Progress Comes From Not Having A Choice.

"You have so much potential."

I've heard that my whole life. And every time, I feel the same thing: deep panic. Like someone handed me an invoice I didn't know I owed.

I've heard versions of it too. "You're so smart." "You have your life figured out." "You have a wise soul." I smile and say thank you. But inside, I'm doing the math. I'm comparing what they see to what I know is my reality and the gap between the version of me they're describing and the one I'm living? it never adds up.

The worst part is that these comments arrive when I'm at my lowest. Rock bottom. Making zero progress. Which means the version of me they're praising isn't real. It's a projection. Overtime, I realised that projection was keeping me stuck.

So I asked myself deep questions and what I found surprised me.

The things that bridged the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be were not complicated. They were realisations I had to arrive at myself, and once I saw them, I couldn't un-see them.

They started moving me toward my potential and would move you towards yours as well if you pay close attention.

With that said, here's the first one.

I - The Default Is The Real Enemy

I was the black sheep growing up. I still am.

I was the kid who questioned everything. Who needed to make sense of things on my own. My parents would ask "Why must you always argue?" I didn't have a good answer for them. But I knew what I was feeling. I would look around at the adults in my life and something in my gut would reject it.

It was a stubborn certainty that there had to be more than this.

I refused to believe wealth was beyond my reach. The default path of go to school, get a job, repeat made less sense to me with every class I attended. I couldn't articulate it at the time, but I was building something without knowing it.

An anti-vision. A clear picture of the life I was running from.

That deep sense of hate for the default has been the single biggest catalyst for every form of progress I've made. For me, this came naturally. But if you want to make any sort of progress, you need to develop that same disgust toward the default.

It's simple but It's not easy. You have to look at things you've been avoiding, ask yourself questions that reveal what you're actually afraid of becoming.

How was my childhood growing up?

What were finances like for my parents?

What happens if I stay in the same loop as my parents and their parents before them?

It doesn't have to stop with family. Look at situations around you. The relationships that make you flinch. The careers that feel like a slow death. The version of yourself you're terrified of becoming.

That's your anti-vision.

Articulate it and write it down because progress comes from not having a choice and the fastest way to manufacture that urgency is to stare directly at the thing you refuse to become. You begin to move forward when you avoid the decline into the life you do not want.

II - Taste Points The Way

Every Christmas, we went to a fancy restaurant. My dad insisted on it.

I was there for the food. The all-you-can-eat buffet. But something else was happening to me that I didn't understand yet. I was being exposed to a world I didn't know existed.

These restaurants were definitely beyond our pay grade. My dad never said this, but I think he knew exactly what he was doing. He was stretching beyond his means to give us a glimpse of something.

He wanted us to see that another life was possible.

I remember sitting by the window in one of those restaurants and watching a family pull up in a black Benz. Beautiful car. They stepped out in their crisp native attire. The father wore accessories that said he wasn't worried about money.

As they walked past our table, oh! their perfume hit me. It smelled like it was from a different world. For a brief moment, I imagined myself as that man. Two happy kids. A beautiful wife. The financial stability to take care of them without worry and then I looked down at my phone. The way I was dressed. My current reality and the gap between the two lives became obvious.

The feeling wasn't depression. It wasn't inferiority. It was a "wow." There is so much more to be done. That feeling is what taste does, It makes you hungry.

Developing taste opens a gap inside you. A gap between who you are and what you now know is possible. And once you see that gap, you cannot un-see it. You don't sit around waiting for the vision to become reality. You become restless because the gap would demand to be filled and that restlessness is the engine of progress.

This is why I tell people: go to the fancy restaurant with your last savings. Not to show off but to expose yourself to better environments.

Attend the conference. Be in the room where you are the least accomplished person there.

Widen that gap between who you are and who you could be.

If you do not know what is possible, you cannot chase it. Taste points the way.

III - Curiosity As Compass

I knew the life I did not want and it pushed me forward. But knowing what you're running from doesn't tell you where to run to. Fear is a great push but It's a terrible steering wheel.

