Instead, have a direction, or preferably more than one. Strive to make progress in those directions and celebrate your progress. If you enjoy running the race, rather than just look to the finish line, you’ll have reason to be satisfied the whole time. And if you don’t have a goal, there’s no reason to ever stop being satisfied.
Bonus points if you can train yourself to be satisfied based on just one criterion: Did I learn something? Because then there are no “failures” to worry about, and you’ll be much more open to trying new things.
> Instead, have a direction, or preferably more than one. Strive to make progress in those directions and celebrate your progress.
I like putting the same concept in these terms: most things in life are a process, not a state.
I only get to live life moment by moment. All I can ever do is what seems to me to be the next right step. The overwhelming majority of the time, that's actually very clear, and very small. In very few of my moments am I called upon to make momentous decisions.
What happens when I make the thousands of small choices usually has very little effect on anything except how I train my own mind to address future decisions. Especially if I'm interacting with another person, how long ago and what they ate is probably going to have a bigger impact on how they receive what I say than anything I can do about how I say it.
So I'm working on letting go of results completely. Perhaps this would be spectacularly stupid if I didn't believe in a fundamental, personal force for good that underlies all reality, but in that context, letting go of any sense of personal responsibility for outcomes is really helping me find peace (and, incidentally, finally find achievement).
There's a difference between emotion-based coping where you try to fix some perceived problem and a more intrinsic drive that aspires to make a change. The difference lies mostly in what the primary source of energy is.
Negative stimuli is a nice way to bootstrap an effort but it's not as durable or the same as internal motivation. I've tried to make many changes on both types of fuel and the only thing that is suitably durable for very long term projects is intrinsic motivation.
I haven't read deep in, but even a couple long form pop write ups has been an affirming experience to go theough, has made me feel less alienated for trying to walk the line with my dissatisfactions (instead of opting for available happinesses or contentednesses). I know others grapple similarly, but somehow having some name some theory that talks somewhat to this desperate dissatisfaction fuel really helped me equalize pressure & handle this stress a bit better.
Most things in life are more like the latter than the former, and most people eventually figure out that it's better to motivate yourself using compassion for yourself and others instead of anger.
That being said, most people who accomplish much do seem to mix some amount of nitrous in their tank. Just don't overdo it.
Think of yourself as a coach to your 'self'. Good parents are often 'high expectations, high support'. So you can be very ambitious, but also support yourself. If you just whip yourself all day every day to get the outcome you want, you will wither like an abused animal.
I actually think the ratio is much lower than we think to feel good about things, which actually makes the bar much more attainable. If you spend 5% of your time expressing love/support for yourself, and 95% of the rest of the time being critical and judgmental, you will feel dramatically better and more motivated than 99.9% critical and judgmental.
We're all just one head injury from being unable to most of the things we want. Too much kinetic energy and we die or become permanently maimed. This is an unpleasant thing to consider, but I have trouble accepting that its better to delude oneself.
In my experience people who have the "I can do anything!" attitude tend to step on everyone else's toes and take up space from people with better ideas but a more realistic self appraisal. The whole "go big or go home" attitude typical of some parts of startup culture takes up a lot of resources from great ideas that are more realistic.
Lord Krishna says in Bhagavadgita: Karmanye vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana, Ma Karmaphalaheturbhurma Te Sangostvakarmani
Meaning : You have the right to work only but never to its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.
Interesting link if you want to read more: https://vivekavani.com/b2v47/
> ...there’s a deeper reason... so many people don’t have hobbies: We’re afraid of being bad at them. If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you’re training for the next marathon... When your identity is linked to your hobby — you’re a yogi, a surfer, a rock climber — you’d better be good at it, or else who are you? Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it... It steals from us one of life’s greatest rewards — the simple pleasure of doing something you merely, but truly, enjoy.
it's about hobbies but frankly many people can probably use adopting a similar mindset about work, relationships etc (if you love and enjoy your partner, what does it matter they're not perfect?) (if you're competent in your work and it pays the bills, what does it matter if you're not the "rock star" of the company or the CEO of Google or what have you?)
there's nothing wrong with ambition and having goals, but social media is constantly shoving the best of the best in everything in our faces and implying we need to be that person or we're less than
but we don't and we're not, lol
Over the next two decades you will slowly lose your energy but what will replace it will be a much better understanding of the world and your self. Your time will become much more limited, but your understanding of how best to spend it will get much better.
And eventually you will find that ambition and happiness pull you in different directions. In your 20s its great to focus on ambition, but in your 40s its time to build a future focused on your happiness.
In my 60s, yeah, energy down significantly, and time moves so fast.
I'm not in my 60s yet, but I've struggled keeping a routine all of my life and I've discovered that I feel like my days are slipping away when I do well at it for a stretch.
Are you a regimented person?
If one was naive, one might also describe democracy this way.
Once you love yourself unconditionally, you can really start to be ambitious. The goal stops being "how can I feel lovable", and starts being about "what could I accomplish".
It's hard but it's the most free way to live.
The problem is that once you tie your self-image to your end goals, no matter the magnitude, how can your mental state _not_ suffer if you're not achieving them? If I want to be a millionaire by 30, and I am still working a low-paying job at 29, I either concede that my goal is unattainable, or I suffer.
Fundamentally, I think internal peace and ambition are at odds. The worlds is either good enough as it is (then why kill yourself over achieving your goals?), or it isn't = mental suffering. This is why I think extreme ambition can only come from/with unhappiness, which sucks for the individual, but seems to work well for the species.
You're at peace because you're doing the best you can to fix or improve things. Part of that peace comes from focussing on the journey and not the outcome.
