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Picture this: you’re in your mid-20s, sitting in your apartment, scrolling through LinkedIn at 2 AM, wondering why achieving everything on your checklist feels so empty.
That was me, except I wasn’t in some fancy high-rise. I was in a cramped Melbourne flat, having just struggled to find meaningful work despite my psychology degree. The version of success I’d been chasing? Turns out it was never mine to begin with.
I’d spent years collecting achievements like Pokemon cards. Good degree? Check. The right social circle? Check. But here’s the thing: I was miserable. Not the dramatic, obvious kind of miserable. The quiet, gnawing kind that makes you question everything while you’re brushing your teeth.
The moment I realized I was living someone else’s dream
You know that feeling when you’re watching a movie of your own life and suddenly realize you’re not even the main character? That hit me hard during what should have been a moment of progress.
I’d just started another job everyone said I should want. My parents were proud. Friends were impressed. And there I was, having what I can only describe as an existential crisis.
The truth? I’d been so busy climbing a ladder that I never stopped to check if it was leaning against the right wall. Every milestone I hit was one that someone else had defined for me. Society, family, that one successful friend from university who somehow made everyone else feel inadequate.
That night, I did something crazy. I wrote down everything I thought success meant. Then I went through each item and asked myself: “Is this actually what I want, or is this what I think I should want?”
The list got real short, real fast.
Why we chase the wrong definition of success
Here’s what nobody tells you about your mid-20s: it’s basically a pressure cooker of other people’s expectations disguised as “finding yourself.”
We’re bombarded with success stories that follow the same script. Make six figures by 30. Own property. Have the relationship that looks perfect on Instagram. It’s like we’re all following the same GPS coordinates without asking where we actually want to go.
The problem runs deeper than just social media comparison (though that definitely doesn’t help). From the moment we start school, we’re taught to measure ourselves against external benchmarks. Good grades, good university, good job. It’s a conveyor belt of predetermined goals.
But what happens when you tick all those boxes and still feel empty? That’s when things get interesting.
I remember reading somewhere in my psychology studies about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. Back then, it was just theory. But living it? That’s when the lightbulb went off. I’d been running on pure extrinsic motivation for years, chasing rewards that meant nothing to me personally.
Taking the leap into uncertainty
After my epiphany, I did what any reasonable person would do. I took a warehouse job shifting TVs.
My friends thought I’d lost it. Maybe I had. But for the first time in years, I felt like I could breathe.
There’s something profoundly humbling about manual labor when you’ve got a degree collecting dust. It strips away all the pretense. No one in that warehouse cared about my LinkedIn profile or five-year plan. They cared if I showed up and did the work.
During those long shifts, I had time to think. Really think. Not the anxious, spinning-wheels kind of thinking I’d been doing for years. The clear, honest kind that only comes when your hands are busy and your ego is quiet.
That’s when I started writing. Not for anyone else, just for me. Pages and pages of thoughts about what actually mattered. What I actually wanted. Who I actually was beneath all the borrowed dreams.
The radical decision that changed everything
During my warehouse job, I made the decision that would reshape my entire life: I booked a one-way ticket to South East Asia.
No grand plan. No safety net. Just a backpack and a desperate need to figure out what success meant when nobody was watching.
Vietnam was where everything clicked. Not immediately, mind you. The first few weeks were a disaster of wrong turns, food poisoning, and wondering what the hell I’d done. But slowly, something shifted.
I met people who measured success differently. Locals who valued family dinners over salary figures. Expats who’d traded corner offices for coffee shops where they could work on passion projects. There was this whole world of people who’d opted out of the traditional success narrative.
That’s where I met her, my now-wife. She didn’t care about my career trajectory or lack thereof. She was interested in the writing I’d been doing, the questions I was asking, the person I was becoming rather than the person I’d been trying to be.
Building my own version of success
In 2016, sitting in a tiny apartment in Ho Chi Minh City, I launched Hack Spirit. Not because it would look good on a resume, but because I genuinely wanted to create something that mattered.
I’d spent so much time feeling lost and anxious, despite doing everything “right.” I knew there had to be others out there feeling the same way. People who needed practical advice, not just inspiration quotes over sunset photos.
The website grew slowly at first. There were months where I questioned everything. But this doubt felt different from before. It wasn’t the doubt of “am I impressing the right people?” It was “am I creating something valuable?”
In my book, “Hidden Secrets of Buddhism: How To Live With Maximum Impact and Minimum Ego,” I write about the concept of non-attachment. It’s not about not caring. It’s about caring deeply while holding things lightly. That became my new approach to success.
What real success looks like (hint: it’s different for everyone)
So what does success look like for me now, at 37?
It’s writing articles like this at 6 AM because I want to, not because I have to. It’s having deep conversations with my wife about philosophy over Vietnamese coffee. It’s knowing that my work helps people, even if it’ll never make me a millionaire.
Sometimes I think about that mid-20s version of me, miserable in his “successful” life. I want to tell him that it gets better, but only after it gets scarier. That letting go of someone else’s dream is terrifying until you realize you’re making room for your own.
The metrics have completely changed. Instead of salary benchmarks and job titles, I measure success by how often I feel aligned with my values. How much time I spend doing work that energizes rather than depletes me. How present I can be in my actual life rather than constantly chasing the next achievement.
Don’t get me wrong, practical concerns still matter. Bills need paying. But they’re no longer the North Star. They’re just logistics in service of a bigger picture that I actually painted myself.
Final words
If you’re reading this and feeling that familiar discomfort of living someone else’s version of success, know that you’re not broken. You’re waking up.
The path to finding your own definition isn’t neat or linear. It might involve some seemingly crazy decisions. Definitely involves disappointing some people. Always involves getting comfortable with uncertainty.
But here’s what I’ve learned: the success that actually fulfills you is worth the messy journey to find it. It’s worth the warehouse jobs and one-way tickets and confused looks from relatives.
Start small if you need to. Question one assumption about what you “should” want. Write down what actually makes you feel alive versus what just looks good on paper. Pay attention to the moments when you lose track of time because you’re so engaged.
Your version of success is out there, waiting. It just might look nothing like what you’ve been told to chase.