The Terrifying Moment I Decided to End My Half-Lived Life
The hardest thing I'll ever write
Taking your own life isn’t glamorous.
It seems stupid. Perhaps sad. Or even terrifying. Reaching this rock bottom moment isn’t easy. It’s a lifetime in the making. I’ve been there. I’d never been so afraid.
But I’m not talking about a physical death. I’m talking about an identity death. One where you kill off your old self. It’s how I found true freedom.
Without an identity death, I would have kept living in fear.
Afraid of food because of an eating disorder. Afraid of change because of a lifetime of pain. Afraid of love because of multiple breakups. Afraid of, well, everything. I lived a half-lived life. If I’m being honest, it was more like a 10% living life.
The moment I came face-to-face with the idea I was unknowingly living a half-lived life was terrifying.
No one tells you you’re living a half-lived life
I got lucky.
At the lowest point in my life, I went to a rah-rah Tony Robbins live event. I hated the first part of it. I wanted to leave Sydney and never return.
When he finally got into the main part of his teachings I started to come around. With the lights off inside the Olympic stadium where we were and some deep and spiritual music playing, he said this line I’ll never forget:
“Never settle for less than you can be.”
That was the terrifying moment I realized I was living a half-lived life. It was the same moment I decided to end it.
Tony explained that most people settle.
They find one hack or arbitrage in life, then decide to stick with it for decades and call it a life. In the process they refuse to change.
They numb themselves when the inevitable pain shows up. They tell themselves lies to justify their sh*tty life. I realized I did all these things and more.
A wave of emotion came over me. I began to cry uncontrollably.
That’s what a half-lived life can do to you. First, it’s the loss of all the time you’ve wasted being mediocre and full of excuses. Then it’s the pain of regrets – the person you could have been, the heroes you could have met.
How do we get manipulated to accept a half-lived life? It happens by design.
I shouldn’t admit this to you, but here goes…
I’ve felt depressed lately.
My daily life involves talking to a lot of people online. Unlike everyone who writes, like I do, I don’t have some Tom Cruise PR team that replies to the comments and emails I get. It’s all me. Just the way I like it – personal.
The downside of this decision is I come across so many people living a half-lived life and can’t see it. I’ve been tempted to tell them… but it hasn’t worked well.
As soon as you nicely suggest someone could change, they quickly get offended. One reader 2 weeks ago lost their marbles at me. They accused me of crimes worse than mass murder. “You’re a narcissistic parasite, Denning. Too much privilege.”
Well, if growing up in Australia where I lost my home to bankruptcy not once but twice, is privilege, then I’m guilty your honor. Or if losing my personal fortune multiple times because I made many bad decisions makes me privileged and a trust fund baby, then I’m guilty of that too.
I hate seeing people live like I used to. But I’m slowly learning that most people will never change and don’t want to be helped.
They’d rather live a life like this:
Get woken up by an alarm clock.
Put on a penguin suit.
Commute to some painfully boring job.
Get into loads of debt to buy stuff they don’t need.
Smile at their co-workers and pretend they’re living the dream.
Get programmed by the news and politics to drown in other people’s wars.
Tell themselves “I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy” until they go blue in the face.
Drink alcohol, go on holidays, live for the weekend, then joke about it with friends.
Sounds like the life of a robot. With the rise of machines a human life could look similar to one of an AI.
It doesn’t need to be this way. But unless you wake up and see mediocrity for what it is, it’ll secretly control your life like some form of secret Illuminati.
How to proactively manufacture an identity death and set yourself free
A life has to end for a new one to begin.
“Once you decide that you want better for yourself, the entire universe begins to shift in your favor.” – Idil Ahmed
Give up staying the same and living like a sheep
The #1 skill to cultivate is being able to change.
The average person hates change. They’ll do anything to avoid it. But that’s how you become a sheep and follow the flock off a cliff into a river full of nuclear waste.
Instead, every year, become a different person to the previous year. Make so many changes that people say “you’ve changed.” I can’t even imagine the person I used to be. My mind has different self-talk. I don’t think like a complainer and blamer anymore.
Not because I’m smart (quite the opposite). But because there’s no point.
A mediocre life leads to poverty. Never being able to pay bills. Relying on luck. Hoping for a break. Never getting time with family. The cost of mediocrity is so high I’d rather not live at all.
A well-lived life is making change a habit.
Give up your repeatable excuses
Mediocrity is enabled with excuses.
If you find yourself saying any of these, stop right now:
I’m busy
I’ll do it someday
I’m just getting my ducks in a row, bro
Later in the year my schedule will free up
Life threw a curveball at me and now I’m dealing with XYZ person’s problem
I’m strategizing
I’m not ready
I need a plan
These are the one-liners of a person choosing a half-lived life. It’s a tragedy.
Let me break it down. We all have a tornado of hard stuff being hurled into our direction every day. You’re not a special snowflake. The human life is made up of about 20 repeating stories such as: sickness, death, breakup, job loss, poverty.
