted the entire time.
After a long day at work and school, I scurried home just to sleep.
Guess what I did the next day?
I was stuck at my job
I was failing my classes
I used my home for sleep
Over and over again.
Something had to change. And something did.
There was a life worth my living out there, somewhere.
A life worth spending my energy.
And it had been in front of me the whole time.
The Truth
Why was I so tired? Do you really want to know?
Poor choices.
Seriously, that's it.
This is what I told myself life looked like:
Work
领英推荐
School
Home
But, this was the true reality:
-Slept in
-Traffic
-Work
-Class
-Traffic
-Parties
-Out late
-Drive home
-Pass out in bed
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
The truth isn't pretty, but it's real.
This was going on long enough. It had to stop.
The Change-Up
Sure, I had a lot of fun with this schedule. Not to mention freedom.
Yet, I still felt empty. Does anyone else feel that?
My solution was easy. But the action was hard.
It all came down to a personal pep talk:
“Jake. Are you good with this?”
“Are you good with this mediocre life?”
“How can you be fine with the monotony?”
You see, this conversation led to an insight that pushed me to where I am right now:
I had to betray who I was then to who I wanted to be today.
I'm aware that betray is a strong word, yet it was fitting for me.
Life was too easy, and I felt the only way to make change was to actively betray that easy life for one worth living.
So I did.
I cut out the late nights. Cut out the partying. Woke up earlier. Beat traffic. Changed my diet. Put my faith and mental health first.
And so much more.
The Time Is Now
This is the time when you can take a hard look at your current self and ask:
Are you okay enough with how things are now?
Do you suppose a betrayal needs to happen to you?
Are you willing to sacrifice now for a life worth living?
Recap
Products:
Student at California State University, Bakersfield
2 年??????????????????????
Bilingual |Educator| |Mental Health| Facilitator| Storyteller| |Public Speaker| Health Care| Parenting and Leadership Coach | Storyteller| |Training and Development| |Voice Over Artist|
2 年Beautiful story and relatable. Yes .. I need to betray myself.. not sure I can do it as mentally I may fall apart with such drastic change ..as you said it’s hard to act as we are each different and different lives and stages and challenges .. school and work ? We’re tous rudying psychology full time and working part time ? Or working full time and doing your graduate studies in evenings ? I don’t think I could do both at same time too exhausting …
Betrayal is the apt choice of word. Totally resonate with your article, something similar happened to me, I betrayed myself and made poor decisions driven by unconscious self, didn't know I had the power to choose as per preferences of life I want to live. Now I know and I am so content, energized with the life choices that I m making. Thanks for sharing your story Jacob Kountz.
System Administrator at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health
2 年My issue at Penn State York after getting put on Saphris was I studied too much, deactivated social media and had no life. It paid off for sure, but the only time I hung out with my friend at a neighboring college was on breaks when it was a ghost town. I wish I would of hung out with him more. He now lives in another state.
Got ADHD? Pay What You Want for my products. (ADHD at Work course coming soon)
2 年What would this process look like for you?