How to Escape the Cage of QUIET MISERY | Grow With Kepo Ep. 12

Don't Let Your Golden Handcuffs Keep You in a Cage

Are you a high achiever who feels stuck in a life that looks good on the outside but leaves you feeling unfulfilled? In this deeply personal episode of 

Kepo shares real tools and inspiration to help you break free from "quiet misery" by tackling cognitive dissonance and aligning your actions with your true values. Kepo speaks from her own experience, guiding you to recognize the subtle patterns of inaction and make a bold choice to change your life today.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Your values are off when how you show up doesn’t match what you believe your true values are.

• When we compare it to your actual savings and we compare it to your investment plans and all of that, the things that actually give you the freedom that you truly crave in life.

• You spend stupid money on designer labels, on fancy looking things.

• You're not lazy, you're just misaligned.

• When you live in a life of quiet misery, when you wake up first thing in the morning, you just reach for your phone and then you scroll.

 • The best time to start was yesterday. The next best time is now.

• You are not comfortable with that mismatch.

 • Awareness is the first step, right? And then make a decision to make a change from today.

• Your head is already full of all the miseries that you are dreading for the rest of the day.

 • It's only when something drastic, something huge, you know, or life changing, something terrible or something painful that takes you to your lowest low. That's when a lot of people tend to finally change.

BEST MOMENTS:

00:00:19 “So you can finally walk out of the cage that you built for yourself.”

00:01:04 “I'm going to be talking about something that I tend to harp on a lot, and it's about living the life of quiet misery.”

00:02:50 “You don't actually need to wait till that point.”

00:04:10 “95% of what we do as humans is actually from habit.”

00:05:40 “When you living a life of quiet misery, you just get up and you scroll.”

00:09:47 “It doesn't make sense when we even compare it to how much money, how much income you're making on an annual basis.”

00:14:03 “If you could figure it out on your own, you would be doing it by now.”

00:22:24 “This is your moment to actually just stop and pivot right now.”

00:26:02 “I mean, like or when you finish spending maybe three decades in a career that you are not really passionate about?”

00:33:59 “Make a decision on what you are going to stop doing and what you are going to start doing so you can finally stop living a life of quiet misery.”

