I've Been Fooling Myself

I wasted almost 20 years chasing shiny objects. Now, I regret it.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto, Pexels

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God, it’s hard to live a life you didn’t think you’d live. 

I should’ve moved to New York by now, or at least I should’ve lived there for a while. I never even visited.

I should’ve finished at least one of the novels I’ve started. I should’ve pitched it to agents. Because who knows? 

And what sucks is that it’s all my fault. My responsibility. No one to blame. 

I don’t want you to feel that pain, so let me tell you why I’m in this mess. 

Secret To Success: Go For What You Want, Ignore Everything Else 

I’ve wasted years chasing shiny objects. I waited and hoped that one of them would magically take me to where I wanted to go. 

Didn’t happen. 

They took me places, for sure. Just not my places.

If you want to have fun, if you don’t have any specific goals, you can go after all the shiny things in the world. Your 20s are designed for that & most people keep it up much longer. 

Because it leads to a good life. 

But you know good is the opposite of great, right? 

If you want greatness—and your own kind of greatness—you need to stop getting distracted and do EXACTLY what you need to do to get what you want. 

What is a shiny object? 

Anything that feels good but is distracting you from your ultimate goal. 

If you’re doing something just for the money, then money is the shiny object. 

If you travel just for the heck of it, but it’s keeping you away from what you really want to do, travel is the shiny object. 

Shiny objects aren’t bad per se.

They’re just not quite it.

Why do we do it?

Are we that stupid? 

No, we just have all the options in the world nowadays. Everything is an option. It’s so hard to choose and so easy to get distracted. 

Plus, distraction is nice. It feels like we’re progressing in a meaningful way—for example, by making money—but we’re really not. 

If anything, we’re getting farther away from what we want. From who we are.

If you want the real reason we do it… I don’t know if I should say.

It’s heartbreaking.

The reason is this: we try to escape the unbearable pain of the thought that we’re not good enough and it’s never going to work.

How to cure shiny object syndrome? 

Two steps here. 

Step 1: What do you want? 

“Change” doesn’t count.

“Money” doesn’t count. 

We need something real & specific. What exactly do you want? What would feed your soul?

Step 2: What are the shiny objects that distract you? 

After a year-long struggle to make my husband move to Dublin, just when he was about to pack the bags, I backed down. 

I realized moving was my shiny object. I’ve moved 6 times in the past 13 years. I’ve moved countries, cities, and apartments, sometimes just for the heck of it. 

Moving takes a lot of energy and it’s fun. It’s the perfect excuse.  

But I realized I was just distracting myself from doing what I really wanted to do. 

So I stopped. 

I’m all in now. This time, it’s all or nothing. 

Identify your big shiny objects and say NO.

This message is so important… 

That I won’t include anything else in this newsletter. 

I want you to remember this one thing. 

Find what you want and go for it with all you got.

Everything else is a distraction that will waste your time.

One day, you’ll feel like I’m feeling now: a bit too old to be in the beginning of chasing my dreams.

Sending you the courage to live life your way,

Maya