When I graduated high school, I moved out of the house the next day. We were cramped in a second floor apartment with four kids, two parents and a total of two bedrooms. (The living room became a bedroom and the dining room became the living room.) I moved in with my grandfather in the next town where it felt like suburbia – the houses were 15 feet apart, rather than five feet apart where I lived.
That was progress, and it felt great. I was 17; life was good.
Today, if I lived in the spare bedroom at my grandfather’s house, it wouldn’t feel like progress.
Success is a journey, and we feel successful so long as we feel we’re making progress each day towards our goals. No matter where you are on your journey, you don’t want to feel stuck. You want to feel you took another step today.
What step do you need to take to feel forward motion and feel good?
The difference in our childhood circumstances is that in my case 3 of us shared one tiny bedroom and my parent’s bedroom was the living room. We ate in the kitchen because we did not have a dining room. To earn some privacy and quiet time and because I was exausted when I got home from school, I went straight to sleep. Sometimes I would sleep for 3 hours and wake up right when everyone else was getting ready to go to bed which freed up the kitchen that I turned into a study hall. My grandparents lived in the country side and did not have a spare bedroom.