Maybe you’re living one of these stories but it’s not uncommon. Billions of people, for example, know what poverty is like.
Don’t let it hold you back. Let it ignite you. If your big life problem is so common then it means people have solved it, right? Why not you?
The excuses you repeat enable a boring life. Fewer excuses, 10x better life.
Give up saying what is trendy (be unfiltered)
I read a breakdown recently of the Pixar movie company.
They’ve had more banger movies than Jonny Big Balls has had gangbangs. Yet 3 years ago things went bad. They started releasing all of these kids' movies that jammed idealistic messages down kids' throats.
Kids are smart. They stopped watching but weren’t mature enough to know why.
Pixar realized they’d become a political machine rather than an entertainment company. They’re trying to undo the damage. The movie “Inside Out 2” perhaps will bring them back from the dead.
Being trendy is f*cking stupid.
Say what you really think (like I do in this Substack).
Have the hard conversations. Accept people are going to disagree so you don’t become a circus monkey acting nice for bananas. Push humanity forward rather than hold us back by wearing gaffer tape over your gorgeous pouty lips.
When you start to speak the truth you set yourself free.
Give up your current mentors who led you here
Let’s blame some people, shall we?
My mentors sucked during my dark days. They wanted me to have beers with them and watch some AFL football. They wanted me to blame family for not helping.
My best friend wanted me to come to his mate's house and snort coke with him. He sold me the dream I could finally be rich if I sold a few baggies of angel powder.
The people around you shape your worldview.
Exit your town. Move country. Start a new family. Do text messages with old friends instead of in-person complaining fests over red wine and burritos.
A real mentor will tell you that you’re living a half-lived life. A robot will talk about themselves and have no feelings for you.
Give up your prior beliefs that brainwashed you into mediocrity
Big man Tony Robbins taught me one thing: beliefs program your mind. Analyze your beliefs and you’ll find the gap in your potential. Write a list. “I believe X. I believe Y.”
Then ask yourself:
What would I have to believe to become unstoppable?Now take those new empowering beliefs and mind-f*ck yourself every day with them.
Post them on your bathroom mirror. Make them your desktop wallpaper. Read them before bed. Tell them to your new friends. Put them on your desk at work and let all the micromanagers see them and say, “Is everything okay?”
The one belief that changed my life: anything is possible if I put my mind to it.
The universe is full of infinite abundance, if you’ll just program your mind to see it and take off the black-colored sunglasses that are giving you a one-sided worldview.
Give up putting in a bee’s d*ck amount of effort
A half-lived life comes from a lack of effort.
We all have goals but most people never achieve them. They’re impatient. They need daily dopamine hits. They need gatekeepers to kiss them on the butt and tell them they look hotter than Ryan Gosling in the Barbie movie after some steroids.
Small efforts don’t get rewarded. You must push yourself if you really want to live. Go beyond your comfort zone, feel the pain…blah blah blah… and all that good stuff, ya know?
Become obsessed in one area of life. Become relentless. Take noes and turn them into yeses. Refuse to accept anything less than awesomeness.
Play 5, 10, and even lifetime-long life games.
If you’re not going to live an all out life, what the freaking hell is the point?
Maybe you should already be dead. A crazy thought. A little harsh. But true.
There’s no point living a half-lived life because it’s full of pain and suffering. It can only be tolerated by altering your consciousness through reality benders.
What do I mean? Well, life is full of consciousness-altering drugs. Sugar, coffee, carb hangovers, social media, Netflix, etc.
Each of these can drastically color reality so you don’t have to think much.
They help you cope. They help distract. They can even create a form of meaning or belonging. It’s one reason I have a clean diet. I don’t want low energy and stimulants to make the world look different. I don’t want brain fog to become the default.
If you strip away all of this, what you’re left with is pure reality. Only from there can you do the work needed to transform from half-lived to living all out.
I beg you not to waste more years being less than you can be. Your time is running out.
Tell me what you think of a half-lived life in the comments below.
PS — My course, LinkedIn Mastery, is on early bird pricing for 48 hours.
If you’re living half a life, you owe it to yourself to take a look.
Hi Tim. If you start a “Living All Out” Club I’m in! I was living a half-lived life for almost a decade after my husband died. I made a list of everything I was doing because of my loss and suffering and changed it all. I’m now healthy, happy and living my best life. My sons are too. I’ll never regret burning it all down and passing along the life skill of possibility and change to my sons. Thank you for sharing this today. Powerful!
I was at rock bottom 8 years after my husband’s suicide. My youngest was going to college. I was turning 50. I was a shell of myself. My sons were growing up I had not. Too much isolation, numbing and anxiety. I actually was sick of myself. I made a list of what I wanted to be. Started small everyday and haven’t looked back. I wanted to have a life filled with joy and love again. I didn’t want my sons to live the rest of their life with a mother who gave up. I didn’t give up.