The Nerdist Way_ How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) - Chris Hardwick [41]
1. Things are going better than they ever have.
2. You wake up one morning strangely depressed.
3. The rest of the day you don’t feel right in your skin.
4. Dread and doom set in.
5. You begin subconsciously dismantling your success while sprinting to get back to your previous comfortable state.
In this moment, take a deep breath and let yourself understand that you are just experiencing growing pains. It’s SUPPOSED to happen. It will pass if you let it, and you will soon feel “normal” in your better environment. Again, please don’t think that I mean “money” when I talk about “better environment.” That should translate to “an improved position from your current one.” This can be a good relationship (for once), a better job title, a more advanced group of work peers, even the freedom of retirement. “Better” often feels “new” and new situations are like jeans: They can sometimes take a little bit of time before they start to fit right. If ever there was a situation to pursue the uncomfortable, this is it. In this case, being ACCEPTED for your talents is uncomfortable but definitely worth overcoming. I had to realize that believing that I would only know and deserve rejection was a thing I made up in my head. Fuck off, brain! Maybe not surprisingly, things started to go better more consistently once I did.
CHARACTERCIZE
Write down five positive things your newfound success will bring you, and let yourself FEEL them.
When you do begin to achieve success, who do you want to be? The act of succeeding itself will not make you happy forever. Don’t think it’s going to suddenly make everything rosy. It is a good thing but it’s not a magic spackle for your problems. You come out of success with the same emotional baggage you had going into it. If you’re unhappy in life, work on that separately.
THE POWER-TRIPPING NERD
Beware! Because Nerds tend to experience rejection from a young age, they tend to skew a little on the crazy side when they finally achieve success and power. Go easy on the little-brains. You don’t need to destroy them like rodents in a crush video. Be thankful and gratified enough by your success. If you treat people like shit, they will revel in your demise if you ever happen to slip up, and getting back up to Castle Awesomegaard can be a bit more challenging the second time if you’ve burned all the bridges leading to it.
We (myself included) seem to live in a constant state of “If I just had X, things would be RAD.” We tend to live in a constant pursuit of happiness, as defined by exterior goods or circumstances. I think pursuing happiness is the wrong approach. That idea puts it into the future, and therefore in the wrong tense. You just need to BE happy—in the present—with who you are and what you have. I realize it’s not as easy as flicking a switch on and off, but my point is that having a bunch more stuff isn’t going to fix you. You have to do that through reflection, assessment, and appreciation. Steal moments of happiness if you have to, and then collect them until they are the dominant images in your psyche. If your computer blue-screens, you can’t dump a pile of money and tits on the casing and expect that’s going to get it working again. You need to go inside, figure out what’s wrong, and repair it. (It’s probably the logic board.)
THE THIRD REACTION
Some Nerds are timid when it comes to anger and confrontation. Others have itchy rage triggers because they have spent their lives fighting upstream socially and therefore have some control issues. I am one of those people. I don’t get pissed at important things, mind you. Just things like computers, traffic, and telephone customer support menus. Occasionally I’ll get snippy with another human when they probably don’t deserve it. Nerds know they’re smarty-pantses—in fact, it’s part of how they define themselves, so sometimes we come