Get started!

Hey there! I’m Reese Patel, creator of this site.

Before I talk a little more about what you can expect to learn about here, to begin: who even is Reese Patel?

Well, I was raised in London surprisingly by two normal parents and I spent much of my childhood exceedingly obsessed with achieving stuff – academically, musically, sporting wise – mostly to cover deep rooted insecurity. As I grew older and (arguably) wiser, I learnt that it was actually possible to strive to achieve things whilst being happy simultaneously.

On this site, I write about both sides of the coin – as a young adult, how can you stay motivated to achieve things, and how can you balance that drive with staying content and happy in the moment?

I essentially share everything I’ve learnt from being a young adult in this modern world. From articles on how I got the grades I got to articles on ways to cope with loneliness, the aim is for this to be a safe homely place where we can all strive to grow and develop, whilst still making sure we’re being kind to ourselves.

I’ll talk a little bit more about me and my motivation for creating the site in a bit, but if you don’t care or you’re short on time, I’ll quickly sum up all the different things you can find here on the site.

So firstly I should offer you the opportunity to get a copy of my free book – ‘Study Smart, Stress Less – tips, tricks and techniques to ace your exams and take care of your mental wellbeing’.

Alongside learning the tools I used to get virtually perfect grades at school, you’ll also learn all the methods I use to take care of my mental wellbeing. To get a free copy, just let me know where to send it below!

And next, what can you expect to learn about on the site? Well to make things easier for you, I’ve split my articles up into four main sections:

Disclaimer: as I’ll go on to discuss in the next section, I’m unfortunately not able to guarantee lifelong happiness or perfect grades or whatever.

I’m also an avid learner and reader, so if I’ve read an interesting paper or book, and spent a great deal of time thinking about a topic, I’ll write an article about it. School puts people off, but learning about things you’re genuinely interested in can honestly be so cool.

My motivation for the site

This site was made so others don’t have to make the same mistakes I did. I write because if there’s even the slightest chance to help others through a similar problem to one I’ve experienced, I feel like it’s my moral obligation to do so. I’m aware that probably sounds insanely clichéd, but it’s genuinely true.

Whenever I experience a problem in life, I’ll read multiple books, watch multiple videos, read the research, and implement what I’ve learnt in my own life and only after that share all the best tips that have worked for me personally in an article.

It sounds corny, I know, but I genuinely made this site to help people.

When one of you sends me a DM on twitter or an email to tell me how an article you read helped you, it genuinely is one of the best feelings in the world.

If you’ve read some of the articles on the site you’ll know I’m not the greatest fan of traditional self-help. I try, as best I can, to steer clear from it. If you’d like to learn a little bit more about why I find traditional self-help so dangerous, feel free to check out my article – “The dangers of traditional self-help” where I delve a little deeper.

This might sound surprising but the website is also incredibly useful for me too. Any time I feel myself beginning to struggle in a certain area of life, I know I’ll be able to find on this site a reminder of what’s worked in the past. As someone who has a lot of ideas about life, someone who thinks too much, I prefer to get those ideas out as opposed to letting them fester within and slowly eat away at me.

I’m also fully aware that one day I’m going to die. Nice thought, I know. I want to share with the world all the ideas I have, all the exploration and digging I have done on life and what it means to be human before that day comes.

I didn’t design this site to tell you how to live your life; I designed it to give you helpful tools so you can figure out how to live your best life. I don’t want to write your narrative but rather help you discover how you want to write your own narrative.

A little about me

As I’ve already touched on, I was a pretty crazy kid, a kid who was weirdly obsessed with achieving things. I’m not going to brag here, but if you want to learn more about my achievements, check out my life list – all the bragging is there.

The turning point in my life came in the summer of my eighteenth year. I remember the day vividly. I was sat in bed, my feet tucked snugly in my blanket and my right thumb hovering over my phone. My heart was thumping, my palms dripping with sweat. This was it – the moment of truth, the day I’d been waiting forever for.

