I learned to live in a way that avoids doing things directly

December 24, 2025 · translated from Russian

The second biggest discovery of the year. This morning's realisation, and the plan for 2026 is to work on it.

What I ran into in 2025 is that changing skills and motivation does not help me. It seems I have to change the way I live and act.

For a long time I thought my problem was discipline and execution. Almost every test scores me at zero on that skill.
I thought of myself as someone who understands a lot and does little. That I lacked structure, focus, or the right environment. But it gradually became clear that it goes deeper. I do not simply fail to do things. I learned to live in a way that avoids doing them directly.

It started fairly early, at school. I understood that you do not have to take the direct route. You can wriggle, negotiate, do the minimum required not to fail. Intelligence, flexibility, relationships and workarounds became my safe way of existing. And it worked. Over time it stopped being a strategy and became a way of life.

The cultural context matters too. I grew up among Armenian hustlers. My father had a shopping centre and market stalls, and everyone around was of that kind. An Armenian-Persian mentality where seeming counts for more than being, and more than patient consistent work.

At the same time, anything that required linear, consistent action and responsibility for the result triggered strong fear in me. Not ordinary tension, a sense of threat. As if by simply doing the thing I risked not a mistake but something existential.

There is another important fact. I have almost no memory of the period from about eleven or twelve to seventeen or eighteen. I do not remember that age as life. More like emptiness. From nineteen or twenty the memory comes back, and before that there is a feeling that I was barely there.

In that same period computer games became my main way of coping with reality. In a game there were clear goals, rules, progress and completion. There I could act and finish things without an internal threat. In real life that feeling was too risky.

In adult life the same logic simply changed shape. I started choosing risk over consistency. A bet on the leap instead of the long road. A small action with the hope of a big win. I always hated casinos and gambling, and only recently saw the irony that I have spent my whole life gambling with life itself.

Now I see the contradiction clearly. In the way I think and reflect I have long lived at a level where I can see my own strategies, understand systems and know the price of my defences.
But in the way I act I still live by the logic of survival and cleverness. Workarounds instead of directness. Potential instead of completion. Risk instead of consistency.

Growth for me now is not about going further or higher. It is about integrating the achiever I never went through. Learning to set limited goals, go step by step, finish, and stay alive inside while doing it. Without the image of greatness and without the game of the big leap.

What is left is to work out which logics actually govern my behaviour, why the achiever became unsafe for me, and how to integrate consistent action without doing violence to myself.