How I hope to meet my love

Phyian Karinge
Mar 29, 2022
5 min read

A guide to my love

If you want to get rich quick, stop reading and leave.

Wait, I thought this post was about love?

Also Phyian, don’t we all want to make money sooner rather than later?

Of course we all do...and yes this post is about love.

Story-time;

Recently we went out to celebrate my friend’s birthday.

(It was such a fun night!)

She stays around campus, so we had to buy food and drinks from around the area.

The atmosphere was buzzing with Friday vibes; cars flocked and the music cut through the cold night.

Party by Beyonce and J-Cole is playing as I write this.

Fitting....

As we chatted outside the café, waiting for our food, my eyes were met with the most beautiful curves.

My friends knew that I had a thing for her.

Every time I saw her, it felt like the first time over and over again.

I would see her and squeal, to which point, my friends knew that she was around.

This time, however, I was chatting with someone who didn’t know about my love for her, so when I squealed, he was confused.

I pointed him to her in overwhelming excitement.

‘Oh, haha, you like cars too?’ he said trying to match my excitement.

‘Yes, but her...I love her.’ I said not tearing my gaze from BMW X6.

She moved slowly, confidently, in all black, with an engine sound so smooth, it nearly brought me to my knees.

My heart yearned for her and I almost missed it when the guy mentioned;

‘Oh, that’s my friend’s car!’

‘What? Your friend? What does he do?’ I said, spewing in a rush as I stole side-glances watching the x6 drive off.

“What does he do?” I asked again impatiently, ready to embark on that very venture at that instant.

He laughed, ‘It’s not something you’d want to do.”

“Tell me what it is”

“Let’s just say, he's in some real real dangerous business, I mean, sure, he can buy the x6 at 27, but I doubt he can enjoy it.”

He went into brief detail about the nature of the business, and I choose not to share that here, but it left me deep in thought.

My ego would like an x6 yesterday, but more than that my rational brain would like to be able to sustainably maintain it and enjoy it.

That means that a quick 30,000 USD will not suffice.

That also means that instead of a quick scheme to buy my car, I might need to build long-term sustainable wealth.

Ugh..

So, I’ll say this again, If you are a ‘Get-rich-quick’ ambassador, gently close this tab.

It doesn’t take a genius to observe that real wealth or anything meaningful is built over time.

We see that through the success of Amazon, Tesla, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Beyonce, and even with the growth of trees.

Yes, trees...

Achieving any form of sustainable success requires a postponement of short-term gratification.

Something the ego hates.

Because it would rather have pleasure here and now.

So how do we focus on the long term?

Here are some tips from a couple of brilliant minds that might help me get to my love and perhaps help you build something meaningful;

# Stop talking about it.

The ego loves to talk about ambitious plans because it wants personal glory at the earliest.

Research proves that the more we talk about our plans, the more our brain tires and confuses it with actual progress, making us less likely to make any actual progress.

Talk depletes us.

Talking and doing fight for the same resources.

Marlon Brando once said, “Void is terrifying to most people.” We talk endlessly on social media getting validation, avoiding the uncertainty of doing the difficult and frightening work required of any creative endeavor.

Because, our intention is to play the long game, we will be action and education-focused, and our ambition will not be grandiose but iterative.

Instead of talking, write it down, as a reminder to gear you on.

Habakuk 2;2 - Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.

# Say NO.

This applies to those that have chosen a path to commit to, after exploring.

Otherwise, in your exploratory phase, you must be open to saying yes to many things.

After all, that is the most effective to figuring out what to focus on.

This is not to say, be rigid, but to learn to cut out distractions to help you stay focused.

Pursue what the philosopher Seneca refers to as Euthymia.

Euthymia is the tranquility in the sense of your own path and staying on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it.

It's hard to achieve Euthymia now, with social media in our faces spurting every shiny thing our way.

We can't seem to focus and are riddled by comparison.

Do what you must to create an environment to enable Euthymia i.e limiting social media, spending more time in spaces aligned with your vision and even spending more time alone.

# You are insignificant

The artist Marina Abramović said that the moment we begin to believe in our greatness, is the moment we kill our ability to be truly creative.

I know; The opposite of that 'Believe in yourself' junk we have been fed.

What she is talking about is the self-absorption that makes you think you are special, so you must produce special work, therefore stopping you from creating any work on a beginner level, because you are so stuck in your specialness.

No one starts with special work.

They all begin with shitty work.

If you are so caught up in that specialness, you will never be able to master the humility of a beginner and therefore will fail to do anything sustainably or long term.

Here’s what famous CEOs, and other successful people do to combat this;

Spend time in the wilderness, or in places of historical significance.

Why?

They remind us how small and insignificant we are compared to the vastness of the universe, and how many of us have come and gone and will come and go.

Meditating on one’s insignificance edges out the ego.

With the ego silenced, we can create and build for the long-term, without the tiresome burden of our specialness.

# Slow and steady, marginal improvements

As echoed by James Clear on Atomic Habits, slow and steady propels you longer than quick and angsty.

I speak about this here as something I've tested with my weekly runs.

# Find ways to enjoy the process

I hate it when people say ‘Enjoy the process’

The process sucks sometimes, and can be lonely.

Enjoying the process won't always come naturally, even for the things we enjoy doing.

I’m here to tell you to FIND ways to enjoy the process because that is essentially the destination.

Go out of your way to find ways to enjoy the process. ie change location to write or film, buy new work out gear, change your playlist, try new recipes for your diet...and keep finding.