What keeps you up at night?

When I saw the HiveGhana prompts for this week, I was tempted between writing about my role model or my worst fear. 24 hours left to live was totally out of the question because writing about it would stir up soo many emotions and put me in a state where I had to imagine the prompt being my reality. I wasn’t (am) not ready for that.

I’ve also written about my Hive role models a couple of times already, so it would be repetitive for me to write about it, even though my role models are not the same people all the time. I keep meeting new people, learning new things and looking up to different people.

Eventually, I settled for my worst fear because even though it’s personal, it forced me to confront some thoughts I’ve been avoiding and repressing for a while now.

When you get asked questions like this, it takes you a really long time time to come up with an answer because you need to consider not just a fear, but the worst one you have. But even that aside, you need to consider whether we’re talking about your worst fear now, in 10 years, or in your entire life in general.

I have a lot of fears, but my worst fear probably is ending up a failure. I know that this might sound really vague, but that is really just it.

All of the goals I have in life boil down to making something out of myself and being the best version of myself.

That basically translates to success and everything it entails. When I talk about success though, that is a very broad topic for me.

For the past 2-3 months, the future has been all that has been on my mind. I don’t spend a lot of time in the present recently because my head is always ahead in time. And it’s shocking how the same me somewhere around the beginning of this year, didn’t take life that seriously, has suddenly switched up in to this future guy. lol

The uncertainty of the future

The interesting thing about life is that the uncertainty of the future is what seems to drive our entire existence. Everything we do in every waking day us aimed at contributing to out future in some way.

Imagine what life would be like if everyone already knew with certainty what they’d be doing tomorrow and the next day, and even 5 years from now. No one would be incentivized to do anything anymore because they know how things play out already. Why go work that underpaid job tomorrow when you know that 7 years from now, you become a multimillionaire?

However, the uncertainty of the future exciting as it can be, is also terrifying sometimes. Wondering whether you might end up poor, bitter and miserable are the scary aspects of the prospects of the future.

At the same time, the uncertainty also makes the future exciting. Not knowing what happens next. Do I end up rich? How rich? What business will I own? How many kids? What type of car do I drive? Maybe I own a plane. Perhaps an airline itself?

The fact that nobody truly knows what the future holds makes life worth living. We at least have the illusion that the choices we make are what determine our future, and so we put better thought into it and plan our lives out.

I’m not simply afraid of not making enough money, but if whether despite how much money I make, I’ll be able to call myself successful. And that’ll depend on my assessment of success.

Success for me means a combination of many things. Getting my bag right, attaining a high social status, having a career I love, having a great family and amazing relationship with my family, spending quality time with my boys and living a lifestyle I love(which for the most of part will involve traveling a lot and exploring the world).

Even If I make 6 figures and work a job that doesn’t give me time to spend with my family or to travel, it doesn’t really check the successful box for me. Or worse, I make a shit ton of money, but have no family for whatever reason. It checks another box though- the rich box, but even though being wealthy/rich might be the foundation of success for many, that’s not solely what my definition of success is based on.

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I’m not going to lie, I can’t even begin to count how many times I erased what I thought was my biggest fear and wrote something different because it turns out I’m afraid of so many things it’s difficult to point which is the worst. Lol

But at this point in my life, this is currently my worst fear. Not being my definition of successful. And this fear is helping my focus stay sharp on the things that matter and lead towards my end game.

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Cover image was designed by me in Canva and all other pictures were taken by me on my phone as well.

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