Driven by the “Career-Life”

Disclaimer: First things first…I’m doing good and I am not looking for help or for a pity-party by anyone. I don’t need calls or texts after this just to check on me because i’m intrinsically a happy person and am just exploring what would make me “happiER” and more fulfilling on my journey. Just wanted to share my thoughts, experiences of the last years and current challenges that one has to deal with in my position and maybe inspire people to reflect a bit more on their actions and possible repercussions of their decisions along the way. I’m not self-centered enough to think that i’m the only one going through this, so maybe this will trigger some people to think more as they aspire to be more than they are. This is how I deal with certain situations/challenges in my life; I experience – I reflect – I write – I draw conclusions and I carry on! Not everyone would do this for the fear of being ‘exposed’ or becoming too vulnerable in public but if you know me, you know me….I could care less and prefer to be transparent, share introspective ideas and thoughts to spark some conversations, change people’s perceptions and inspire to do better. If you see me as competition and want to use this against me when talking behind closed doors…be my guest, this is part of life too. We are all humans that experience life as it happens and grow through it on various levels…hopefully. 

Again, I’m cool, no need to be concerned…just dealing with situations and certain thought-processes that have an effect on me at times.

“Loneliness” can be interpreted in many different ways and has many different faces. Being 41 years old and feeling pretty vibrant and young as a whole (excluding my f#&$ back), I still find myself in a peculiar situation. Thanks to Chris Williamson, one of my favorite podcasters (Modern Wisdom), I was made aware of the “loneliness chapter” that can exist in certain people’s lives. It usually occurs when you have outgrown certain people in your life that you don’t identify with and have not found your new tribe yet. Tribe is what we all seek ancestrally because it was easier to survive that way since we can all benefit from each other in various ways within the group. By living a secluded lifestyle at some point we can reach moments of emptiness and have to ask ourselves certain questions.
“Me-time” is great but to what degree healthy? Chris refers in this case to a younger group of people that are into self-improvement & personal growth and want to stay away from doing immature things and inadvertently distance themselves from the group that has a bad influence on them but at the same time have not found their new tribe yet where they feel understood and welcomed in their growth…this loneliness chapter can last a while and requires discipline to stay the course and do what you believe in. You find yourself in a hollow space without belonging and have to learn to navigate those waters on your own. It can be fun for a bit, being alone without dramas and being independent to do all the fun things on your own but…human connections are essential for a healthy body&mind.

My loneliness chapter is not so much based on that because in a way I was always into self-improvement and personal growth but more on the repercussions of a continuous investment into a career and continuous “withdrawal of funds” from your personal life….It’s like a “reverse compound interest effect”. Did you know that loneliness has the same health effect on your body that smoking does? Not so much on your lungs obviously but for the system as a whole…”take that for data” google that one :).
For the last 13years, since I had my first big break, I continuously invested into my career on two high-level jobs at the same time, which didn’t happen simultaneously but instead bled into each other seasonally…firstly, a regular basketball season in Euroleague which turned in the NBA and summer-time investment with the National Team…pure passion and commitment on both ends are required, that’s a pre-requisite while burning the candle from both ends. This left hardly any time for private life except for ‘pockets’ of joy off the court with friends that I happen to make along the way and are not connected to basketball directly. On one hand, I made friends all over the world and can say that there is a piece of me all over this planet but at the same time, it’s impossible to bring this circle together because of the life I chose. Since 2011 my career-life has been on full blast and in order to be successful in whatever you do you have to decide what you want to leave behind. When I got my first big break I was sure I wanted to leave Cuxhaven and I was ready for it, zero doubt, without being aware where I will land and where it will ultimately take me, it was a one-way street without a dead-end…I was going somewhere. Euroleague seasons turned into NBA seasons and Eurobaskets turned into World Cups & Olympics…what a phenomenal basketball life I am living! All of this ‘investment’ into the professional path and success leads to ‘withdrawal’ from the ‘private account’ as I mentioned earlier…and now we are here…reflecting on the journey and understanding the reasoning for my lack of a cohort group to spend free time with.

