[RabidRat]

Originally Posted by BIC_BAWS

What do you guys define as a high value individual?

For me, it's people with compassion and integrity. People who are generous: with their energy and their patience, and make an honest attempt to help others be better off.

Fwiw, it's what I see of you and most other folks on here.

Originally Posted by BIC_BAWS

Spoiler!

I've been really really really fucking burnt out (struggling) for the last few years. Hell I haven't done anything to change it and I know that. It's not an excuse but for context, I barely feel like a human being most of the time and it honestly feels like I'm living in a shell of myself - robotic going through the daily motions of life (work, eat, sleep, repeat). I've said this before, but I feel trapped. As in, trapped in debt (mortgage + car) via lifestyle inflation and other familial circumstances. Outside of track and friends, I am living only to pay off generational debt.

Anyway, through a conversation with a friend tonight, I think the lack of motivation to do something about it ultimately boils down to my self worth. Pre-COVID, in my early 20s, I was running several successful businesses and I had a clear path of what I wanted to do. COVID kind of really fucked me cause I feel like I've done nothing since the shut down. To me, success looks like ambition and living your life to your terms, done via entrepreneurship. I can't do that anymore because I need things like job security and being an employee for mortgage reasons.

Despite me feeling that I haven't had a lot of self growth in the last 4 years, a different friend reminded me that I've grown so much more as a person - managing to foster (cultivate) an amazing friend group, finding joy in caring for others (monetary, time, experiences) and showing up for people, etc. While I think I was doing that before, they did mention that they didn't really like who I was before - arrogant, cocky, and an overall asshole. I'm still an asshole, but I perceived that time of my life of being a high valued person.

Originally Posted by BIC_BAWS

I find it difficult to have this conversation with those amongst my age group as in most cases - it's the opposite. They didn't have a sense of direction in their early 20s, but now they do. Or tbh it's just that life hasn't beaten them up yet or enough, to get to this point of what the fuck. Whereas, the demographic here is older, so well most of you have gotten your 20s and 30s out of the way and life has fucked you up over the years.

Like Hobz said, the reality is there is no truer success or failure than the one we have in our minds. The most powerful thing we can have, is control over our own goalposts, and not have someone else deciding that for us.

Setting those goalposts in a way that we give ourselves a break on things that are done and decided (which we can't or shouldn't change), but also so that we challenge ourselves to do more and better with things that are or will be upon us.

Originally Posted by AstulzerRZD

While some of my friends have gotten amazing self-discovery while living at home, I got a lot of it from moving abroad.

Looking back, if they had paid me the same salary in Vancouver / Seattle / NY, I still would've moved for the exp

This was huge for me as well: I didn't manage to really grow until I ventured out there to give myself a shake.

@BIC, if you're not currently attached right now, then a huge upside of that would be the ultimate freedom to just pack up and move somewhere totally different .