Why you are not where you want to be

Patrick Kyei — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 17:20:23 +0000

We all have desires in our hearts.

The kind of lives we want to lead
The kind of places we want to be at
The kind of people we want to be with

All valid, but achieving them often feels difficult.

There are lots of reasons why, but there's one that usually stands out:

“What we currently are.”

A saying you should have heard that would make this clearer:

“You are addressed by the way you dress.”

If you want to be addressed as a king, you'd have to lead a life that mirrors that of a king.

This same principle has a crucial role to play in our desires.

You don’t become successful and then change who you are.
You become the person first: the habits, the mindset, the discipline — even when it feels awkward or “cringe.” Act like that person daily. Make the choices they would make, and the world eventually responds in kind.

Before you actively go out to make your desires reality,

You have to look inwards and intentionally ask yourself:

Do I currently look like someone who deserves that thing – relationships, opportunities, connections?

If you don't look like it, you'll struggle to get whatever it is.

First focus should always be on building a better you.

A better you that's well fitted for what you desire.

With this in place, you increase the chances of achieving what you want.

Be honest with yourself.

Real change requires a change in identity. A change in identity requires being absolutely fed up with who you are. Being fed up with who you are requires you to stop distracting yourself from what matters.

The world prefers that you don’t change.

It always starts with us.

you can just create your own life ( you need a series of goals)

Patrick Kyei — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 22:02:39 +0000

For most people, it's their dream to spend their time studying what they love and doing that for work. That's why "everyone" wants to become a YouTuber or content creator, as shallow as those may now seem on the surface.

The reality is, and by now it's cliche to say, the internet has made this lifestyle a possibility for those with the right qualities: persistence, risk tolerance, disagreeableness, self-reliance, and the ability to take a failure and turn it into a lesson. It is absolutely possible, but most don't maintain the 2 habits that make it so.

Learning and building. 1-2 hours a day of pure focus on a meaningful goal set by your own self is the answer to doing what you love without hating the rest of your life working on a goal you don't care about. 1-2 hours a day seems so simple, and people confuse that with easy, so they get disappointed after what feels like ages of a lack of progress and quit.

I want you to take that lesson and mull over it for today.

People are too quick to adopt the structure that somebody else created to ease life’s uncertainty. You need to create a goal for yourself otherwise you'll be assigned one. And since most people pursue goals that are assigned to them, they are not fulfilled.

If the goals you are pursuing in life are assigned to you by society (parents, teachers, friends) – and not by your own creation – you will not feel fulfilled.

There are many paths to success but most people are conditioned to follow the default path. If you never push beyond what your parents, teachers, and friends tell you, then that becomes your potential.

There are many ways to get what you want. If there isn't a way, create it.

DEV Community: Patrick Kyei

Why you are not where you want to be

you can just create your own life ( you need a series of goals)