3 Lessons for Life After Graduation

I want to read to you a journal entry that I made around this time last year in May of 2022. So for context here, I wrote this the day after graduating from college. Let me read to you. I'm scared. That much is abundantly clear. The fear is maybe best expressed as a fear of not knowing myself. My passion is now retired. My education complete. The way in which I spend my days is to shift completely in the next few months. I was very scared about graduation. And given that it's the same time of year and I'm watching a bunch of friends graduate, I've been reflecting a lot on what it is that I've actually learned over the past year. Right? Because those scary few months have passed and a bunch more months since. And it really boils down to three major lessons that I want to share with you today. So I learned the first important lesson this past summer. And the lesson was this. You have to choose your path or else a path will choose you. And this might be obvious to you. But to me, I was reading David Foster Wallace. This is water. And he was talking about worship. And he was saying everyone worship something. So if you say that you're not worshipping something, well, you're just not aware of what it is that you're worshipping. In other words, if you don't pick the path in your life, you're going to absorb by osmosis the path that's expected of you. Because everyone's on some path. So if you haven't defined yours, then you're just kind of following this average of all the other paths around you. The problem with this is that it doesn't make you happy. It doesn't lead to fulfillment. Following an average path is not a good way to the life that you want to live. The life that will make you happy. So it's not that there's a perfect path, right? But by explicitly saying like, hey, this is a path that I'm going to go down. Here's why I'm doing it and why I think it'll lead to a fulfilling life. You're able to move around a little bit better. You're able to push that path in the direction that you want it to go. In school, the path is pretty well defined. Just get good grades, get into a good school. Outside of school, there are so many more paths to follow. You have to choose. But how do you choose a path? That's a very overwhelming thing. There's no one way to do this. But there's a framework that I learned in college. And it works like this. First, you consider where you're coming from. So your childhood, high school, college, the things that you value, the things that are non-negotiable for you, and the activities that align the best with those values. Then you consider where you want to be in 10 to 20 years. If you could pick a life, what would you be living? Then you consider where you are today. What are your skills? What resources do you have at your disposal? Finally, the goal of choosing a path is to find the line that connects those three points. So given who I am and my background and the things that are non-negotiable for me and the skills that I have today and the resources at my disposal, how do I get to the place that I want to be, to my ideal life? And ultimately, yeah, there will still be a bunch of possible paths that connect where you are today and where you want to be. The way that I think you should choose between these or the way that I choose between these is by considering the paths and figuring out which one feels like it would be the most fulfilling to work on. The second thing, I think it's really shocking when people leave school, that suddenly community is really hard to find. Because in school, you almost have too much community. There are so many little communities that you can be a part of. You're constantly around people, interesting people. You have chances to participate in groups and so on. In adulthood, that goes away to a large extent. You have to put a lot of energy into cultivating that yourself. I'll share with you something that worked for me, because again, there is no one way to do this. If there was, it wouldn't be hard, is we started to have brunch every Sunday. So it started with me and two friends, and then we just started to invite everyone interesting that we would come across. Do you want to come to brunch with my friends on Sunday? We just have like this running brunch, I'll add you to the group chat, you can come whenever you want. It's a low pressure way of building community. And because people are craving community so much right now, you might be surprised at how many people actually show up. And at the end of the day, like worst case scenario, you eat pancakes with a couple of friends. Now the final lesson that I learned, it's actually, I'm cheating a little bit. It's not a lesson that I learned this year. I learned it years ago, but it's one that I've had to apply this year. And that is that you have to be your own best friend. I used to struggle a lot with anxiety. I had really bad negative self-talk. When things were going well in my life, I would tell myself that I didn't deserve them. When things weren't going well in my life, I would tell myself that it was all my fault. There was a lot of insecurity that I dealt with. But one day I had a bit of a revelation. I was sitting there in bed, beating myself up. And I suddenly realized, hey, if anyone else talked to me the way that I'm talking to myself right now, I wouldn't tolerate it. I would cut them out of my life. But because it's me, for whatever reason, I tolerate it. And I realized that I had control over the way that I talked to myself in my head. I am that voice. I can choose what it says. And so I started to talk to myself as if I were my own best friend. I thought about my best friend in real life. And I thought, well, how would I talk to them if they were in this situation? So I started to be like, John, I got your back. I'm in your corner. We're gonna figure this out. It's all good. I literally do this in the third person. I say like, hey, John, I got your back. Hey, John, it's gonna be all good. I cannot overstate how transformational this has been for me. Listen, after graduation, I had that negative voice come back, right? It's like, oh, you're leaving this behind. You're leaving everything behind. You made so many mistakes, so many regrets and so on. But if your best friend was graduating, would you beat them up like that? Or would you be like, dude, I am proud of you for what you've done. I'm excited for what you're gonna do in the future. And yeah, I recognize that it's scary and ambiguous right now. But guess what? I believe in you. I'm in your corner. I'm with you all the way. And we're gonna figure it out. Why wouldn't you talk to yourself in that way? Why would you be like, oh, we're gonna fail. So we have to take away. No, dude, talk to yourself in a good way, right? You control that voice. Seriously, it's one of the biggest things that has helped with my mental health. It worked wonders for me. Okay, so how do you actually apply this to your life, right? Well, first, you actually have to be aware of the way that you talk in your head. You need to pay attention to this conversation and recognize that it's a conversation and a conversation that you control. Okay, so paying attention to that voice and understanding when it's starting to spiral negatively and then intervening willfully saying out loud, I find it much better out loud to be like, hey, yo, John, why are we talking to ourselves like this? Like, come on, dude, let's be friends. Like, let's be nice. Eventually that voice starts to kind of habituate. It becomes the default way that you talk to yourself. And yeah, you go back and forth. That voice always slips. But I found it to be really impactful on me in terms of building a consistent, healthy practice in the way that I talk to myself. Okay, cool. So to recap the three major lessons from this year, one, set your own path, choose it or it will choose you. Two, pick the people that go along in that path and put a lot of effort into cultivating a relationship with them and it'll pay dividends. And three, the one person who's guaranteed to be on your path with you wherever it goes is yourself. So make sure that you treat yourself well and that you're your own best friend. Now, if you're curious about what I've been up to, I'm building a social reading app. It's a lot of fun. It kind of combines everything that I've ever cared about, reading, social media, technology. It's called Bookshelves. It's pretty early days, but I have a bunch of people beta testing it right now and I'm very excited to bring it to you. So this is interesting to you. There's a link in the bio, no obligation. It's obviously free for everyone, but I'll just email you when you have beta access and I think you'll really enjoy some more on that soon. But if you're watching at the end of this, I just figured I'd let you know. It's been a pleasure talking to you again. I hope you're doing well. See you soon.