It’s the beginning of 2019, so that means it’s around that time of year when the ‘new year, new me’ motto comes back for about 3 weeks and then disappears until Jan 1 of next year. Personally, I don’t like to make new years resolutions for the simple fact that I don’t think my goals should or can be contained to 12 calendar months. Some of my goals are going to span years (if not my entire life), and some will only take a week to achieve. Don’t get me wrong… anybody who does resolutions, that’s awesome. It’s amazing to see people motivated to make positive changes in their life – so all the power to them. I did however start thinking about something I’ve never given much time or effort to contemplating before the past few weeks: what am I truly afraid of?

I don’t mean scary in the Fear Factor sense of being afraid of snakes or eating something disgusting… I started to think about what truly scares me to my core as a human being. What fears are guiding my everyday choices? What fears are affecting my emotions? What is my soul afraid of? It’s scary in itself to do self reflection and be vulnerable, especially when it comes to fear, but I also think it’s an important process if we want to grow and overcome those fears. The following is what I’m personally afraid of, or at least what I think I am afraid of.

Disclaimer: I also realize that fears change over time and this reflection may have to be a recurring process, which I think personally could be a good replacement for new years resolutions. I’m not necessarily going to try and provide solutions to anything I talk about, as that’s also an ongoing process that I need to figure out. I’m just opening up to hopefully inspire others to do the same self reflection if they don’t resonate with making resolutions. You may have goals you want to achieve and experienced some roadblocks when trying to accomplish them – those could possibly be your fears holding you back.

#1 – Not Living Up To My Nana’s Expectations

I’m going to do my best to explain in a succinct way, but if you have known me for a while or you have read my post last year on my anger issues (that basically summarizes a good chunk of my upbringing), you’ll already have a better understanding on the following:

My Nana brought me up with morals, respect and a very old school mentality of working hard towards whatever you want to achieve. We also grew up very poor, and as a result, I’ve always appreciated the value of a dollar and what it takes to get one. I’ll get this out of the way now… Los Angeles is not a city that endorses any of the above on the norm. Again, I don’t want to generalize the city and say that nobody in it is a hard worker or has respect but I’d argue that it’s more common to find someone who doesn’t get the value of a dollar and only cares about themselves than it is to find someone that my Nana tried to raise. This has been a challenge ever since moving because I’ve found myself in certain situations acting and treating others in a manner that my Nana would have smacked me for back in the day. Los Angeles glorifies ‘living your best life’ and only showing that aspect, which a rational person can initially see through. There’s no way that all these people can be living their best lives you think, right? Well yes, they probably aren’t… but seeing images of people putting only the best aspects of their life in the public starts to add up. You start questioning whether you’re also living your best life, and even worse, you start trying to match what you’re seeing on Instagram. I’ll tell you now – it’s a race to the bottom full of stress, debt, and zero personal fulfillment (at least long term). My fear here is not being strong enough to combat this, and changing from who my Nana wanted me to become. I want to stay humble, work hard, and love everybody… but there’s also a part of me that has had a hell of a hard life and feels prideful about what I’ve accomplished and how far I’ve come. Unfortunately, this is also the part of me that gets sucked into the LA void and starts spending money on stupid shit and has the occasional entitled attitude when dealing with others.

I now tread the line between the vision my Nana had for me, and the vision I have for myself (with LA indulgences included). I honestly do think this is the best choice, because who is to say that you can’t enjoy the finer things in life as long as you remember the work you put in to get them? I just hope that I remember my Nana, where I came from, and the sacrifices we both made to get here as I think that’s the only way to truly stay grounded.

#2 – Ending Up Alone

This is probably the most common fear when it comes to milennials… I mean, how many times has your friend complained “Ugh, I just can’t find anybody right for me. I’m going to end up alone!” but I’m being for real here. There’s a part of me that has already accepted there’s a chance I may end up alone when it’s time to leave this planet. This can be explained by two things; How I see myself living in the future, as well as the fact that dating can be incredibly difficult nowadays.

What I mean by how I plan on living is that a few life choices I’ve made (and want to continue to make for the time being) don’t really support settling down with a family. For example, I love to travel and see the world… I feel like this becomes a lot harder to do when you have a little human as a responsibility. It changes how often you’re able to travel, which is something I want to do more and more of as I have the opportunity. Travel has become a bigger priority in my life as I expose myself to the world. I’d also argue that a child also changes how you travel. There’s something allusive to going off the beaten path and seeing how various cultures live, aka avoid doing touristy things on trips, but this can sometimes come with its own risks and would not be very responsible to do with a child along for the ride. Playing devil’s advocate, I am also open to the idea that I may fall so deeply in love with somebody that I couldn’t picture any other scenario other than bringing another human into this world with them and would be fine pulling back on the travel plans to do so. The problem is, I don’t see that happening in the next few years at least. This may seem far away now but can be a deal breaker when talking to potential girlfriends as our timelines may not exactly match. I’m afraid that I may scare off the woman that could potentially be the love of my life due to my own desires to be greedy and keep travelling the world for the time being.

