What I’ve Learned In One Minute…

Hi friends,

This week to continue on last week's newsletter about purpose, I wanted to talk about the privilege of performance and being allowed to perform at your best self.

Life gets in the way. Responsibilities slowly pile up and without realising it, the one thing that used to help you grow is no longer the thing you get to focus on. You feel like you have no balance anymore. You cannot manage life as well as you used to. You feel drained and tired all the time, and eventually it starts to show. A few months pass and you barely recognise yourself.

A normal day starts to look the same. Waking up at the usual time, missing lectures, making a coffee, then reaching for a Red Bull by lunch. Going to the library already exhausted. Studying for about an hour before doing nothing after. Sitting there slouched, eating sugary foods and chocolate, feeling heavy and foggy. I felt tired all the time. Drained. Like my brain was permanently switched off. Busy all day, but knowing deep down that I was working towards nothing.

What I was most ashamed of was admitting that I was struggling. Ashamed that I could not get the grades I wanted anymore, and ashamed that I was no longer enjoying my course. I felt that if I told people, it would make me undeserving of where I was. I was at this established place, surrounded by people who seemed to be doing well, so there was no reason for me to say that I was not. I convinced myself that the pain was normal and that this was just what had to be endured.

For a season in my life, I had to stop focusing on performance altogether and begin focusing on my purpose and my mental health instead. That meant putting my drive and ambition to the side, even though that felt uncomfortable and wrong at the time.

During my first year of university, coming from Botswana to the UK, there were only a handful of Batswana at the university. I had no friend group, no community, and no immediate family around me. All I really had was a mission to perform. Looking back now, I realise how naive I was. I thought mental health was something optional. I thought the most important thing was academic excellence, and everything else could wait.

What I did not realise was that the main thing had shifted. It was no longer about grades. It became about balance and self acceptance. Making sure I was eating properly, living properly, and being disciplined with my own wellbeing. These were things I had never really had to manage before.

I struggled deeply during that time. There were moments where I could not recognise the man in the mirror. Internally, I was deteriorating. Weeks would pass where I could not understand why I was unable to study properly. I refused to talk about it. I felt there was no point. I told myself this was normal, that this was just what university was supposed to feel like.

The problem with that mindset is that after spending so long with the only mission being to perform, I never realised how blessed I actually was. I had been blessed with the ability to focus on one thing, academics, and because of that I was able to be excellent at it. Neglecting other responsibilities and only having one focus is often how excellent results are produced.

It took losing that structure for me to see it.

I now deeply sympathise with and respect those who had to carry multiple responsibilities from a young age and did not make it as far as people who were allowed to focus on one thing. The most difficult part for them is that it feels like failure. Like their reasons are excuses. But now I see that they were playing the game with one hand tied behind their back and were still expected to achieve the same result.

This is not to say that there are not people who have achieved the same or even greater things with far harder challenges. It is simply to say that if you genuinely worked hard and did not achieve the outward result you set out for yourself at such a young age, that is okay. The cards you were given made that round harder. And with the experience you now have, you are far better equipped moving forward.

And if you were like me, someone who was blessed with the opportunity to perform from a young age with support around you, then this is a moment to be grateful. To take the time to acknowledge those who carried you to where you are, and to keep going.

I think it is naive to judge people who do not achieve top grades without recognising how many things in life have to go right for grades to be the only thing you are able to focus on.

So what are we supposed to do when we are expected to both perform and acclimatise to a new environment at the same time?

We can neglect our mental and physical health, isolate ourselves, and follow a narrow path ahead without looking back. Grind, keep your head down, and see how far you go. But by the time you stop to breathe, you may not recognise who you are or where you are standing. And when that happens, it becomes easier to dive straight back into the narrow path rather than face the uncertainty around you.

Or we can redefine success for a season.

For a while, success is no longer getting one hundred percent on an exam. It becomes stability. It becomes looking after yourself properly. It becomes making sure your chores are done, your space is clean, and your physical and mental health are in a good place.

When you feel overwhelmed and drained, you start mistaking conveniences for necessities. You begin buying more café coffees or energy drinks because it feels like the only way to cope. You spend more time on your phone late at night because it feels like the only part of the day that belongs to you. You cancel your gym membership and replace it with small online conveniences that promise to make life easier. You eat more processed food because it saves time, even though it leaves you feeling sluggish and unfocused.

You start looking for external changes to fix internal problems. And when you are in that state, breaking out of it feels almost impossible.

So how did I get out of it?

The truth is, I reached a point where nothing was working anymore. I felt like I had nothing left to give. And in that moment, I realised I had nothing left to lose. All I could do was finally listen to myself and start taking responsibility for rebuilding my life properly.

I had to redefine who I was. I found my identity in Jesus Christ again, but that did not happen overnight. I had to rebuild my relationship with Him and learn to find myself there. I also had to let go of the idea that my identity was tied to my habits, whether good or bad. I was no longer defined by being someone who went to the gym or someone who avoided certain foods or someone who never slept properly. But I was also no longer defined by being the disciplined student or the high performer either.

I stopped measuring myself by grades and outcomes. Instead, I started measuring myself by the quality of my days. Whether I smiled that day. Whether I spoke to someone I cared about. Whether I spent time reflecting and praying. Whether my room was clean and my bed was made.

Slowly, things began to change. I started attending all my lectures again. I set a clear end time for work in the evenings and used that time to go to the gym and focus on myself. I started sleeping more and going out less. I put myself on a meal plan and began meal prepping so there was less space for confusion and impulsive decisions around food. That alone helped clear a lot of the brain fog I had been living with. I made sure the first thing I did every morning was read and pray.

The thing that took the longest to stabilise was mental clarity. Brain fog did not disappear quickly. Understanding who I was and what I wanted from life took months, and in many ways years. Only recently do I feel like I have fully closed that chapter and am now able to focus more on outward performance again without losing myself in the process.

The biggest lie I had to unlearn was thinking that performance was only about outcomes. Now, more than ever, I understand that performance is about how you get there, and how much peace and joy you allow yourself along the way.

Performance still matters. It is important. But there is a time and place for it to be the priority. Only when the foundations underneath are in order.

TL;DR

There is a privilege in being able to perform, in having a season of life where your only responsibility is to focus on one thing and get good at it. Many people never get that opportunity, and losing it is often what makes you realise how much support and structure you once had around you.

When I lost that structure at university, performance stopped being the main thing. My mental health, identity, and wellbeing came first, whether I wanted them to or not. I struggled, felt ashamed of admitting it, and slowly realised that chasing outcomes without stable foundations only leads to burnout and self-doubt.

Getting out of that place did not happen quickly. It took months, and in some ways years, of redefining success, rebuilding my identity in Christ, and measuring my days by stability rather than grades. Performance did not become irrelevant, but it stopped being the only measure of worth.

Performance matters, but only when the foundations underneath it are strong enough to hold it.

WINS & LESSONS

Win:

I managed to submit a project I've been working on for a long time at work. It took so much out of me but I'm so grateful I managed to go through that experience

Lesson:

I've begun to appreciate the aspect of short, medium and long term planning and the power they have towards guiding you to who you would want to be.

QUESTION FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

If you’re being honest with yourself, are you struggling because you’re not working hard enough — or because too much of your life feels unstable for performance to be the only thing you focus on right now?

Alright that's it from me.

In a bit,

Motheo