If we could detach from the negative connotation of being "non-ambitious", we could reason like this: am I less likely to become a millionaire if I don't obsess over it? Yes. Will I be OK even if I don't become one? Yes. So I'll give it my best shot, but I won't sacrifice the rest of my life for something that might not happen even if I did obsess over it.
A steady state of always feeling peace in the background seems pretty impossible though under any circumstances.
If you can do this and stay ambitious, I'd like to buy your course. I don't know if generally people can stay hyper-motivated and hyper-ambitious unless it's tied to their identity and self-worth. If you're content with the way you are or the world is -- why bother?
I am a very harshly self-critical person in all my pursuits. Ordinarily it'd probably be pretty unhealthy, but I've always had a confidence in regards to technical pursuits (learning a new skill etc) that I could eventually figure them out, which has allowed me to reframe harsher criticism into stronger motivation. I didn't have this confidence regarding other things, which used to cause me a lot of stress and fears about being a 'failure'. Lately I've been building up this confidence for those things too, reframing being a 'failure' from someone who hasn't been able to achieve their core goals to someone who has given up on trying to achieve or change their core goals.
I don't know if I'd go that far, more like the middle way or Aristotelian golden mean.
I think to an extent there is some inevitable pain in wanting for something that is not yet there, but that doesn't have to be the primary emotion. It's like in relationships or flirting, if there's no friction at all, it's not compelling, it's boring.
But the underlying thing that makes these relationships worth it, just like pursuing your aspirations, is less about the outcome and more about the process of growing and learning. Or optimally, it should be. Paradoxically, a focus on the process and engaging with it sustainably will oftentimes get you closer to the end goal than excessive goal focus and beating yourself up for the whole time you have not yet reached your goal.
The tragic part of aspiration is that often those that are ambitious are also incredibly critical thinkers, and are thus not as able or willing to count the small wins and gradual progress that comes from a sustainable approach.
We also have a tendency to move goalposts, so that by the time we achieve an original goal, we already have the next ones lined up. So the feeling ends up being inadequacy and disappointment.
"Why am I never meeting all of my goals? There must be something wrong with me..."
"There's always something left to try to crack at the end of the day, and until I figure it out I can't let myself off the hook."
This can lead to burnout, cynicism, and frankly a pretty toxic social life.
It's been a process to be in the paradoxical state of constantly wanting to improve and realizing the human constraints I have aren't typically existential flaws, they're just parts of the experience.
Pausing to assess my progress, optimally with objective data, to be able to come to a conclusion and adjust if needed allows me to "give it a rest" with the constant cross examination of self.
Over time, it becomes less constant. Over time, I've learned to appreciate my progress.
One of the big things recently is learning to appreciate myself for WHO I am rather than what I can do to "create value".
I liked this.
What is wisdom anyways? It is one of those things that is illusive to define and communicate. Wisdom is a check against your own self-delusion. And what is the true reality of things? Each one of us has a very unique and individual human experience. And when one truly accepts the solitariness of his journey there is no comparison possible and he is in an existential world where things simply “are”.
They're not saying their experience is universal, just what helped them. This is the type of question that is not solved quickly, it is probably something that takes a decade or more to really crack.
Separating the doing from the feeling (and especially the feeling-about-doing from the doing) makes weathering setbacks much easier.
All my life so far has been spent constantly stressing over avoiding (potentially unknown) setbacks. I used to ignore this advice because I interpreted it as giving up on my goals (and of course the stakes were much lower). But getting into real world stakes, I started to stress myself out so much that it was becoming detrimental to my health. Finally taking my parents' advice and adopting this mindset has shown me that I can be harshly self-critical and ambitious without making things miserable for myself. If anything, it has made me able to pursue additional ambitions.
Being dismissive because the author is only in their 20s is ridiculous, feeling at peace and being satisfied with the direction your ambitions are taking you in is not age gated.
- East of Eden
That whole book is filled with passages about the exact conflict this article is addressing.
Regarding the article: Life is sprinting sometimes, other times its crawling and sometimes you might just be sitting still. That is just how it goes, it will definitely not be a marathon or any other consistent or predictable metaphor.
(this is my wild guess based on the tone of your post, just trying to understand it)
It can also happen that you end up with wrong ambitions and only find out once you reach those ambitions.
We all have ambition and a peacefulness to it, but the most successful people have connections to utilize that peace and ambition. When your family or friends barely support your ambitions your network will not have a jump start on everyone else.
I think this is not the most useful frame. You don't necessarily need to outcompete people for limited spots (I think a lot of people's definition of success or greatness is very narrow, and mostly informed by what others are vying for)
I think the bar for doing something great is shockingly low, most people aren't even trying. That's the impression I get every time I read a patio11 article (most recently the super long but worth it "story of vaccinate CA" [1]. This is not patio but same vibe, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Manometer Readings" [2]). My takeaway from these is that there are big problems in society that nobody is working on.
This is kind of a good thing for ambitious folks: everywhere you look there are problems everywhere, the bar for making something better than what is there is low. I think the network & support is critical but it isn't always given. I think great things happen when we start to move towards what we are capable of fixing, what is within our control, finding others who have that attitude and supporting each other.
I think for me now, the point isn't to outcompete everyone/make it to the top 1% or whatnot, it's to make it as far as is possible with what I have. Those two approaches are identical if you have the support to reach the 1%. But if not, why worry about what is outside of my control? I have plenty within my control in the menatime.
[1] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-story-of-vaccinateca/ [2] https://asteriskmag.com/issues/05/lies-damned-lies-and-manom...