As I also mentioned, dating can be incredibly difficult. I’ve touched on this subject before (and a lot of you are going through it – so good luck to you as well) but want to elaborate for the sake of the post. Choice – too much choice to be exact. With dating apps like Tinder & Bumble, or sites like POF & Match, there’s never been so many ways to connect with another human being. This in theory sounds amazing, but the execution (in my experience) is anything but. The problem with too much choice is that we’re a spoiled society nowadays that finds commitment difficult. You get a bunch of matches, have conversations with maybe 10% of them, and then 10% of THOSE conversations actually lead to a date (which is a 1% conversion rate if you’re following the math). Say it does work out and you end up dating somebody, there’s still the ongoing process that people forget: a relationship is work. I’m not entirely sure how to explain the breakup/divorce rates of 2019, but I do know that with the amount of options & choice available, it makes it easy to give up on one person the second things get difficult knowing that there’s plenty of other options out there. I definitely don’t want to blanket our entire generation and say everybody falls under this as that’s not the truth… there’s plenty of people that have found successful spouses off dating sites/apps in today’s era. There’s plenty who have had success without them. I’m unfortunately just not either of those people at the moment.

I think what makes it worse, is that when I had the amazing experience of loving and dating two different women (Katriina & Jess), they both didn’t end in the way I thought they would. I don’t easily accept others into the deep corners of my life, but I opened myself up and thought about a future that included both of these women at some point. To me, that was a major thing to do as I’ve always been in ‘defence’ mode and put myself first and foremost. It was incredibly difficult to end it with both, and to have to rejig what I started to picture as my future with another person, just to start back from square one alone… seemed like a nightmare. Don’t get me wrong, there’s learning experiences and values that still come from failed relationships. I don’t want to be ignorant and say I didn’t gain anything from either – it’s quite the opposite. Katriina had a huge impact on me realizing that it was time to start acting more mature and take things seriously. She’s also responsible for getting me more cultured and interested in things other than video games and sports. I’m thankful that we got to reconnect last year, and now I have a friend for a lifetime that knows me probably better than anybody else on this planet. And while Jess and I don’t really speak, I was blessed to gain such an amazing friend group from her that I now consider very close friends of mine. I’m forever grateful. I also dated a wonderful woman named Merry for a good part of the year after Jess, but that also came with it’s own issues. While on paper she seemed like a perfect match for what I was looking for, and we got along very well, we had a ton of communication issues that made it difficult to feel like we were ever progressing in the relationship. Compound that with the fact that I wasn’t over Jess when I first started seeing Merry, and it taught me a very hard lesson: do not date until you are absolutely ready to. A lot of us date because we get lonely or think that being in a relationship will make us happy, but it won’t unless you can truly say that you’re happy by yourself (and also not stuck on someone from your past).

So what does this all mean? What am I supposed to take away from realizing that while part of me accepts being alone as an outcome, it’s not what I actually desire? I honestly don’t have an answer right now. I’m still putting myself out there, still talking to women, but I’m not sure there’s much else I can do other than that. I still find it difficult to date in LA, and I haven’t quite figured out if I need to approach it differently or just be more patient or what. Tips welcomed! One thing that I could do better is put more of an effort to actually open up earlier to somebody… I tend to keep myself closed off to minimize rejection. Nobody likes being hurt, but I really don’t like being hurt.

#3 – My Life Falling Apart Beyond My Control

Sounds dramatic with such a clickbait title like “My Life Falling Apart” but it’s a little more involved than that… and I mean, I got your attention right? There’s one major component to this fear, and a subsequent fear that’s a result of it.

The major thing that I am afraid of when I think about my life falling apart is honestly failing at my career. While you may be thinking, how is this your life falling apart? It’s because my career has been my life (to this point) and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. As I mentioned in the previous fear, I’ve worked very hard to get where I am at today. One of my biggest fears is losing everything I’ve worked for and not being able to recover from it. While it may sound easy just to get another job, there’s a few worries on my end for why it isn’t that simple. From a high level perspective, it would be a huge pain to find another company to sponsor me for a VISA as well as just stay in the LA area for what I do (it’s a rare profession here). So I worry about losing my lifestyle and the opportunity to be in LA. Diving deeper into what I actually feel about the job, it’s that I worry I won’t find another job that I love as much as this one. Don’t get me wrong, there’s been many times that I’ve been frustrated with my job, company or people at the company. The thing is though, I can truly say that I love what I do. I’m privileged to report to two very intelligent hustlers who I have learned a great deal from (and continue to), I’m privileged to work with some amazing people, and I’m responsible for the some of the companies most important initiatives. Not only is it hard to get all of that in one role, it’s just hard to get that in my industry at this age. Advertising is fairly old school when it comes to who gets to become a manager and why… roles are given to those that don’t deserve it, but rather because who they know and how long they’ve been in advertising. This was a large part of why I left Toronto in the first place, just because I’m under 30 does not mean that I can’t lead a team or accomplish the same things that a 35-40 year old can. I honestly can probably do it better – I’m that damn good (that’s prideful Tyrell talking, I like to call him Nayquan). Here’s what scares me though… if I was to ever lose my job for whatever reason, I am afraid that I won’t be able to find this type of opportunity again. I’m afraid that I’d have to go back to Toronto, back to that old type of management hierarchy, back to corporate life, and that’s just not what I want for my career. I have a lot to offer and it scares me that I may not always be able to give back to the full extent that I can. I don’t want to settle for the next job just to earn a paycheck.

