Introduction
Hey there, I'm Alex. I'm 28, from France, and I've just left the company I've worked for the last 6 years, on the typical hyper-scaling trajectory, from 10 to 600 people. In the past two years, I've gone through a roller-coaster of ego and emotions. I lost my director role and my team, we hit the unicorn milestones, I had hands-on managers when I was used to being completely autonomous... There was a lot of chaos. Today, I've overcome it and I'm transitioning to a much more internally-aligned work life. This is the story of how that happened, with the hope that it might help others on a similar path.
Along this path, I've found nuggets that have changed my view on life, my beliefs. I wake up with much more energy, I am eager to engage with the world, I am delighted in basic human interactions, I have high hopes for the future. How delicious! It seems a very long way from the mix of post-covid, eco and ego-induced depressions... I hope these nuggets can be glimmers of hope and provide useful inspiration and ressources if you find yourself bogged down by nihilism, eco(or not)-depression/anxiety, meaninglessness. I was there a year ago, and the sky seems brighter every day. The journey is on, and it's colourful, joyful, poetic, rich with music!
The sky is not all blue though! and hopefully my tone and choice of words will reflect that. Yet I consider hope as a fuel (not a drug: “hopium” is a thing on Reddit, apparently). I don't understate the many problems to solve for humanity, not the least actually, as I intend to project the hope necessary to create meaningful impact for you, and consequently for others.
On the methodology, each part is built as a whole. While the parts are linearly organised for the story, they standalone and are all influenced by other points down or up the story. They are indeed inherently intricately entangled, and it’s intended so you can easily consult a specific section later in time. Also, I'm generally telling the story in broad brush strokes and as a consequence, this piece is more conceptual than practical. I will go into more details in further writings, let me know what you wish were more detailed, the questions and remarks you have!
Finally, it's the first time I write something like that. I hope to get better at the exercise, so please do encourage and/or give constructive feedback 🙂
NB: this is the first part of a three-posts series. You can find the other links at the bottom.
State of despair
Life is hard
Let's first go back to a year ago.
We were barely out of a 2-year long covid situation, I downgraded from a director role with 4 teams and about 15 people to a contributor role in my company, I had compromised on so many of my values to fit in the role I was expected to play, yet it had bore no true fruit. It was a failure. I was a failure. So my mental voice was saying! I was confusing job title with intrinsic value.
I was tired, I had very low motivation, I didn't feel much emotions beyond stress, or excitement for a good afterwork party. I got used to getting out of bed at 9 to have as much sleep as possible. I was confusing tiredness with depression.
I had given up on being a vegetarian, despite my ambition to contribute environmentally, to show the way, illustrate an ideal... I was angry, but I couldn't solve it all by myself anyway, right? I was confusing perfect with done, ideology with realism.
I was confusing... many things. Life was not very savorous to say the least. I was disappointed with myself a lot if not most of the time. Things got more and more out of my control. The future seemed very dark for humanity, and I saw any type of engagement in the world as a pollution or an oppressing of people or other life forms... Life seemed truly meaningless. Something was off.
One day I listened to a podcast from the Good Life Project - about the great resignation. It was talking about me. How come could the host be so accurate? As a matter of fact, I wasn't alone, as I found out later: 90% of people are disengaged in their work. I took his test and tested as a scientist. I loved solving problems, that was about right. I wasn't solving enough problems in my job. Sounded like a dissonance. That was a start. I started to recognise that there was a problem. And more importantly, that I could do something about it.
And thus I hopped on the developmental train where I would clear my confusions. To echo those above:
that I have intrinsic value and the most important is to align what I do externally with what I am and value internally,
that it would as a consequence get me out of nihilism and help me get out of bed in the morning, with something exciting to achieve everyday
that ideals are perfectionists' mental projections and say nothing of who you truly are while often getting in the way of actual progress
Let's dive into more details.
PS: don't take me too seriously on words like depression, I don't intend to talk about clinical definitions here
Ego shock
Who am I, after all, in the grand scheme of things?
When I lost my Head of Data position, I essentially had two choices. Cling onto the prestige of the role and choose "up", i.e find the same or better role in another bigger company or go build a company for myself or anything more prestigious. That would be the rational choice, uh? Or I could choose "down" and sit with the discomfort and ego blast. For reasons I don't truly understand, I chose the latter. I somehow sensed it was a better choice for me. I had been climbing the typical social ladder for the past 4 years, in a typical race of title, team size, salary. I realised I was profoundly tired of it, and to be fair I didn't especially like my role in these conditions. I found it fluffy with a lack of substance. I chose to listen to that voice instead of the one telling me that I was "getting demoted and I deserved better, that people didn't understand my true value" and so on. Maybe you know that voice.
