Getting dumped might have been the best thing to happen to me

7 February 2014, I remember asking her over Skype if our relationship was over and not being ready for the answer that I was about to get. She hesitated at first and for a brief moment I thought there was a chance we could recover. But thinking on it I kinda knew myself it was over. She had actually just invited a guy over the weekend who I suspected she might’ve been falling for and from what I could tell she was already moving on. The signs were there, actually looking back at my emails I realized that I had probably killed the relationship back in December the last year when she wrote to me saying the words I had written to her felt like glass had cut up her insides and she no longer felt anything for me from that moment. Like I had hurt her so much that she felt numb inside. I remember trying to fix the relationship after that but things really weren’t the same. We were fighting more and looking forward to less to do with each other.

The relationship was long distance, she lived in California, I lived in Sydney. We sustained this through continuous Skype calls and for the first 2 years it was good, but afterwards it really wasn’t going anywhere. Namely because of me. But at the point where the relationship had gone south I had done so little self reflection I hadn’t even realized how far or how deep I fell.

And so when she said I think it’s over, the weight of those words came crashing down and pretty much destroyed me.

I probably spent about 4 weeks of doing nothing and wallowing in despair. You might be wondering what a 32 yr old man was doing at this point if he wasn’t working and you’d be right in assuming that I was unemployed. I just finished a games development course at a subsidised college (called North Sydney Tafe) where I learned really little and scraped through. The project manager in our group had voiced his extreme dislike for my work ethic and been cited to say that I was really lazy. I hadn’t finished my degree which I started back in 2000 and continued to fail until 2007 before UNSW (University of New South Wales) expelled me. Considering all of this, you would be right to say I hit rock bottom. The fact that I managed to keep any kind of online relationship with someone at all in this state was amazing thinking back on it.

After getting dumped, I had so much time to reflect and really think about who I was and what I was going to do about it.

What could I do about it anyway? I don’t have a degree, I can barely program and I make really ugly 3d models in 3ds max and do some horrible animations. I had enough self awareness to realize I had nothing.

Since I was a gamer and it was still kind of fun to keep playing, I kept on playing Path of Exile at the time. I probably loaded about 80 hours before I stumbled on a youtube video. It was this one here. After listening to it, something definitely changed.

I lost all interest in playing the game I was playing and I just decided that day to delete it. I wiped all my characters and logged out, uninstalled and I was completely surprised. What the hell happened? It’s like Eric Thomas reached inside me and just flipped some switches. The only thing I was concerned with was, how do I just focus on success? How do I succeed? What do I need to do to get to where I want to go? I looked up success stories of people who made it big in a short time and then I decided from there I’d try to follow one of those paths.

I started taking walks around the block and really think about myself. Whilst on those walks I realized what changed exactly. And it was my beliefs. I changed what I believed was most important.

Re-arranging my priority list had the effect of changing the way I would react emotionally.

Before the video, I just wanted to feel better by playing games and looking forward to progress in Path of Exile.

After the video, I just wanted success and to invest in any means of getting there. And it was from that day forwards I decided to study programming properly. I looked up free coding classes, found codeacademy and started there. I finished the javascript course there and I remember whilst doing it I was never checking the clock. This was really unusual. Because back in class I couldn’t wait for the courses to finish and the schooling to be over but with this new set of beliefs it changed how I felt about time and that was weird but welcome.

What was more odd was just how easily it was to discard games at this moment. As soon as my priority list was shifted my addiction to games seemed to drop too. I won’t say it was a clean 100% drop because since then I did play between that time and now but it was pretty solid.

And it was from this point I knew I figured out the mechanism for how to change.

For me this was like that moment in the Matrix where Neo starts seeing the code flying down.

It was an epiphany, like woahhh that’s how my mind works. Everything I do is a result of a belief I hold. And everything I feel is also a result of what I believe. (editor correction: ALMOST everything)

Even the depression was and it wasn’t until further retrospection I also understood what exactly causes depression in the mind. Maybe it’s presumptious to say but I honestly believe I can distill exactly why we feel depressed.

If beliefs control our personality, and our emotions that we feel as a result of holding those beliefs, then depression must be a symptom of a belief.

The belief that there’s no positive future. That’s pretty much it. Maybe biochemistry can lead to that too since it is possible to feel particular emotions based on the induction of chemicals in our system. But it seems this is a two way street. We can also change the chemicals in our system by holding certain beliefs. Things like the placebo effect or mind over matter are possible because of that mechanism. So based on that logic, depression is triggered by the belief that there is no positive future.

I’ve had discussions about this with numerous peers, and so far no one can dispute this. And maybe for some of you who read this you might think, yeah and so what? What can you do about it? Well this means if we know what causes ourselves to feel depressed we can address the root problem and try to fix it.

The reason we don’t believe in a positive future is going to be different for nearly everyone. However, following the path of beliefs that lead to that particular one, we can probably figure out why we think this way. For some people it’s a lack of self belief, and for others it’s a lack of belief in others but ultimately it’s this lack of optimism that leads to a future view where life has no positive outcome.

The fact we know that depression stems from this system of thought should be huge. It means we can try to tackle the real problems that lead to that view.

For me in this instance when my ex-girlfriend dumped me, I was depressed because I believed I had no positive future. I had no job, no qualifications and very little self belief. After finding ways in which people were succeeding in their lives, and asking myself if I could do the same, I started working on myself and that started a system of thought that led to increased self belief and progress.

Eventually I wasn’t feeling depressed anymore, and I started having hope for my future.

My life has since gone up and when I look back now, I don’t blame her for moving on like she did. I remember being somewhat angry about that at the time but I also knew it wouldn’t be important where I was headed. I also wanted to write this article when that happened but waited until now to post it because now I can also add the following.

Since then I met an amazing girl the year after who I’m still with. I also met one of the best mentors who fast tracked my programming skill (I’ll definitely write about him later) and I received an offer in salary that was more than 2x what I was getting after working 3 years in software development. Though this story isn’t all that uncommon if you’ve read other success stories. It’s pretty amazing for me how much I turned my life around and so that’s why this event marks such an important change in my life.

And that leads me to this figure of thought.

If I ever go through crushing defeat in any way. If I get fired, if my girlfriend dumps me or maybe an idea I try completely fails. I know I’ve learned the best response to this. And it’s to reinvest everything back into self improvement. Because self improvement is the only thing that can reliably produce positive future results.

I have to evaluate what went wrong, what went right. Make notes, commit to the right course of action and try again. Because what’s the alternative? Dying? That isn’t an answer and doing nothing doesn’t really work either. Wallowing in negative emotions sucks. Such a huge waste of time, time that could’ve been spent working on myself in some way.

The only negative event I wasn’t prepared for however, was when my father died last year. I have moved on since in as positive a manner as possible. But this one required a slightly different response. A response I can’t articulate right now in this article.