In high school, I was not cool.

I came from a small town, with a graduating class of about 150 - the kind of high school where everyone knows everyone - the type of high school you’d see in a Hollywood movie.

However, I was not the type of uncool where I was secretly cool.

I was just the type that was uncool where I secretly wanted to be cool and popular.

I probably wouldn’t have admitted this at the time, but it’s so obvious now.

I can remember all of the popular kid’s names right now - Adam Stanton, Alex Salazar, Sam Cooper, Mitch Van Dyke, etc.

Those guys were so cool, and funny. I wanted to be them.

I probably had a bunch of opportunities to be cool in high school, but I ruined all of them, probably from trying too hard and caring what people thought about me.

After high school, I still wanted to be cool.

In college, you get to start over. And that’s what I did.

I went to a college thousands of miles away, and I worked hard to be cool.

I was more successful at this in college - and I actually became somewhat of a ‘cool kid’ - at least in the eyes of the previous popular kids I wanted to impress so bad in high school.

A couple of these guys from my high school visited me at college. We hung out and became a sort of friends. Nothing crazy, but all of a sudden we were chilling like some normal dudes. I think they thought I was cool.

Yet, in college, I suffered the same problem. 

Once I leveled up my cool factor, there was now a cooler group of kids - and I wanted to be like them.

Just like in high school, I wondered what it would be like to be these cool kids.

So I did the same thing - I worked hard to get to their level. 

Then I got there.

You can probably guess where this is going.

The cycle continued. After college, I discovered the next batch of cool kids. But this time it was about the cool job and the cool career.

...

I don’t think this mentality is all that healthy - but I also think that it’s a part of what drives many successful people and high achievers.

Becoming cool did not solve my problems - but it did get me closer to what I was really looking for.

When I chased the approval of others, I eventually got it - and it was always at that point where I realized it was never what I wanted in the first place.

This is my story - I did this enough times that I've trained my brain to care less about being cool.

These days, I live in my parents' basement, own just a suitcase of clothes, I'm not in a serious relationship, and run an online business from my laptop. 

To 99% of the world, this is extremely uncool.

Sometimes people will tease me about this, but these days I just laugh it off. It doesn’t bother me as it would have five years ago. I secretly know I'm cool as fuck - but I don't need to show it.

Maybe this is just me again trying to be cool... but it feels different this time.

...

About a year ago, the #1 cool kid from my high school sent me a message telling me how he was inspired by my story.

We got to talking, and I told him how much I had admired this speech he did back in high school. Here was his response:

It just goes to show you that all of this shit is just in our heads.