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Transcript

0:00

Stop living in constant cognitive dissonance. Stop living in opposite way of what you actually value. Actually start to show up living according to your own values. Or pick a new set of values that fit the life that you are really craving. So you can finally walk out of the cage that you built for yourself. The door is wide open. Walk out. Here is something you need to hear. You're not lazy. You're just misaligned. I'm Keppel. I help high performance get unstuck by taking bold, aligned action. And this is growing with Keppel, where we speak with influential trailblazers who've made their mark and found the clarity that changed their lives. This is where we get clear, realign, and move toward a life that actually feels like yours. Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the show, everybody. Today I'm going to be talking about something that I tend to harp on a lot, and it's about living the life of quiet misery. I'm going to go into detail and explain what it really means to live a life of quiet misery, so you can see if you identify yourself in any of this things, so that we can finally be honest with ourselves and just just admit it. That maybe, maybe, just maybe, you are living a life of quiet misery and your brain is coming up with all kinds of ways to justify it. You know that very popular boiling frog analogy where you know the frog is in the water and it's boiling like it's heating up, but the frog doesn't realize that it's actually in boiling water until the water has reached boiling point. For a lot of us, I think we're waiting until the water has of our lives has reached boiling point before we actually do something about it. There is this quote that I used to love back in the day, and I don't know who who's quoted is so anonymous. If you know, let me know. Leave a comment. It says only at the precipice do we evolve. It's only when something drastic, something huge, you know, or life changing, something terrible or something painful that takes you to your lowest low. That's when a lot of people tend to finally change. But I'm here to tell you that you don't actually need to wait till that point. I mean, like, are you even enjoying this right now? Okay, you know what? Before I go down that route, let me just go into all the different things. Like what living a life of quite misery looks like. As always, I am not talking from textbook. I am talking from a life that I've lived before. And I know very intimately. I wish I didn't know, but maybe it's good so that I can tell you what it's about, and so that you don't have to spend so long there. First of all, living a life of quiet misery is like you constructed a cage for yourself and the door to the cage is wide open. Or you are choosing to stay in that cage. Living a life of quiet misery. You have Sunday Scaries. You have Moody Mondays, you have Hump Day Wednesday and you have TGIF. And then you have Saturday Faff day, and then Sunday scaries again. And it's just that cycle over and over again when you wake up and it's time to get ready for work, you're like, yeah, you know, saying this grumble or this groan or maybe even worse. Yeah, just an autopilot mode where you just get up, you go like, okay, you know, let's just go through the motions, you know, even thinking of your thoughts and the truth is, 95% of what we do as humans is actually from habit. What your brain does when you do something over and over again, after a while, your brain would say, oh, it's this person is doing this thing quite a lot. You know what? Let's do it in our long term memory so that the next time this person needs to do this thing, they don't. It doesn't require so much energy anymore. Your brain always wants to conserve energy. So still. Side note be careful what habits and patterns you are repeating over and over and over again. That is the kind of life they are going to continue to live, because 95% of the time you're going to be doing what is a habit for you. Okay, now when you wake up, you might even start, you know, when you think about the thoughts they are having, you might even start thinking about how your day is going to go. Start having conversations in your head with your colleagues or people that you know they are going to encounter that DNA. If that if that's if, from, from HR or whatever says that nonsense that she says again, then I'm really going to get hard this time. But you know what? Before I even go to all of that. When you live in a life of quiet misery, when you wake up first thing in the morning, you just reach for your phone and then you scroll. There is no room to actually think about, oh, what do I want to do for today? And what kind of person do I want to show up as today? What is my intention for today? There is no room for that. When you living a life of quiet misery, you just get up and you scroll. Sometimes. Sometimes you will actually do some, you know, healthy morning routine things, right? But you're not really consistent. You just you don't even know how you are going to show up the next day when you go to bed. You just whatever side you roll, you wake up on. You know, that day is kind of what determines how you are going to show up that day. So you wake up and you grab your phone and immediately you are just in other people's worlds, or you open up your world for other people to come in. When you wake up in the morning, how many of you will actually open up your door and let all your friends and family just come into your room? Like, literally, you haven't even done anything. You still have