“You won the lottery”. “You’re lucky”. “It’s easy for you.”
These are the some of the phrases that I hear a lot from well-meaning friends and acquaintances. They’re all different ways of saying the same thing. That to them, the aspects of my life that they can see from social media and occasional parties are the result of good fortune.
I thought instead of sharing some good news or political opinions today, I’d, instead, take the time to share some of the hard or intentional things I’ve had to do to get where I am.
I absolutely do not do this for anyone to feel sorry for me or to suggest that my life is harder than someone else’s. I know that I have some incredible baseline privilege in my life. To name just a few: Being a straight man born to great parents in a middle class family, in a relatively safe neighborhood, in a safe and generous country, with relatively few outwardly disabling genetic illnesses.
But I have also faced (and still continue to face) hard decisions and challenges. I want to share just a few of these because it might inspire people to recognize their own agency in the face of adversity.
1. Health: Depending on many factors that change over the course of my life, I have either mild or acute social anxiety that flares on a weekly or even daily basis. This will often result in anything from slight shortness of breath all the way to full-blown panic attacks that make me want to throw up. This has been a significant factor in pretty much all of my movements throughout my life. From simply going to the shopping center all the way to jumping on a plane to go to Silicon Valley or taking on new jobs, having important meetings with clients and of course public speaking. It makes literally everything harder and, I believe, has been a major limiting factor in my career and contentment. Things that might otherwise be happy occasions - like my wedding - were things to dread and situations to manage so that my own mental health wouldn’t get in the way of my happiness and the happiness of my partner and friends.
2. Relationship: Aliya and I have an amazing relationship and we intentionally “love out loud”. That means we are affectionate in public and often post about each other on social media. But any relationship is not easy to create nor is it easy to maintain. For example I was born and raised in Australia and she was born and raised in Pakistan. The result is big cultural differences involving religion, world views and popular culture. These were not just things we had to overcome between each other, but they were also something that deeply concerned her family. We (especially Aliya) had to work very hard to put her family at ease about our relationship before taking it to the next level - right up to and including our wedding day. The differences between us and the concerns from her family were not trivial. We have each had to make incredibly intentional and hard compromises and evolutions to be in each others life. This barely scratches the surface of what it takes to make our amazing relationship work. But we DK all of this because we love each other and we know we are right for each other. We do it because we know anything worthwhile takes intentional effort. Our partnership is not luck. It is a choice that we make every day.
3. Work: While my work and my situation right now is profitable, this is only a recent development. It is the result of constant grinding over 20+ years. I have launched and built countless projects and companies. Each of them has failed to live up to my hopes and expectations in their own way. Up until recently, all of my work has really resulted in very little monetary success. It’s required resilience, grit, consistency, curiosity, optimism, risk-taking, and an enormous force of will (particularly in the face of my anxiety) to keep moving forward and get to where I am. It is exactly this difficult journey that makes it possible for me to relate to - and add value to - the journey of founders and startups today.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. Nor does it go into every difficult detail. Not even close. But I hope these few examples can serve as inspiration to others who feel like they have hard things to deal with or that others people have it easy.
Finally I’d like to say that I am available for anyone who is reading this. If you were going through a tough time and need someone to talk to, I am here!