There are still moments where I feel completely lost. Where I stop and ask myself questions like: how exactly am I going to escape the default path?

The answer was simpler than I thought though. I just had to follow my curiosity.

Curiosity is the signal within the noise. It's the thing that makes you lose track of time the way nothing else does. The thing that feels like play to you and work to everyone else. When you're curious about something, you don't need discipline to show up. You just show up.

After you've defined your anti-vision and developed your taste, the next step is to explore the things you're curious about. Not passively. Obsessively. Build something around them. Even if it fails.

You anti-vision pushes you forward so you make progress but following your curiosity pulls you in so you can also make progress.

My first real obsession was digital marketing. I dove deep into that rabbit hole and built my first business, ADCOM. I couldn't scale it. The business died. But then overtime I realized following your curiosity is a chain reaction. Building that project opened my eyes to something else I was curious about, human psychology.

Why do people buy? Why do they trust? That question led me down another rabbit hole. And another. And another. Each one connected to the last and that's how I went from the boy with big dreams to the boy with clarity on how to achieve them.

Not by sitting down and figuring out a ten-year plan but by following the thing that lit me up, one step at a time, and trusting that the path would reveal itself along the way and it has.

IV - The Art Of Figuring Things Out

My mum noticed something about me.

As a kid whenever I was in the midst of other kids I would take my toys or anything I was playing with and go play by myself in the corner of the room. Weird? I know, but hearing that gave context to my habits now as a young adult.

I enjoy being solo. And because I rely so much on my own company, everything that makes me who I am today, I had to figure out myself. I mean everything.

I tell people around me: give me YouTube and some time and there is nothing I cannot get done. Initially I thought this was just a niche skill I had. But overtime I have realised this is the single greatest skill anyone looking to make progress in life needs to have.

Here's why. When you start a business, you think you are getting into one thing. But later you will realize you need to learn sales. You need to learn how to create content that converts. You need to figure out money management. You need to understand AI before it leaves you behind. And a dozen other things you never even planned for. None of it was part of the plan but all of it is mandatory.

The people who make progress are not the ones who knew everything upfront. They are the ones who looked at an unfamiliar problem and thought: I can figure this out. Not because they had the answer but because they needed to make progress and they trusted themselves to find it.

The kid who played alone in the corner wasn't avoiding people. He was learning something. That when you are on your own, when you realise nobody is coming to save you, you have no choice but to figure things out. And once you learn that, you stop being afraid of what you don't know. You start seeing it as the next thing to learn.

The Progress Equation

I started this essay with a feeling. A gap between who people said I was and who I knew I actually was.

That gap used to terrify me. Now I understand it.

The gap is not a curse. It's a signal. And the four realisations I've shared with you are what turned that signal into clarity and ultimately progress

Here is the equation that ties them together.

P = AV + T + C + F

You make Progress when you:

AV — Anti-Vision. You cannot move until you are honest about what you refuse to become. The boy who questioned everything, who looked at the default path and felt it in his gut that something was wrong, he was not being difficult. He was building his anti-vision. Define yours. Write it down. Let it push you.

T — Taste. My Dad stretched beyond his means to put us in rooms we had no business being in. He knew something. You cannot chase what you have never seen. Go to the restaurant. Attend the conference. Be in the room where you are the least accomplished. Let the gap between who you are and what you now know is possible make you restless.

C — Curiosity. The anti-vision pushes. Curiosity pulls. It is the one thing that feels like play when everything else feels like work. Follow it. Build around it. Even if it fails. Because one curiosity leads to the next, and one day you look up and realise you are no longer the one with big dreams. You are the person with clarity.

F — Figure It Out. Nobody is coming to save you. This is not a sad thing. It is the most freeing thing you will ever accept. Once you know that you can figure anything out, there is no door that stays closed forever.

This equation applies to anything. Building a business. Learning a skill. Making progress in life. Whenever you feel stuck, return to it. One of these four things is probably missing.

I hope enjoyed reading this as much as i did writing it! Let me know in the comments.

And remember, I am rooting for you! ❤️📍

Tolu.