How could I not see what was going on?

Alan DHK
4 min readNov 9, 2021

How did I let it get this far? And how was I going to turn things around?

Photo by Tara Winstead via Pexels

These questions popped into my head after taking a second to process what I had just heard, it was something along the line of:

“You have been stressed out for a long time, because of your past and all, and you have not taken the time to process things, and it seems that’s why you are suffering from burnout.”

About a year earlier, sitting in the same spot, I learned that I had been diagnosed with ADHD after 34 years of feeling that even modest success was simply not for me.

The medication promised more focus, less anxiety, and peace of mind. I felt hopeful for the future, finally, I would see my real potential and live the life I always desired…

… And now I was burned out?

How could I possibly be burned out? I was doing all the things I was supposed to be doing, so on paper, I should be happy… right?

My life was based on the Joneses

That basically meant that I did what everyone else around me was doing.

A steady 9–5 job, an excellent salary, a company car, a nice house, a wonderful family, lots of friends, and 50 goals I was pursuing to compensate for something that went unfulfilled.

In my mind, this situation was temporary, but the reality was that this was my life. Period.

And it was a life of anxiety, hypocrisy, and self-doubt where I was basically running out of the clock until retirement.

But that day, my body refused to go through another debilitating day. I could not pretend anymore.

Even if it meant putting myself in financial hardship because I needed that income to support the rest of my life…

This was the first time I realized how stuck I was in decisions from the past.

No wonder I burned out

My life essentially consisted of a week of draining activities that were constantly repeated.

The sad part was that I chose to repeat that week because I thought it was part of adulthood, being a family man, and taking responsibility.

I saw my dad work the same job for 40 years, so I thought this was the way to go and stress and burnout was just part of it.

However, I also realized that this was not the life that I dreamt of as a kid.

It was something I had created to impress others, and for them, I overextended myself for years and put their priorities above my own.

As I walked home from the doctor’s office, I kept trying to find blame or point fingers, but no matter how I tried to spin it, it was me who pulled the trigger on all the decisions.

A rude awakening indeed.

So if it was my choices that burned me out, how could I make the right choices to fix things and prevent this from happening again?

I did what I always did when I had a problem: I analyzed it down to the smallest detail and looked for information on how to solve it.

In this case, it was life that I had to analyze, break down into its component parts, and put back together to make it work for me.

It was then that I decided to study life coaching, read books on self-development and ADHD, and trade Netflix, the News and trading war stories with friends for information relevant to my situation.

This new input completely changed my outlook on life, and from that, I developed a plan for the future while making sure my current life did not fall apart.

I created a system to bring order to the chaos, both in my mind and in my daily life, and by transferring it to paper, my priorities, plan, and goals became visible, tangible, and achievable.

This was the first time I actually wrote a plan for my life; I was the person that did everything in his head and thought I didn’t need to write things down…

SMH…

Getting out of the loop

As I write this, almost 3 years have passed since that moment, and my life has completely changed since then. I traded my safe and sapping job for my own 9–5 helping others change their lives.

Instead of pursuing 50 goals, I pursue 5, focusing only on my priorities, which fuels the motivation that I never had before to show up and do the work every day.

Burning out was an intervention of my soul, which refused to watch helplessly as I wasted my energy instead of using it to live a fulfilling life.

This article is the culmination of the last three years of personal transformation, and sharing this is just another step that seemed unimaginable a few months ago, let alone three years.

Does this mean life is perfect, and I have all the answers? Far from it.

But I have a clear vision, a solid structure, and a plan with goals and priorities to make sure I do not fall back into the old loop.

Now it’s easier for me to say no to the things I do not need and say yes to the things I want.

There, I think that’s enough for today.

I hope you enjoyed my first article.

If you want to read more or think I should write more, let me know, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

See you in the next blog, or article, whatever it’s called.

Hope you have an excellent day. Peace.

Alan.

If you want to make some changes in your life, or you require more structure and want to get organized, check out my course with all the steps, methods, and techniques I discovered and created to turn my life around, so you can do the same (I’ll see you on the other side).

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Alan DHK

Considered a fool cuz I dropped out of high school.