As a baseline, you have to consider that the job I do is fully remote in itself and I don’t have a traditional home-base where I can say that this would be my home for life…also globalization naturally leads to your friends and family being scattered across nations. On top of that, I travel alone, eat alone, work alone (mostly), watch games alone, workout in the gym alone, talk & think alone, home alone, walk alone…it became a vicious cycle that begs the question ‘where’s the line between independence and loneliness?’ Fast forward 13years from the time it all took off like a plane that I’m used to riding daily now I find myself in my pockets of free-time thinking about the sacrifices that I laid down over the years.
Now, I find myself walking through Vilnius on a daily basis, multiple times and find myself continuously taking the loooong route instead of the quick route home or to my destination…for very simple reasons, exposure. I see friends of groups of 6-8-10 people sitting at bars/restaurants, talking, laughing, socializing, living life basically…and this triggers an anger inside of me that I can’t explain. By the way, this anger leads to phenomenal gym workouts but that’s another story….:) I’m happy for them and can’t be mad at anyone but at the same time I understand that I find myself in a very weird pocket of life where my age-group has already family and developed friendship circles and the younger group has their own routine of office, afterwork life & weekend escape trips to the lake i.e. All of this comes only to my attention because i was isolated for too long and had not much outlet for my social and naturally curious personality. The team was my friend & family circle…whatever team I worked on that was my tribe. 

I used to shut down clubs at night/morning and now I’m shutting down cities until late at night in a different way just to make sure that I don’t miss anything that is happening and try to expose myself as much as possible to social situations around the city…Imagine taking an evening walk, getting close to home at 11pm and finding yourself taking another detour just to check on the city one more time, if it’s still there and if people are still living their lives, if things are in place, if by chance you could be a part of something as well…that’s me more often than not these days. I take the street where more people are mingling instead of the empty street that has ‘no life’ in it. As a social person you realize that there is a fine line of how much social interaction you actually need and there is certainly a limit for that also…especially if it’s a useless conversation without much substance…you will lose me quickly and i will distance myself physically or mentally, which is also my own issue. One friend told me that I’m “too niche”…I don’t party often…whatever the word ‘party’ means, I like to fast and optimize for my nutrition, I workout and don’t like to go to the park and chill, I travel for work a lot and am living in a total bubble…so yes, it’s very unique and challenging and I prefer to aim for the balance instead of living in a extreme dis-balance. I will not fake my interests just to fit-in…is that a flaw? I see those people in the bars having fun and laughing but I’m certain that all of them have their own set of issues and probably completely different to mine…so ultimately, it’s a trade-off and I’m more than willing to take this trade and try to optimize the situation. 

Alex Hormozi, who is also a good friend of Chris, once said and I’m sure this quote has other forms too but his resonates: “There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs!” This applies to everything….you are always giving something up in every decision you make, however small the decision is. I.e. I like to fast and not eat late at night and I don’t drink alcohol all that much but would I sacrifice an evening of socializing for a fast?…abso-fucking-lutely…I would gain much more from the socialization part than I would from sitting at home and giving my cells and digestion system a rest where “autophagy” may safe a day in my life, at the end of my life….

Life is about investing in one thing while withdrawing from something else, it’s completely normal and just has to be weighed out to a degree that helps you sleep at night at peace. Are you willing to give up something in order to get something else? How much? To what degree and how long? The people I see in the bars and restaurants probably have not seen as much of the world as I’ve seen and have not met the ‘spectrum of people’ that I have met in my journey, which helps me to connect on various levels in various situations of life because of my world-view. They have other headaches in their lives that I happily don’t have to worry about. 

Life is a collection of exchanges and sacrifices and you have to choose yours especially if you are a driven personality like I am. You have to be mentally ready to sacrifice things that others won’t in order to get to where you want to go! If you are in the beginning of your career whatever age group you are at, I would inspire you to be more cognizant of your actions and time spent behind the laptop…keep asking yourself constantly ‘is the juice worth the squeeze’? I would also urge you to explore the 80/20 rule that I currently apply to almost everything I do. It’s like back-pain in a sense….you continue to have bad posture and ruin your back but it’s not aching you at that moment, it’s just a ‘compound interest effect’ that you feel in your back once it’s too late, then you have to reverse engineer the whole process and rehab your posture and muscles so the pain recedes…which is the same with your private life. You don’t feel that your private life is escaping you and being naturally eradicated until it has escaped you to a degree that has a visceral effect on your body … Then you somehow have to reverse-engineer the whole socialization process and expose yourself to situations that raise the chance of you meeting people that you like to associate yourself with, meeting new friends and widening your horizon in a different sense.

Life is also about people, to some more to some less but it’s definitely more fun with good people in your life that want the best for you!

Reach for the stars, seek the highest level of satisfaction in your work, aim for the success in your career, go after it….haaaaard…hustle, make the most of your opportunities but don’t forget to smell the flower along the way while you are trading certain things away!