Clicking the link on the email, I proceeded to stare vacantly at the screen, my eyes drifting up and down the page over and over to check what I was reading was real. It was only after about ten minutes when it finally set in – my A-level grades were in and for some insane reason I was not happy.

At this point, I was fully aware that almost any other kid alive, upon receiving these grades, would have been running around their room like a maniac, jumping for joy, and screaming in elation. Meanwhile, there I was, still sat in bed, staring at this screen as if I’d just found out my cat had passed away.

I’d got 3A*s, 1A and no matter how hard I tried, that empty feeling in my stomach, a hollow feeling, as if all the light had been sucked from me, refused to budge. It wasn’t just the 1 A that had got to me – it was a feeling that no matter what I achieved, no matter how well I did, I’d never be happy.

The next few weeks passed by quickly, and before I knew it, summer was over and all my friends were heading off to their respective universities ready to have the time of their lives. I, meanwhile, was still sat at home.

I’d decided to take a gap year.

My whole life, up until this point, had been about achievement. But I didn’t want achievement anymore. I wanted to be happy. Happiness, the feeling, the sensation that had always proved elusive – like how a kid can chase their own shadow forever without ever catching it.

I’d love to say my gap year consisted of me heading off to some silent retreat in India and after 87 hours of straight meditation, finding enlightenment, but in reality my mind was still a mess.

A year prior to this I’d also experienced another failure of sorts – being rejected from Oxford University. Before the rejection, my life had direction – I’d go to university to study maths, proceed to work in a bank, earn copious amounts of money (whilst hating my job) and then live happily ever after. In theory, the rejection from Oxford didn’t really affect the odds of this dream occurring – I had offers from Imperial, Warwick etc. – all pretty notable universities in the UK.

But that day I received my results made me rethink things. Yes, I had achieved virtually perfect grades at school, but did I really like maths? Did I really want to spend this one precious life doing banking? One of the ways I processed all these thoughts was through writing. In fact by the end of my gap year, I’d written a fiction novel, worked with a top editor on said novel, written another free e-book and over 25 articles.

That, in essence, is how this site began. From there, I branched out and wrote even more articles on studying, contentment and (for some reason my most popular article) death.

The importance of fiction

This might feel like an incredibly weird section to have in a ‘get started’ page, but fiction genuinely is super important to me, and it’s something I wanted to briefly talk about.

I believe fiction and art as a whole are essential when it comes to exploring emotion, contentment and what it means to live with meaning.

Although non-fiction books and articles are great for honing in on a particular issue, fictional stories are often more powerful in conveying a message, especially when that message has an emotional string attached.

There’s something much more powerful and relatable about exploring a complex theme in the form of a story or poem. Fiction provides a way of transcending the nature of our current lives and allows us to live momentarily in someone else’s; feel what they’re feeling, experience what they’re experiencing.

With mental illnesses which you have never experienced and perhaps never will, a good way for you to get a glimpse of what it’s like is through a fictional novel. You’re able to see the world through a certain lens, get a glimpse into what’s it like to view the world from another perspective. It’s powerful and also extremely useful to know, even just in small proportion, what other people around you might be contending with and fiction helps with this.

Long term, although I want to continue writing non-fiction, my real passion lies with fiction. As I’ve already mentioned, (after two years of work and twenty drafts) I’ve finished my first novel and am currently working on my second. I’m still (at the time of writing) searching for the right literary agent, so if you’re an agent reading this or someone who knows a family member or friend who might be interested, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

And finally…

I’m someone who loves feedback – all kinds of feedback. If you do read an article on the site or my free e-book, and think it’s awful (or not awful), please feel free to tell me via twitter. If you want to (preferably constructively) roast me, go ahead. If you want to praise me, I’m not going to complain either. Whatever feedback you have, no matter how harsh, I want to hear it.