morning breath. Yeah, I know you do. We all have. It's ha ha. Oh. But there is this mouthwash called closes. Closes on Amazon. I don't know where you are, where you're listening from, but I notice that when you use it, night, when you wake up in the morning, you don't have that much money in breath. Okay. All right. This is not sponsored or anything just created for you right there. Okay, so you you wake up and you just let all these things into your world, into your head. Your head is already full of all the miseries that you are dreading for the rest of the day. You now compile it with other people's agendas and other people's things. Useless names. Funny videos? Yes, some of them are truly entertaining. You go to the comments section blah blah blah before you know it. Oops. It's time to get ready for work. That is just what a typical morning looks like. Now I'm going to break it down to you. How do I put it? The characteristics of a life of quiet misery. Number one, your values are off, how you are showing up and the way and what you believe your true valued values are. They are not the same and it shows up in how you're spending your time and how you spend your money, honey, and how you spend your thinking, your mind space, what you occupy your mind with. I'll break each one down one by one. But before I do that, the second thing main buckets, is when you're living a life of quiet misery, you are constant in that state of cognitive dissonance. I'll get into that later. Don't worry. By no means go into silence. Just stick with me because I want you to identify yourself wherever you are. So, like I said, you can finally come to terms with where it is you are at. Awareness is the first step, right? And then make a decision to make a change from today, literally, as you are listening to this podcast or watching hey quick one, are you spinning your wheels but not moving forward? I know how frustrating it is when you're putting in the work. You're not seeing any progress in my Free Race Your Standards 21 Day Challenge, you'll get some life group coaching to uncover your blind spots. You reignite your momentum and finally make those bold moves you've been avoiding. Join the next round or get on the waitlist today. The link is in the description. All right, back to the episode. So going deep into the values, for example, I am going to hurt some people today. You. You spend stupid money on designer labels, on fancy looking things, and I say stupid money. Because when we compare it to your actual savings and we compare it to your investment plans and all of that, the things that actually give you the freedom that you truly crave in life. It doesn't make sense when we even compare it to how much money, how much income you're making on an annual basis. It doesn't make sense. I brought up, I brought this conversation up with a friend a long time ago, and he was saying that I was basically putting my own standards on other people, that maybe for some people, a Chanel purse is what really brings them fulfillment. Please, I am I, I'm taking this stand and I am saying is very likely that us Chanel purse is not giving you the long term fulfillment that you are truly craving at the end of our lives. What we truly value is not oh my God, how many pairs of shoes did I acquire in this lifetime? It's going to be how did I spend my life? Did I show up? Did I love, did I do all the things I really wanted to do? What experiences the memories that I created? That is what you are going to remember. Don't take my word for it. This is just something that I've heard from older people and what I've read that people tend to say on their deathbeds. It is not my own conclusion. At the end of the day, that Chanel purse or maybe for guys, if you wear braces, those fancy, Chanel bracelets or I do not name of the brands, those things like worn bracelets is like $5,000, but you're getting paid$150,000 a year before taxes. Like, make it make sense. And you have cardinals they create does they will make sense at all. And then when someone now brings to you, hey. You've been saying that you want to launch your own side hustle. You've been saying that you have heard of this 9 to 5 life, and you want to carve out your own space. This business coach is really awesome. She's charging. I don't know, I'll just. I'll just name it number. This is charging $15,000 for the year. You're like, okay, who is going to pay $15,000? Oh, I'm not doing that. So that's crazy. That's ridiculous. Anywhere, anywhere. First of all, there's no I won't talk about how much you spent on your college education. It's really if you if you studied, maybe in the US or whatever, or maybe if you went to grad school, this was all about how much you spent on your education. And maybe there's even a high chance. I know, even using that thing, some of us need to go back to our universities and just be like, please, just give me back of me. Give me back my every. For the collect your diploma. I studied electrical and computer engineering and my undergrad and I just want to go back to my school. And just because I just can just get my refund, I will give you all my knowledge. Tick tick tick tick tick. All the things that you that I learned right? But jokes aside. When you look over, then you look at how much you have spent over the year on dumb things. Please don't get me wrong. I like nice things. I like nice things. They. I like those shoes. I like girls, you know, I'm not a big purse person, but I like nice things too. I guess I'm one of those people that I can wear shoes from target, and I can. I can also wear, you