When the pressure is too much

In 2015, upon high school graduation, I penned an ambitious list of goals for my 25-year-old self:

These goals included:

• Making $10 million

• Reach 1 million subscribers on Youtube

• Releasing 5 acoustic guitar albums

• Buying a 5 bedroom house in Sydney

• Create the no.1 music teaching platform on the internet

• Open a music school in my hometown, Sydney

• Perform around the world for one year

Like most young people between the age of 18–25, I was invincible, impenetrable and nothing could stop me in my way. The world was at my feet, I had visions of success everywhere I went, and if something knocked me down, I had little doubt I would just get straight back up.

Well, now I’m 26 years old and I’ve achieved 1 out of those 7 goals, that I have $5000 to my name, and for the last 5 years I’ve been crippled by the black dog of depression.

When I look back at the old crusty notebook where I wrote down these goals, on one hand, I see a pretty typical overconfident and cocky 18-year old who was very excited to start his life after school. On the other hand, I see someone who put an enormous amount of pressure on himself to achieve great heights in this world. I am still the same person today as I was nearly a decade ago, and the pressure I put on myself almost took my life in 2023.

The pressure cooker

Pressure can be one of the great drivers of motivation and inspiration in our lives.

For example, a professional tennis player feeds off the intensity and enormity of grand slam finals, and it is one of the reasons why he is one of the greatest tennis players of all time. On the contrary, some players let the pressure get to them, and when the big moments arrive, they fail to grasp the moment and let victory slip away.

I’ve had my fair share of battles with pressure over the years, and for nearly 10 years, I pushed myself beyond my limitations to the point of completely breaking down in mid-2023.

I continued putting immense pressure on myself for an extended period, and when reflecting on why, a host of reasons come to mind:

• I grew up believing I was never good enough

• I felt the need to prove myself to my family and friends

• Many of my teachers told me I had so much potential, so I didn’t want to disappoint them

Might I add that I felt I was doing something important, and something that would make the world a better place. How altruistic of me!

For years, I used to tell myself and all my friends I aimed to work harder than everyone else.

I pounced at the opportunity to work 12 hours a day on weekends, whilst all my friends were out having drinks and partying. After studying and teaching during the day, I’d go home and continue educate myself by learning everything from how to edit videos for Youtube to starting an online business. If I missed a day of work or wasn’t happy with the quality of my work, I deliberately and wilfully forced myself to stay up until the early hours of the morning.

When the pressure finally got to me

The pressure cooker is one of the great culinary inventions that makes cooking at home so simple and delicious.

When I first moved out of home, one of my first purchases was a pressure cooker. Every night I’d come home from work, and cut up a bunch of vegetable and meats, pour a couple of litres of water into the pot, close the lid, and in an hour’s time, I had a heart home-cooked meal. Most of the time I would sneak in an extra ingredient halfway through the cooking time.

However, if you put too many ingredients in a pressure cooker, eventually everything will overflow, burn, and your cooker might even explode.

Between 2016–2023, I averaged about 5 hours of sleep a night and the only days off I had were Christmas and New Years. At one point in mid-2023, I lost nearly 7kg in a week due to stress and exhaustion. To top it all off, I was experiencing panic attacks left, right and centre and I consistently lost my temper at my family and friends, even when they didn’t do anything.

The worst part about this — I knew what I was doing, and continued to do it anyways.

Was it because I’m a perfectionist? Was it because I was so desperate to have success and do well? Was it because I was repressing years of childhood trauma and being told I was a disappointment by my parents?

Eventually, shit hit the fan, and on July 3rd 2023, I had a complete mental breakdown and experienced my first suicidal thought.

Until then, I somehow found the willpower and mental strength to fight off any thought of giving up. Whenever I was about to fall apart, I managed to find an inch of energy to keep on, keeping on. Even during those moments when I was physically and mentally exhausted, I found ways to continue working towards my goals.

On July 3rd 2023, the pressure finally got to me, and I completely broke.

For the first time, I not only thought about completely giving up my dreams and aspirations, but I wanted to give up on myself. The truth was, the pressure was too much yet I had no idea how to break away from this loop that I put myself in. Whilst I always told my friends and family that I revelled in the pressure and criticism from others, the truth was, it always hurt me and the only way I knew how to handle it, did more harm to me than good.

Ultimately, every time I put pressure on myself, a little bit of my mind was chipped at, and eventually I completely lost myself.

How I changed my goals to take pressure off myself

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that I clearly put far too much pressure on myself, and I needed to find a way to firstly take pressure off myself and handle pressure better.

After my mental breakdown, I revisited all the goals I set myself back in 2015, and asked myself why I continued to chase these lofty goals. Obviously, I knew that having goals is important as it gives your life directions. However, when it comes at the cost of your own health and relationships, something has to change before it is too late.

I sat down at my desk with my journal the week after my mental breakdown, and reflected on my relationship with pressure.

Ultimately, I acknowledged these three things:

• Most of my goals were born out of external validation

• Whilst my goals weren’t unrealistic, the timeline I set myself to achieve those goals were

• I was chasing goals that 18 year old me wanted, not the goals that 26 year old me.

The most important thing I needed to do moving forward, was to update these goals according to what my life was like now.

This is now my updated list of goals versus the old list of goals:

In setting myself these new goals, this time I haven’t set myself a deadline. Not only will this allow me room for rest when I need it, but it will add a layer of flexibility for unpredictable moments in my life that I didn’t give myself previously. Crucially, whilst I still want to make my friends, family and mentors proud, I made sure these goals are truly what I want to achieve in my life, and aren’t born out spite or past regressions.

How I manage pressure in my life now

We all need a little bit of pressure in our lives.

Whether it comes from external sources, an overbearing parent who just wants the best for you, or your own lofty standards, pressure keeps us going in life, allowing us to accept challenges that life throws at us. For almost of decade, I let the pressure consistently flow in, and I never gave myself a chance to press pause on the pressure cooker, and give myself a chance to breathe. Eventually, the pressure got to me, I broke down and almost gave up.

Today, I still allow the pressure to come in, as it comes part in parcel with the goals I’ve set myself to achieve.

This time around, however, whenever I notice the pressure cooker starting to overflow, I press pause and release a little bit of pressure for a moment. When this happens, I step away from my work, I put everything aside, and allow myself a chance to rest. I do this by going for a run, spending time with my loved ones and doing something that makes me laugh.

Moreover, I remind myself of the things that really matter to me in my life.

As much as I enjoy my work and job, missing one or two days of work will make very little difference in the grand scheme of things. In the past, I would work myself into the ground, believing that if I finished a task later than planned, I’d fall 10 steps back. The reality was I worked under extreme exhaustion and any work I did in that condition was not worthy of any quality in the first place.

Ultimately, rewiring my mind to allow myself to rest has been monumental in not only working at my best, but also simultaneously maintaining strong physical and mental health.

It certainly hasn’t been easy, and there are still days where I still feel the pressure cooker starting to overflow.

One thing’s for sure though — not only has taking pressure off helped me work far more productively in recent times, but I feel more motivated now than I did at 18, and more importantly, I have my life back.