Intrinsic value > Extrinsic value
It was such a great decision for me. From that, I learnt that exterior signals of value are much less important than interior signals. I finally started truly asking myself questions like: what do I want to do? where do I want to excel? who am I? Instead of: what do I have to do to be the best at what I'm doing and earn the most prestige? I'll explain in further details below, but I believe I grew my ego and was able to understand a more wide-encompassing view of the world, precisely thanks to that. The result was that I transcended my career and prestige-oriented self, I learnt to disentangle myself from external social criteria that shouted that I'd go on and look for something bigger, better, shinier. Instead, I learnt to listen to my inner voice, I learnt that success was relative, I learnt that I wouldn't be happy complying to someone else's injunctions. Isn't that liberating?
Maybe you think: "well that's good but society wouldn't go very far if people did the things they wanted". You would be right to some extent, but maybe not where you think you are. Actually, it is very well documented that any person with a job that requires at least a tiny bit of thinking is going to be more efficient if they work on their terms, rather than if they have extrinsic rewards associated with success. The simplest examples is sales: you believe in bonuses? think again! They are counter-productive. Intrinsic motive > Extrinsic motive.
The philosophical take
Such situation (ego shock) provokes an inner growth, as it forces your inner story telling out of its previous conditioning. If you sit long enough with the discomfort of the situation, you inner voice will have to transcend its story of shame and guilt into one of value. Ego doesn't suffer a degrading story very long.
Heard of that friend who got laid off his job but thought it was for the best, and maybe you think she's just making it up not to loose face? Well, we all have that friend, and by the way I'm that person too, and you. There is truth in that in at least two ways: first, usually, when something like this happens, it means that you weren't truly meant to be where you were at this time, even if you hadn't realised it, life is showing you the way ; so maybe you don't understand yet the lesson, but it's still for the best. And maybe you do get the lesson, and here's the second way, as you grow to realise things you hadn't seen before: it opens new doors, new perspectives, new opportunities... You're better off now!
An ego shift: let life flow
I later on found models on ego development, which has actually been pretty thoroughly researched, and it blew my mind. It showed how people distributed and evolved in their meaning-making. The concrete benefit was that it helped me acknowledge what transition I went through, why and how my value systems evolved. It also truly helps understanding, communicating or working with others, like any typing methodology does (like MBTI, Enneagram, DISC...). As a theory lover, it was generally enlightening and I’m still researching related topics to this day.
The main ego lesson I learnt from that transition was that I could not force life. I could not force things to happen my way. Actually, I should not! The walls you face are your best friends. Hadn't I trusted that my forced change of role was for the best, I wouldn't have learnt everything I describe above. Learn to spot walls faster and you increase your likelihood for success, as you easily end up in spaces where you truly shine, aligned with your inner value. Conversely, the more you ignore walls, the bigger and harder they get when you eventually hit them.
The requirement is humility: your ego cannot control. It has to trust: people, life, future. Do you trust your future?
Learn to spot walls faster and you increase your likelihood for success
In my situation, this also created a breach in my rationality and opened me up for spirituality. I stopped clinging so desperately to my rationality, this suit I was wearing to perform my job. One day a holistic nutritionist asked me to grade my spirituality from 1 to 10. I was like, "kesako?" Later though, I realised spirituality was something I could now effectively consider, when I used to see it like mere magical superstition.
It seems that when you choose to trust life’s flow, you also tend to believe something greater might be underlying all of it. That you're only a piece of a puzzle.
To go further:
Confidence that things can change
Bring in the beacon of hope
I was on holidays. A month of holidays. I had been told to think about what was best for me next as I lost my role, and I didn't know. Was it time to move on to new adventures? I took a week alone travelling Italy, and I had this one book with me: Let my people go surfing, from Yvon Chouinard. My girlfriend had read it during the pandemic, she said it was inspiring. It was an understatement.
My book overtook my trip in Italy. I devoured it. It felt like a fresh mountain stream of water pouring upon my tired scale-upper face. It was a blast.
My key learnings were:
Your difference is your strength, you can create the change you want to see, you can refuse to go the typical highway
It is possible to create very successful businesses that hold dearest and truest to humanist values
Not wanting to build a business is a great recipe to build a great one
The environmental crisis is massive, but through action there is hope
Capitalism through responsible entrepreneurship is a huge vector of good, rather than destruction
Normal people create amazing things, when in the right conditions
I 200% recommend the book. I didn't know it yet, but the book actually contained most of the wisdoms I came to dig into and embody during the next year and which I write about further on.
I was astonished. It showed me a path which I had come to believe impossible. I had buried these values which were constitutive of my deeper self in favour of more productivist ones, which were required of me from my environment. I had started questioning everything, the purpose of it all, my adequacy with the world... I felt a huge dissonance and couldn't see a way out. This book clicked like the missing piece. It swept away all my confusions and made me understand that I was simply not playing the right game. It gave me hope.
More precisely, it ignited me to push for better, to become a better person and to trust in a better future where societies and enterprises do good for their people and for the environment. I could envision a world not walking on its head. And it gave me confidence to follow my instincts and to stop compromising on my values.
I truly started journeying at this point. I had a quest. I wanted to realign with and fight for my deepest values. I wanted to take responsibility to create a better future. I was woken up.