Picture this: You’re sitting in your perfectly reasonable apartment, working at your perfectly reasonable job, and suddenly it hits you like a freight train.
You’ve never made a single major life decision based on what you actually wanted.
Every single choice, from your college major to your career path to where you live, was filtered through the lens of “what would they think?” The invisible jury of parents, peers, and society has been running your life, and you’ve been their obedient puppet for decades.
Sound familiar? Because that was me not too long ago.
The reasonable life trap
Growing up, I was the king of reasonable decisions. Psychology degree? Reasonable. Safe career choices? Check. Living in acceptable cities doing acceptable things? You bet.
But here’s what nobody tells you about living a reasonable life: it’s exhausting. You’re constantly performing for an audience that probably isn’t even watching. You’re making choices based on imaginary conversations with people who likely don’t care nearly as much as you think they do.
I spent my mid-20s feeling lost and anxious despite doing everything “right” by conventional standards. I had the degree from Deakin University, the career trajectory, the whole package. Yet something was fundamentally off.
The Buddhist concept of “wrong view” kept coming to mind. In my book Hidden Secrets of Buddhism: How To Live With Maximum Impact and Minimum Ego, I explore how we create suffering by seeing reality through distorted lenses. But I hadn’t realized I was living that exact distortion.
The moment everything shifted
The wake-up call came during what should have been a celebration. I’d just gotten something that looked fantastic on paper. Better title, more money, more responsibility. Everyone was congratulating me.
But sitting there, accepting the handshakes and the pats on the back, I felt nothing. Worse than nothing. I felt like I was watching someone else’s life from the outside.
That night, I made a list of every major decision I’d made in the past 15 years. Next to each one, I wrote why I’d made that choice. The pattern was devastating:
Chose my university major because my parents thought it was stable. Took my first job because it impressed people at parties. Moved to a particular city because it seemed like where successful people lived. Even my hobbies were curated for external approval.
Not a single decision started with “because I wanted to.”
Breaking free from the approval matrix
Here’s what I’ve learned since that revelation: The approval you’re seeking? It’s a moving target that you’ll never hit.
Think about it. When was the last time you spent serious mental energy judging someone else’s life choices? Probably not recently, because you’re too busy worrying about your own stuff. Yet we assume everyone else is constantly evaluating our decisions.
This is what psychologists call the “spotlight effect.” We overestimate how much others notice and care about our actions. Meanwhile, they’re all stuck in their own spotlights, worried about their own audiences.
Breaking free starts with a simple but terrifying question: “If nobody was watching, what would I choose?”
For me, the answer led to founding Hack Spirit in 2016. Not because it was reasonable, not because it impressed anyone, but because I saw a gap in practical self-improvement content and felt genuinely excited about filling it.
The irony? When you stop making decisions for the audience, you often end up making better ones.
The art of disappointing people
Let’s be real: choosing what you want means disappointing some people. And if you’re like me, that thought probably makes your stomach churn.
But here’s what I discovered. The disappointment you imagine is usually way worse than the reality. Most people are too wrapped up in their own lives to be as invested in your choices as you think.
And the ones who are genuinely disappointed? They’re often projecting their own fears and limitations onto you.
I remember telling someone close to me about leaving a stable position to focus on my writing and business. Their response was immediate concern, warnings about security and retirement funds. But later, they admitted they’d always wanted to start their own venture but never had the courage.
Your authentic choices might make others uncomfortable because they highlight the compromises in their own lives. That’s not your burden to carry.
Starting where you are
You don’t need to blow up your entire life tomorrow. Start small. Really small.
Choose what you want for lunch without considering if it’s weird to eat breakfast food at 3pm. Pick the movie you actually want to watch, not the one that makes you seem sophisticated. Wear the shirt you like, even if it’s not “age-appropriate.”
These tiny acts of authenticity build momentum. They train your decision-making muscles to consider your actual desires as valid data points.
Recently, I became a father to a baby daughter. Talk about pressure to make “reasonable” decisions. But I’ve learned that the best gift I can give her isn’t a perfectly curated life. It’s a father who knows how to honor his own truth while navigating the world.
The unexpected benefits of selfishness
Here’s something counterintuitive: making decisions based on what you want often benefits others more than people-pleasing ever could.
When you’re living authentically, you bring more energy, creativity, and presence to everything you do. You’re not depleted from the constant performance. You have more to give because you’re not running on empty.
My work improved dramatically when I stopped writing what I thought would impress people and started sharing what genuinely fascinated me. My relationships deepened when I stopped being who I thought others wanted and showed up as myself.
Living between Saigon and Singapore now, a choice that definitely raised some eyebrows, has enriched my perspective in ways that benefit everyone I interact with. The “unreasonable” choice became the one that added the most value.
Conclusion
At 37, I’m essentially starting over. Not with my circumstances, but with my relationship to choice itself. Every decision is now run through a different filter: “Is this what I want, or what I think looks good?”
Sometimes the answer is still murky. Decades of conditioning don’t disappear overnight. But the shift has begun.
If you’re reading this and feeling that uncomfortable recognition, know this: it’s not too late. Whether you’re 27, 37, or 67, you can start making decisions based on your actual wants rather than perceived expectations.
The audience you’ve been performing for? They’re probably not even in the theater. And if they are, their opinion matters far less than the cost of living someone else’s version of your life.
Your authentic path might not be reasonable. It might raise eyebrows, invite questions, or challenge norms. Good. That means you’re finally writing your own story instead of reading from someone else’s script.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to start choosing what you want. It’s whether you can afford not to.