know, Alexander McQueen shoes or whatever. I like the whole it doesn't matter to me. Well, maybe it does, but I'm not saying that nice things are not nice. I'm not saying do never do anything any nice thing for yourself, but it's not stuck. You know, you are saying that you want to start something and they're offering you. Hey, this person is an expert in this very thing and they can help you fast track your path to actually achieving getting similar results. But to you, it's not worth. It's oh, I can't figure it out of my own. On my own. If you could figure it out on your own, you would be doing it by now. You still won't be stuck, you know, chained in your golden handcuffs, called your 9 to 5 that you do not like or whatever it is they are doing. Now that you do know, like if you could do it yourself, you will be doing it by now. But then when we when we call it how much you spent the entire year, sometimes it's going to like maybe 20 something thousand dollars and some of you might need to think about who do you know is spending 20 something thousand dollars on material things, on shoes, on clothes? You they are asking you to do more spending. It's. And if you are not spending that much, whatever your level is, your budget level pieces, don't try to get out of this and say, well, I'm not spending$22,000 and clothes and shoes just calculated in reference to how much you get paid, in reference to what else you could be doing that actually giving you a better return in reference to what is truly important to you now and in the long term. That's what I mean. That's what I mean by your values are off in terms of what you're spending money on. You will spend $5,000 on a vacation, or you want to lose weight badly and actually fix your physical health like big time. And you know that this body that you have is your single vessel on this planet, and you actually needed to get things done. When you feel better, when you look good, you feel good, you're healthy and all of that, and you can show up better for yourself. But you say, why would that be $500 a month for this badass, you know, health and fitness coach? There's actually going to help me transform my body inside and out and will help me fix my ridiculous relationship with food. And I will get in the best shape of my life. And I'll be amongst other people, other men or women who are actually going through the same thing because there's something called social learning. We learn from each other. We are stronger when we lift others up. We are stronger when we are going through the journey together. And you have all of that for $500 a month. But, off of it. But then you are happy to go on not two, but three vacations throughout the year. That will in total, when you go back, you see that this isn't actually cost me like maybe 3 to 5 grand each a pop or something. Again, I love vacations, I love to travel. As of the time of recording this with my. With my Nigerian passport, which is about to change by God's grace story is a matter of time with my Nigerian passport. I've been to 43 countries I think. Yeah, over 40. I know I love to travel and yes, I'm bragging about this because something to brag about. I am proud and I'm happy to share that with you, to tell you how much I love to travel, but also tell you that I have lived is therefore quite miserable. I have done this thing where I spend stupid money to travel. But then there is the that thing. Oh my God, I was going to pay that much. Is not doing that. But but then at some points you have to collect since you have to collect common sense. Well, you know, that's the thing about common sense, I think, is Brendan Bouchard that says this, this is common sense is not always common practice. But you know, this and I don't know why they call it common sense. Do you know why they should just call it rare sense or this sense, the sense that you get when you are ready to have sense? Anyway, my point is, I love to travel. I love these things. But then at some point you're going to have to put your life on this skill or put on a new set of lenses and just look like this. This path that I am on and where I want to be five, ten years from now, three years from now, if I continue on this path, I'm not going to be here. If I continue on this path, I'm going to continue to to sign in to slack, a Microsoft outlook, to my to my 9 to 5 work and my own passion will just continue to suffer while I work hard to bring other people's dreams to come to pass. Make it make sense. You are that place where the values don't match is how we spend our time. There was a time in my life that if that's honestly next, six should be should have paid me for the amount of Netflix that I watched. No no, no, there was one. There was one show that was it is a Turkish TV show. So good is historical, is a like historical fiction. And each season has about average 90 episodes and each episode is about average 45 minutes long. That's five seasons. I watched the whole thing. In fact, I wish, I don't have my phone here. I want to do the calculation. So five seasons. Times 90 episodes, times 45, 45 minutes. Let's try to do that. Actually, that's about 5000 minutes times five. So, 25,000 minutes divided by I don't know how many minutes there any day. My brain is not working that quickly, but do the calculation. It's 42 working days, Six weeks. Imagine if you apart from maybe a few weeks of vacation, because I do believe in resting and recharging. You had, I imagine if I had six weeks to just work on it, just go home on something that I really am passionate about and to give it my all. Do it. I give