I also mentioned that I have a sub-fear as a result of the above… it’s actually kind of ironic given my fears of ending up alone. I also worry that if I was to ever lose my job, I wouldn’t be able to support and provide my contribution to my spouse & our potential children. In no way do I ever picture myself being the only breadwinner in the relationship, so I don’t want to make it sound like I plan on being that, but I do feel like I have to contribute my half to whatever we have going on in life. I know that if I was to ever lose my job and not have an income, I would feel incredibly guilty having to ask my girlfriend/wife to step up and cover all of the costs and responsibilities. I guess I’ll have to overcome my first fear to even allow this one to happen though, right?

#4 – Not Pursuing My Passions

This is probably my biggest fear of them all and is something I think about on a regular basis. Mainly because it impacts every aspect of my life, and actually goes against my other fears (go figure… a fear that is contradictory to other personal fears, lovely). What I mean when I say that I am afraid of not pursuing my passions is a few different things; It’s not exploring becoming an entrepreneur, specifically starting a consulting business. It’s not exploring enough of the world and seeing all the cultures that live on this earth, meeting as many people as I can, and really being apart of the global community. It’s also not making a difference while I’m here, and continuing to do so when I go.

Let me start with the consulting business (or being an entrepreneur). I’ve always had a passion for marketing/advertising, and I really got my first taste of consulting a few years ago when I worked for adMixt from my condo in Toronto. Nothing fills my soul more than taking the knowledge and expertise that I have, and sharing it with other businesses to help them grow and give back in their own right. This taste for consulting continued when I first moved to LA, as my CEOs were introducing me to a few of their friends who needed help with their own companies. I really found a passion for helping other companies and applying my skill set to different industries, products, and people. Unfortunately as my role became bigger at Five Four, I was finding it very stressful to balance my day job with the side consulting and still have free time to network, socialize, or even just be by myself. So I stopped. I do eventually want to get back in it, but I am afraid that I won’t actually pull the trigger given everything I have going on with my current career. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to find a way to do both, and it’s a scary thought to give up a career that I’m in love with. I do think that I could find a way to eventually start my consulting business and transition away from Five Four, bringing them on as a client instead (so that I can still help and make an impact), I just think that it’s minimum a few years away still, and I worry that a few years is a lot of time to change my mind. I don’t want that regret later in life of “what would have happened if I had just taken the jump and full time consulted”. What if’s are never fun – there’s no answer to them.

Secondly, travel. I’ve previously mentioned that travelling is a reason why I think that I don’t want kids anytime soon as I have a ton of plans to continue seeing the world and the people/cultures within it. Here’s where a new fear kicks in: I’m afraid of something arising that prevents me from letting this happen. Whether it be a special woman to convince me that it’s time to start a family, whether it’s job responsibilities that limit travel time, or whether it’s just the lack of funds to jump on a plane and go… I’m scared that there’s a possibility that I will look back in life and think that I didn’t get to experience enough of what the world has to offer. This isn’t an easy fear to deal with, because the only solution I can think of is to travel more now while I have the least limitations, but that’s also not necessarily the best option either as I’d probably have to quit to get enough time to fulfill my true need to see things… 2 to 3 weeks a year isn’t going to cut it. Stay tuned while I figure this one out.

Finally – and the most important thing to me; I am afraid that I won’t make as big as an impact as I can while I am on this earth, and I won’t leave an impact when I go. My Nana raised to me to care for others, and since being a child, I’ve wanted to give back to this earth and the people on it in one way or another. Aside from the consulting business, I’ve wanted to start a non profit or something that will positively contribute to communities on this planet… I just don’t know what that business is yet. I have a deep caring for the environment, so I think it’s something to do with protecting & maintaining that, but again, no clue on the actual idea yet. I also want to make sure that anybody who doesn’t have the opportunity to grow and meet their potential gets that chance. There’s a ton of kids growing up that for whatever reason, are told they won’t become anything or that they can’t make a difference. I truly believe that each individual on this earth can make a difference in their own way, and I’d love to find a way to help others find out what theirs is. I’ve thought about becoming a Professor at a college or university later in life to share my knowledge/experience with others. I’ve also thought about joining groups like Big Brother (as I was in the program for a bit growing up). I want to be able to help who I can while I’m here, but also leave something that will continue to help others growing up in the future when I’m gone. It’s easy to write that, but it’s a lot tougher to actually act on it. I’m just not sure what’s the best way to reach the most people right now… but I’m hoping to figure that out in my 30’s.