Remember that there is nothing more important than your life and desire to succeed at a startup or in corporate America or anything else is just conditioning and not necessarily important at all.
That's something I cannot come to terms with. I really want to succeed. I know I can succeed if I just became disciplined and focused.
Not sure of the situation but for me nothing focuses me more than having a real customer and/or collaborator to whom I've made real commitments to.
When I've worked on my own, its real easy to get distracted and rationalize putting things off. I'd be lucky to get in a full eight hours.
But working with others, I found myself working many hours beyond even the time we spent directly collaborating. Because I had to deliver on my commitments. I think many people need that.
Thanks for taking time to comment. How did you work your struggles with discipline? ie. I have tried meditation/yoga/working out many times only to relapse and give up week or month later.
This pattern has repeated so many times in the last 5 years I have reached a point I don't want to try anything new because of the fear/knowledge that it won't stick.
> I don't want to try anything new because of the fear/knowledge that it won't stick
My point was ... so what if it doesn't stick? Just don't worry about it. So you're a person who starts things but doesn't finish them. Big deal. Just enjoy whatever you're doing while you do it and when you're sick of it and feel like something else, do that. Just go with it.
You can't fight this kind of thing .. just roll with it, accept and enjoy the fact that this is your personality. At least you're not boring!
That mindset is how I deal with this, and it's worked fine for me. You don't have to be or do anything. You're OK already.
Pain is one thing and it's understandable to fight pain while running a startup. But where I'm at now--this indifference to life--is scarier than pain. It's weird. I should be able to work through it though! Thanks for the uplifting words.
The best bit to get out of many of these guys is that each of us needs to find our service to others. What can you do to benefit and serve other people? When you find the answer to this question, you will be led to both success, and meaning.
I considered that. When I returned to school, I promised to stay away from start-ups for at least a year. My life sucked even more perhaps. Hopping onto my current startup brought some joy--though not long-lasting. But nothing has brought me long-lasting joy and that may be the crux of the problem.
So startup is a important part of what makes you happy, but focusing on it solely will not make you happy.
Now you are going to have to find out what are the missing ingredients that will make you happy, and what you are willing to give up in your startup dream (as hard it may be) to achieve those missing parts.
Because focusing solely on startup's or on banking on the success of your startup will not help those other parts of your life.
Yeah I've read up on it and it's one of my default "jokes" to new friends("dude! you've no idea how bipolar I am")--only they don't know that I am not really joking.
Still I have a lot of stigma about officially getting tested for this stuff.
Funny this should come up because I'm also a 23 year old university student (undergrad) and I started medication for bipolar II a week and a half ago.
I've had similar problems with focus and discipline. I've tried alleviating them by exercising (working out with the ROTC at 6 AM), eating well, making important commitments, doing Buddhist mindfulness exercises, listening to Eckhart Tolle, writing myself a contract that I signed in front of my friends/classmates, trying to create a startup with some good friends, and many other things that typically ended in (painful) failure. I had successes here and there, but the mental effort required to hang on until the end was often huge.
I have the tendency to make commitments and create relationships when I'm in one of my highs, and then proceed to fumble them when I inevitably reach a low. I dropped 2 semesters of college before I looked for professional help.
I started by seeing a therapist, not an MD. I found the sessions beneficial and they helped me get through a rough patch, but after two months things weren't really coming together. At my therapist's discretion, I saw a psychiatrist. I told him my situation in it's entirety. I didn't let myself think about trying to save face. I told him the grittiest details if I thought they were important for him to understand what I was going through.
I definitely had strong misgivings before making that step. For me the worst was "What if everyone goes through the same difficulties, and I'm just weak and cowardly?" However, my track record clearly showed I needed help. It was mostly a matter of allowing myself to be humble enough to accept it.
After only a week and a half of taking Seroquel, it's hard for me to say how it's going and where it's going to take me. Early though it is, I've noticed a change for the better. I like to think it's a temporary solution, like the way that you would put a tarp over a hole in your roof before you actually get it repaired.
Psychiatrists and therapists see people for things like this all the time. It's familiar territory for them. I could have saved myself a lot of heartache if I'd gotten professional help sooner.
There really isn't testing per se for this sort of stuff... its more like you make a doctors appointment, meet with them 1-4 times to given them your personal history of all relevant stuff, and then theres a subsequent discussion about viable courses of action. (Is there really a stigma in talking to a doctor in general?)
If its just a case of having trouble doing the initial jumpstart of getting started looking into stuff, ask one of your friends who you're close to and comfortable being open with to help you get the ball rolling on looking into such, or just make yourself commit to at least making a appointment with your general practitioner.
(getting around irrational social anxiety issues which can act as obstacles is hard, and apparently the best adaptive approach is to reframe the ominous task by breaking it into lots and lots of smaller steps, and forcing yourself to only think about the current step and never about later steps, rinse and repeat)
It took three places coming to the same diagnosis for me to really accept I had bipolar disorder . I was convinced I was just hyperactive and just wanted an RX for Ritalin. Even now, I still can't bring myself to take the mood stabiliser meds (lithium, valproic acid). But seeing a psychologist has been one of the best things I've ever done for myself.
The thing is, bipolar disorder can get worse over time. It's not uncommon for people to get help only way after things have gone to shit. Why waste time? If it's really BPD, it's not just gonna go away. Might as well go to a doctor now -- at least that way you can be fully informed.
You're plenty welcome. And... as odd as it may have seemed, the phone number's there if/when you want to chat. It may amount to absolutely nothing, or it might be useful for the both of us. I'm not awake 24/7, but am available quite a lot :) By way of reference, I'm plenty older than you, and have dealt with a lot of how you feel (except for the startup in highschool stuff!) since my teens - it definitely can get better. To a large extent things are what we make of them, and the beauty of life is that we can make of it what we want (sorry to get too philosophical so late/early in the day!)
After reading your thoughts about how you feel I can honestly say I currently still feel the same way about my life. It wasn't until Senior year in High School that I started to have the same feelings as you and experienced thoughts of suicide or depression along with anxiety and was given Zoloft by a doctor when I was 18. I was really outgoing in high school though but did have some rough times my senior year with the typical girl bs causing fights and what not. I also had a therapist session every other month or so (didnt start until college) to talk to about whatever really and also problems with my family.
Pretty much everything I endured with Zoloft and therapy didn't make me more confident or helped me accept the fact that I don't like to make mistakes and that in turn makes me like the The Too Many Aptitude Problem - TMA. One thing it did help me with was my suicide thoughts and even stopped me from writing good bye letters.
What I am trying to say is that after every thing I endured over the span of a 1 and half I was on Zoloft I really thought I was recovering from my daze I had. I felt better but not cured. But it seemed it caused a worse daze making me just pass through things in my life without real thought. My mind started to seem off and I changed from my true self. I wasn't as social, I was more cautious, and I think I lost the person I was in Senior year. This all came to a realization after I was finally taken off the drug just as my freshmen year of college came to an end.
One thing that can really help is therapy though. So totally give it chance. I know I used the tissues in the room a lot when I talked about what I was going through because his answers/questions always made me really think.
To me any drug with any type of extreme side effects is not a solution but it could be for you. Just a thought.
That's something I cannot come to terms with. I really want to succeed. I know I can succeed if I just became disciplined and focused.