that show. My old course I did. I gave it my full faculty. Whenever I was watching the show, I wasn't scrolling on my phone, I was focused. And then when I'm done watching the show, I would look at my pipeline because at that point I was a weight loss. Coach, I look at my problem, I'm like, oh, why? Why is this not happening? You like, I'm not getting enough clients. Well, since, gosh, I wonder if you had spent all that time that you used to binge on Netflix to actually go deep on your content, content that attracts your ideal clients contract that that will actually give value to people and you don't just be knocking on your door and just like, shut up and take my money. I want to work with you. What if you did that? But that is that is the thing with we human beings. When we are doing these things where, values are just off and the way we are showing off just doesn't make sense. We don't. We dig deeper into it because now becomes this vicious cycle where we have this negative self-talk was like, why am I doing this on my show? You know, plagues on that talk, the way we go about it, we end up in a not so great place. We beat ourselves down instead of, okay, you know what's all right? I was on autopilot. I kind of, you know, just got distracted and got so lost there. I'm going to change right now. I'm going to pivot right now for some of you listening to this or watching this, this is this is your moment to actually just stop and pivot right now. Like, okay, you know what? I was being stupid. I was showing up like someone who does not have anything to do or anywhere to go in this life. But now, okay, I realize it. I'm going to change my mind. I'm going to change how I show up right now, starting right now. I forgive myself for showing up like this, maybe for the 100 and 117th time. But you know what? I'm getting up again and I'm going to try again. I'm going to give my myself my very best again. But no, no, no. When you're living the life of quiet misery, you know how you do. You dig deeper. Yeah. Like, oh, you feel so bad. And because you feel so bad, you kind of need something to make you feel happy or to make you feel good. And so you click next episode, or you allow Netflix to go to the next episode and you just kind of get comfortable and that voice in your head is knowing and telling you. But yeah, just like ignoring like, you know, just shut up. I'm just going to watch this thing because you make me happy, or you may move to another vise and just like, okay, you know what? Let me go order that take in there. Hey, was that this was the ice cream or whatever to feel good. I know you feel good. Temporarily, but again, emphasis is on temporary because when you now do that, you know, like why they would eat that thing that no make me feel so good after all. And because you don't feel so good, you're like, okay, let me just watch next episode. It's crazy. This is madness. And I have every right to say this because I've been there too. I'm not dissing you. I'm not trying to insult anybody. When I talk about your values out of in terms of what you focus on, what you put your mind on, on one hand, you say, I want to be. I want to be a world leader, or I want to be best in class in this business, or I want to be best in class on my job or you know what? I want to create a life that is financially free. I want to make enough money so that I don't have to worry about money, worry about working so I can actually work on things that I enjoy. You see all of that. And then instead of media hating on those things that may help you to actually get there, to actually become that person, you instead think on all these thoughts that don't get you anyways, like the ones that I just went over earlier. You know, you you think about other people that are killing it. You compare yourself with them. You think about maybe a time in your life where you were killing and you're wondering, why am I not like that? You be asking questions that don't have any answers, or maybe questions that you have you already know the answers to, but it's better for you to just stay in that question mode, because then you don't really have to answer anything. They don't have to take any action. Hello? Who can identify it as living a life of quiet misery just yet? Like, seriously, at what point is this going to end? Is it when you are 44? When you're 49? When you turn 52? I mean, like or when you finish spending maybe three decades in a career that you are not really passionate about? Or is you? When something pops up in your life where you suddenly need a huge lump sum of money and you don't have massive savings, and you have to keep working because you actually need to now you just need you just need to keep your way of, you know, making those bills. I am not free to actually pivot and do what you want to do. Like, when are we going to stop this thing? When does the end is a life of quiet misery on the outside? You are successful. You look good. You're wearing your designer labels like is smacking on your lipstick. Actually, if you're on YouTube, how do you like my lipstick shade? It's so cute, right? Okay. Anyways, so you know, you're looking good, but deep down there's like in your head there's like all these, you know, things, this project that you never go to or you studied them, you just never, you know, saw them through. I did this things projects that I will start and not finish. I mean great start up for finish. And that is why I'm walking my own journey right in front of you with this podcast. And I'm going to prove to my future self. And so even my current self, now that