How Much Can Your Life Change in a Year?

A year ago, I would’ve never imagined being in this place.

Hi!

How are you all doing?

The previous newsletter inspired me to write this one, in detail. It got published in a publication called The Ascent which has about 145k subscribers!

I hope you enjoy it and maybe get inspired. Reply and let me know how it goes!

"We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish." - Tony Robbins

Until next week x

---

The author in Malaga, Spain

A year ago, I was learning how to code. Rumour had it that people with tech skills will be the workers of the future and are highly paid. I was anyway doing some data crunching in my full-time job, so coding and data analysis felt like a promising field to try.

I spoke to my engineer friends, and they directed me towards resources.

Here’s the thing, I suck at math. I’ve even got 2 marks out of 20 in high school because trigonometry would go over my head. I was great at languages and social sciences, but math and logic were my weak area.

But I wanted to try it after all the success stories I read on support Facebook groups I joined.

You know, sometimes you really want to turn your life around and are willing to work towards it. It doesn’t matter what it requires, but if you never try, you’ll never know.

Until this entire plan went downhill, and something magical blossomed.

Difficult and boring isn’t a good combination.

I woke up early to practise coding and do a data science curriculum. I worked post my job to study some more. In the beginning, it wasn’t hard but was definitely boring.

But hey, you’re always told good things don’t come easy.

So I pushed through the boring bit. I’d read job descriptions and salaries of data analysts and get motivated. I’d tell myself your life will upgrade massively, just put in some work.

And I continued for two months. After half the curriculum, I couldn’t do it anymore. I never got my answers right to coding questions no matter how hard I tried.

I felt like a quitter, and trust me, that’s not a good feeling when you dream big about changing your life. Meanwhile, I also came across a blog on the internet that spoke about writing online and thought, why not try this now?

Let’s not forget that I also created some noise in my family by now that I’m trying to be a data analyst and all of that died down quickly. Well, that was quite embarrassing to say the least.

What about difficult and fun?

The fundamental difference between coding before and after work and writing was that one of them was fun.

One of them didn’t feel like work, it felt so natural. I’d been writing since I was 7 and was writing online on various platforms since I was 18. Writing didn’t feel easy, but the challenges were fun.

Instead of learning a quick trick like I did while coding, I actually wanted to explore challenges in writing. I didn’t want to jump to answers or strategies, and the process of exploring was enjoyable.

About the metrics, they weren’t booming at all. Once, 8 people read my article, and I was ecstatic that 8 people on the internet read my article out of nowhere!

I can’t even get 8 people on the street to read my work, so digital felt powerful.

I then wrote often. And one day, applied for a random gig on a freelance platform. That gig made me $130 in 5 days. That’s a huge amount in my currency.

It’s when I realised these waters can be tested

But what about the devil in your head?

The biggest difficulty was the devil that resides in my head, and maybe yours too?

Do you ever feel what if this goes wrong or what will people think? Those are imaginary scenarios that haven’t even happened, but they pierce us. When I included my personal experiences in my articles, I felt this more often than ever.

I come from a conservative culture where a lot of things are looked down upon, even dating! But I shared away my experiences because I was done caring about what others will think and sabotage my journey.

I wanted to work on my mindset and beliefs. I read about growth mindsets, and about how can I ruthlessly believe in myself. I tested the strategies these books and self-help articles told me to follow.

After that, my energy changed. And with that, the energy I emitted and attracted changed too.

Making money online feels powerful.

Making money online made me feel powerful.

It makes a lot of difference when you come from a populous and competitive country with a low currency because everybody is competing for jobs. As a result, the jobs are low-paying.

It felt the internet finally gave me a chance to do what I’m good at and earn well from it, a chance that my society and culture didn’t.

Here, I could be me. I could interact with people across the globe and, to my pleasant surprise, people were kind. They wanted to help me expecting nothing in return. They wanted me to grow and pushed me when I wasn’t feeling up to it.

One freelance contract came and then the other, and I earned much more on the side as compared to my corporate job. This went on for a few months and then I finally took the leap to quit my job because I felt emotionally and financially secure.

Unfortunately, not all love stories have happy endings.

Losing everything.

After I quit my job, the universe took its turn. All my freelance contracts either paused or ended, and suddenly there was zero income apart from blogging.

But it didn’t matter so much, because of the mindset shifts I made. I knew in my heart that only better things will come and I will give my 100% to create no matter what.

Each month since a year has been a journey of growth that has helped me come out of a shell.

This is one of the many dips I experienced, and I faced worse ones before. I’ve had my high-paying client put off a book deal because of his work and home demands.

I had somebody speak to me for 4 months where we ideated upon a business and then they suddenly walked away after I countered a low-paying contract, I was in bed for 2 days feeling like shit. But my mom told me I need to have thick skin and prepare for worse things.

Many of these things have happened in the past few months! The only difference was that I had a full-time job to feed me back then.

Instead of feeling like I’m not good enough, I’ve felt I can do whatever I put my heart into. Instead of thinking I’ll always have to settle for low-paid work, I’ve demanded (and won) competitive freelance rates from people across the globe. Your mindset and strong beliefs can take you places, and hold you during the tough times too.

Yes, this is a pause from client work but that gave rise to ideas I wouldn’t have thought of before.

You can live a completely different life a year from now.

The question is, are you willing to make it happen?

Will you do what it takes to reach there?

Will you put work into it no matter how low the lows are?

A year ago, if somebody told me I’d quit my job to pursue writing full-time, I would’ve said they’ve lost their minds to even think that way. But with my journey of the last few months, I’ve realised there's a space for achieving dreams.

And not everybody achieves their dreams because it takes courage and faith to run after what you want. But before that, it takes guts to dream big because all our lives we’re told to ‘settle’ for subjects, streams, and jobs. To come out of this box isn’t easy.

In my journey, the good part was that what I chased didn’t feel like a race. I didn’t want to compete with anybody, I just wanted to get better than last month.

And there was no rush or obsession with stats. I didn’t care how many people viewed my stories or how much money my stories made me because after I publish them, I focus on the next story.

Maybe it’s these mindsets that have got in good in my way – like a viral LinkedIn post with over a million views or an article earning 4-digits, amongst others.

If you want a change in your life, I can’t promise that you will become a millionaire or will become famous.

But what I can tell you is that you’re not meant to live an unhappy life. There’s just one chance we get, and you absolutely have it in you to change things you don’t like.

It won’t be easy and it will require a lot of work, but if you have fun, time will fly!

After all, since when did life turn out to be something so serious? Since it’s one chance we get, might as well dance and make a fool of ourselves, right?