How to Start Something New (or start over)

Sometimes you have to follow your heart.

Building my new bookcase in the new house.

A while back, I asked my readers about what’s currently on their minds. One reader said:

“The thing on my mind right now is how to start over when your world falls apart.

How to get your feet back under you and be able to be confident again.”

I can say something about that from personal experience. Almost 11 years ago, in January of 2015, I was on a vacation in the Caribbean with my then-girlfriend.

My grandmother was in the hospital back home.

She collapsed the day I went to the airport. It was a very emotional and hard decision to take off. On the one hand, I wanted to stay; on the other hand, I was also burned out from work and life and felt I needed to get away.

That year was stressful. I left my family business to work at an IT advisory firm in London, which was a huge adjustment. I got sucked in by corporate culture.

I became laser-focused on achieving my targets and started playing office politics. By the end of that year, I went through so much drama that I felt like I was part of a TV show like Suits or Industry.

Power struggles, backstabbing, office parties, people on drugs, abusing booze, you name it, we experienced it on the work floor.

But that lifestyle didn’t sit well with me. I’m an introvert. I like my alone time and don’t like to socialize.

I was really in the wrong career. But I also didn’t want to say goodbye to it. There was this kind of rush that kept me hooked.

When I got back home in the first week of 2015, my grandmother passed away the same day I arrived. As a family, we had never experienced a close loss like that before. Everyone was affected because my grandma played such a big role in our lives.

You keep going until you can’t anymore

I took some time off work and returned two weeks later. Nothing felt the same anymore.

The office politics? Pathetic.

The targets and bonuses? Meaningless.

After a week I handed in my resignation. Since I performed well in my first year, the brass all came to me with their meetings and carrots on their sticks. They offered me:

• More time off

• Higher salary

• More freedom

• Paid flights to see my family once a month

I didn’t care anymore. I already made the decision.

In March 2015, I was back home and ready to start over.

Decide, plan, execute

In that order.

The first two steps are the hardest.

Making the decision to change something or start over is VERY hard. I find that to be true to this day.

No matter how much experience you have or how successful you are, it will always be hard to make a change. That’s because you’re giving up the familiar for the uncertain.

You’re getting off your existing path and forging a new one.

For example, this is the first article that I’m sending out to all my subscribers on Substack. I just moved my newsletter to this platform.

When I started my newsletter, I used Mailchimp. After a while, I moved to ConvertKit, and then to Kajabi.

Every step was scary. And this isn’t even something that big.

When I started writing online in 2015, there was no “creator economy.” There was also no Substack.

Since Covid, this space has grown exponentially. I didn’t make much money for the first three years.

But I was committed because after I made the decision to pursue writing I felt liberated. Everything about what I was doing felt good.

And that was a huge contrast with how I was living before. It never really felt right.

So you should trust your gut sometimes. If you feel like you need to switch things up, take that sign seriously.

Once you decide to pursue something new, you will feel a lot better once you commit to it.

Then, it’s time to make a plan.

Being serious about making a plan

There are two ways to make a plan. A serious way and an unserious way.

In my experience, anything that doesn’t have clear and repeatable actions is not a serious plan.

My plan when I started writing in 2015:

• Write for two hours first thing in the morning

• Publish a new article every Monday and Thursday

• Journal 30 minutes a day

• Read 1,5 hours a day

Mind you, I moved back in with my parents and worked a few hours a day at the family business. I dedicated the rest of my time to figuring out my writing career.

I worked on that 7 days a week because it didn’t feel like work. It felt like solving a puzzle. I always saw this writing gig as a fun challenge.

I kept trying out things until I found something that worked. I kept publishing new articles and books. I’ve published more than 700 articles.

I also wrote 10 books. Some of them have done very well.

So well that I finally bought my dream home this year. That was also scary. Moving from a one-bedroom apartment to a big house.

But my wife and I are loving it. And I bet that our son, who will be born soon, will also love the space.

I started writing from my tiny parents’ bedroom. And you know what? I also loved that phase of my life. It was fun to just wake up and write.

You know that famous quote about how success is mostly a matter of showing up?

I think that’s true. Just show up and be creative about solving your challenges.

And our challenges are almost always the same. We simply want to be heard and recognized.

Execute like your life depends on it

Your life is, of course, not going to end if you don’t find success in your new endeavor.

You can always try something new. But as long as you’re still working on something, you have to take it seriously.

Get angry if you are slacking. Be pissed off if you didn’t stick to your daily goals. Because it’s not easy to achieve something meaningful. So you have to be hardcore.

Once you commit to a goal, make a plan, and execute every single day until you make progress. If something doesn’t work, create a new plan.

Keep adjusting until you find success.

It all sounds very simple, and to be honest, the underlying structure of achieving something actually is simple.

The problem is that so many people make everything complicated.

Keep it simple. Follow your heart. And work as hard as you can.

All the best.

-Darius