Breaking Free: Building a Life You Love
From Dissatisfaction to Opportunity
The thing you hate most about your life is going to become your greatest opportunity.
The thing you hate most is not a curse; it’s a compass. That nagging dissatisfaction, the one that turns the colors gray—that’s where your opportunity lies waiting for you.
But when you live a full life, how do you change direction without everything you love collapsing in your wake?
You’ve got everything you thought you wanted: a family, a career, a mortgage, two cars and a phone that takes kickass photos you never look at.
Something’s not right, though. You’re unhappy.
Distractions, Not Solutions
Here’s the deal: You have an aching void in your life—a hole that gnaws at your heart and happiness, no matter how hard you keep trying to ignore it or fill it.
- You buy shit you don’t need—a new doodad or shopping “retail therapy” that teases happiness but leaves you feeling empty after a day or a week.
- You drink, you smoke, wasting your free time chasing escape from a life you could be living.
- You have meaningless sex or a porn habit.
- You eat food—too much and the wrong kind.
- You doomscroll and argue with random Internet trolls.
None of them fit, though. Like cutting up a banana peel for a puzzle piece, it squeezes into place, but it doesn’t complete the puzzle.
The missing piece isn’t booze, food, or Internet trolls. It’s not still in the puzzle box or on the floor.
You must create it.
If you stop to consider the incomplete puzzle…you can allow yourself to admit that you don’t like this puzzle anymore. In fact, you haven’t for quite some time, and you’ve been distracting yourself by zeroing in on that one missing piece, because with so much time spent already on the familiar pieces of your life, it’s daunting to start a totally new one.
Rebuilding Your Life
It’s time for a new puzzle.
A Turning Point: My Story
I’ve been there. I trapped myself in a cushy corporate job, trading the brightest parts of my soul for a fat paycheck. I came up poor, and when money’s your biggest problem, it seems like money is the solution to everything. It’s not.
I made multiple six figures per year and yet I still racked up tens of thousands in debt, because I tried—and failed—to buy happiness. When you’re not fulfilled, the money doesn’t lose its value. You lose your value in the money.
When the economy turned and I got laid off, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to find a job that paid as well—or enough. It was a huge blow to my pride and sense of self-worth: I have to provide for my family! That’s who I am!
But I also felt…relief. Permission. I had opportunity thrust into my hands to stop missing out on my own life. I decided not to run out and find a new job only to continue to slowly lobotomize myself until I was finally laid to rest.
So, I looked at my life and asked myself a hard question: Do I like my life anymore?
Now, I’m asking you the same question.
Do you like your life anymore? Be honest with yourself. Maybe you haven’t for some time. Maybe you have also been so focused on trying to find that missing piece, that you haven’t let yourself believe that you don’t want this version of life anymore.
Facing the Doubts
Once you open yourself to the possibility, doubts and excuses creep in—both within your own heart and from people you love.
I don’t have the time.
”It’s just a phase. It’ll pass.”
What if I fail?
”You’re being selfish. Think of your family!”
It’s too late for me to start something new.
”Good grief, are you having your midlife crisis?”
These are hard to hear, and the best thing to do is acknowledge them, compare them to the drive that makes you want a happier, more fulfilling life.
You’ll also have allies—people who admire your courage and hopefully a partner who will stand by you and support you. People like me who have gone—or are going—through this and understand you. People who have walked the same path.
Once you make the decision and begin acting on it, you’ll discover strength within yourself that you’d forgotten you had.
Keep What Matters Most
If you’re my age or close to it, then that puzzle you don’t love has a whole lot of pieces inside it that you won’t ever let go of and are terrified to lose.
Kids. A wife or husband. Friends, people you love. Clubs you’re part of. Plans for the future.
You’re not some 20-something that can just live in your car for a few weeks and start from zero, anymore.
Trust me, I get it. We’ll keep those center puzzle pieces intact. We’re not going to shove everything off of the table; we’re going to build something new around them that truly matters to you.
Building a New Puzzle
This is where the real work begins. If we imagine the puzzle as our life, then it fills almost all of the table—the time-table—that we have available. We’ll need to start building out that new puzzle at the edges right beside our existing life.
You’re the puzzle. The pieces you need are the new skills and connections that you need to develop to move into the new picture. A piece at a time, you’ll do it.
Turn off the TV. Put down the beer. Leave the MJ in the drawer. Close the online shopping browser tab.
Pick one: Mornings or evenings. If mornings are tough for you, try setting an alarm 30 minutes earlier than usual, then an hour earlier. Start small—one task, one page read, one step taken. Over time, each new commitment made and met becomes the game-changer that opens you to the next win. Whatever it is, carve it out, and stay consistent.
There are going to be days you want to skip it or give up entirely. There will be days you succumb. Accept, admit, forgive, and recover.
You deserve to live, and that means you’re worth the pain of growing past the capabilities of the old you. Think of it as training for a marathon, and each day is the run you take to make you able to run farther.
Small Wins, Big Change
Here’s the beautiful part of this: As you start placing those new pieces—that is, after you acquire new skills and overcome challenges that stymie and frustrate you—you’ll start to realize that you’re able to do more than you have in years.
Once you get your first couple of wins—get your own first customer, earn your first dollar that didn’t come from a paycheck made of chains, solve a problem with skills you didn’t possess last year—something magical happens: You fall back in love with life.
Your new successes give you back the excitement you used to feel, except this time it’s not about fitting into someone else’s picture of success.
You’ve started to create your own.
Prepare for Setbacks
New challenges are going to trip you up:
If you start having some success with a new venture or skillset, you’ll have to decide how it fits with your existing commitments.
Gradually transition to your new career while maintaining your existing job? Work days and nights, six or seven days a week?
Finding ways to bring your new passion into your family life so that you get time with your kids even as you work six or seven days a week?
There will be setbacks, days when the old life looks rosier in hindsight. Hold onto how you feel growing forward.
You can’t avoid setbacks, but you can expect them and prepare for them.
Bouncing Back
Every day should be a day of gratitude. Even the hard days are opportunities for growth.
And then, one of those days, as you express your gratitude for what it offered, you’ll realize that the hole you were trying to fill—the empty space that launched you on this journey—will be gone.
Not because you found the perfect-fitting piece, but because you built an entirely new puzzle—a new you—that had no missing pieces.
You’ll no longer be living a life that doesn’t fit. You’ll be living one that is uniquely, wonderfully yours.
Living a Life That Fits
Take out a piece of paper, or a new note or document. Write down what you want to do.
That’s your first piece. You don’t need to know what the whole new puzzle will look like, yet. You just need one piece to start a puzzle, one step to begin a journey.
Give yourself one goal to drive toward, and then figure out the next step to take. Pick that one thing, write it down, and take the first step.
You’re not just solving a puzzle—you’re creating your new life, one piece at a time.
And you have permission to make it amazing.