Keppel, you have the ability to follow through, you have the ability to finish things or which I don't plan on finishing, quote unquote. This podcast is going to go on and on and on. I throw a magnum. Okay, I shouldn't say that because I don't know if YouTube flagged that as, copyrights music. Anyways, so. You're living the life of of of quiet misery and you're in it and it's time to get out. Please do not wait to listen to yet another episode talking about this, because I will continue until until you guys that so comment on this. I took action on this. I've stopped doing this. Enough. Let's just be done with it already. The other thing that I said is a sign that you're living in level quiet misery is what I call cognitive dissonance. You've you've probably heard this term thrown around. This is really when your behavior and your actions, you know, are really not matching your identity like who you think you are, you know, or your your thoughts and the way you are showing up is not really matching what you think it should be in that maybe particular environmental situation you are in. And so when that happens, you will change the way you think about the situation so that you can resolve that dissonance. Because as human beings, we are not comfortable with that mismatch somehow. Either your behavior needs to change or the way you think needs to change. The former is very hard to do. That is why we are talking about this thing on this podcast today. So instead of changing your behavior, you change the way you think about since you might go something like but you know what? Today or this week, I've just been very tired or, you know, my I had we had visitors over the weekend, so I'm just recovering from it's, you know, so that's why I didn't, you know, post my content on social media, for example, or let's say, for example, you are tired of your 9 to 5 and you've been saying that, you know, what's yeah, you know, you want to start something on your own. We are not quite sure what it is yet. And so this coming month is your month to make that decision, because you're going to do a bunch of research, you're going to ask people questions, do some networking, all of that. And so the month, the month is here, we, you know, maybe is the 12th day of the month and you realize, I've just been bingeing on Netflix. I've just been talking on the phone, going into comments section on Facebook and Instagram and laughing and just wondering, where did my day go? And okay. But, you know, it's been very stressful. So to, to justify not doing what you said you would do. And so this is just for your current behavior, you will now say something to yourself like, it's been very stressful. We can work. And please, at some point I just have to come on my veg. Or you may say something like, well, you know, it's only 12 days. I still have 19 days left in the month. Or you may say something like, well, the last time when I needed to make a switch or something, it took me only five days anyway, so maybe I need the whole month to do it. Do you see how like you, that you're changing your perception of things or you're changing your your expectation of how things should go just so that you can justify that behavior. But, and when you justify it, then your brain, your self, is at peace because you've kind of you've brought behavior and thoughts into one. You've, you've you've aligned them, but you know that they are not aligned. But that's how the brain works, because that is how our brains work. You know, you are experiencing cognitive dissonance. You are not showing up the way you think is show up, or you see yourself as a go getter. You see yourself as someone who actually gets things done. You see yourself as a very savvy businessman or woman, but. Just still in this basic life, collecting salary, you know, giving your W-2 or T4 or whatever tax document it is in your country and they, you know, tell yourself that all about, you know, like then this person start their own business off for them and look at them now. 43 they are thriving. I still have time. Or you may say something like, well, you know, at least I'm just I'm working now, so I'm saving up so that I can quit my job and then start my business. Well, you know that that's not what you really want to do. You know that even if you saved up all the money in this world, you have this sense that you need. You need to know that you have recurring income before you can feel good enough to actually, so actually quit. So really, you all when are you going to wake up? Let me give you a suggestion. Now would be a good time to do it. As the saying goes, the best time to start was yesterday. The next best time is now. Stop living in constant cognitive dissonance. Stop. Stop living in opposite way of what you actually value. Actually start to show up living according to your own values. Or pick a new set of values that fit the life that you are really craving. So you can finally walk out of the cage that you built for yourself. The door is wide open. Walk out. Thank you all for listening. Thank you for watching today. I hope this helped you. If it did, make sure you share with someone that you think I helped because you know how we do it here. We pay it forward. But as I always say, most importantly, take action today. Make a decision on what you are going to stop doing and what you are going to start doing so you can finally stop living a life of quiet misery. See you all on the next episode through. Thanks for tuning in to grow with Keppel. If this episode sparks something for you. Subscribe. Share it with a friend. I keep growing.