Chasing your dreams without breaking yourself
I have type-A personality. I am highly ambitious, highly competitive and often impatient. Early in my career, my stress level used to be very high on a regular basis. I used to feel anxious, lose my sleep and was not able to enjoy other aspects of life, as my goals, and the challenges that came with it, used to constantly be on the top of my mind. At the start of each goal, I would think that once I meet this goal, I will want nothing else in life. However, once the goal was met, there would be a short period of joy and relief, and then I would want the next thing to chase.
About a decade back, in the middle of one such cycle, I found myself working longer and longer every night and sleeping lesser and lesser. This caused some health issues which served as a wake up call for me — I realised that there is something wrong in my approach. I started looking for a solution. I talked to people, read self help books, read spiritual books, watched videos, introspected and more. I did not find any single book or source that had a solution for my challenge. But, this process led to better self discovery and a tailored solution that made things better for me. Today, I have a more joyous and productive journey towards my goals and I am able to manage my stress and anxiety much better.
In this post, I am sharing the framework that I discovered and now apply for myself. If you relate with the challenges I outlined above, you may find this post useful. Read on.
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Amongst all living creatures on earth, humans have a unique capability— the capability to think consciously. Because we think, we desire. In fact, most of our thoughts are some form of desire. Ambitions too are a form of desire. Our ambitions are driven by many factors. For most humans, ambitions are driven by necessity, in other words, the desire to survive. However, if you are a reader of this blog, very likely, your ambitions are not driven by necessity. Curiosity, problem solving, autonomy, community appreciation and peer comparison are some of the most common drivers for most people.
Where did these drivers come from? I think that these other drivers too have their roots in the desire to survive. Peer comparison allows us to work towards being better than others who compete for the same resources. Community appreciation is important as we are tribal animals. Curiosity and problem solving leads to inventions and discoveries that strengthen our position as a species. Desire to be autonomous, in some sense, is the desire to become stronger.
Evolution is far from perfect. As much as ambition is a necessary tool for our species, if left unchecked, it can go into an overdrive and create negative emotions, harming us in the long run. Peer comparison leads to jealously. Success leads to vanity. Challenges lead to anxiety. Failure leads to sadness.
Negative emotions are a part and parcel of our existence. It is natural to be upset on failing an interview, shutting down a startup unsuccessfully, being rejected for a promotion or being laid off. However, uncontrolled negative emotions cause a long term irreversible damage to our body and mind. Perhaps, evolution did not optimise to avoid the long term damage caused by these emotions because out in the wild, humans were not required to live as long as we live today in the modern world.
Many of us live our life letting negative emotions be in the driver’s seat without conscious awareness. I know this because I lived that way in the past. However, it does not need to be that way. Just as much as humans have the drivers to push us towards our ambitions, we also have the ability to understand and deliberate on the cost we are incurring in pursuing our ambition. We have the ability to make a conscious choice between the benefits of our goal and the cost we have to incur for it in other aspects of life. We have the ability to consciously change how we approach our goal. We have the ability to change our goal altogether if needed. Even if we change nothing, deliberate choice makes it easy to own up the consequences and hence helps minimise future regret.
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In this section, I will share the blueprint for conscious awareness that I have learnt through my explorations and have been applying with great effect over the last decade. Each individual is different. You might require creating your own recipe for happiness — hopefully, this blueprint will serve as a good starting point for you.
First and foremost, I regularly try to reason if my goal is a need or a desire. Knowing that you don’t need something is extremely powerful as it gives you the choice to walk away. It gives you the power to be OK in the face of failures. I write this down on a post-it note and stick it in front of my monitor so that I can read it every day.
Second, I try to be consciously aware of what my ambitions may be doing to my body and mind. Am I sleeping well? Am I missing the little moments of life? Is my back stiff. How is my energy level? When I was young, I easily operated with high productivity even after a night without sleep. That is not the case anymore. I now create a table of benefits I will reap on successfully accomplishing my goal on one side and the harm that my body and mind are going through on the other side. I stick that table to my monitor and read it every day.
A lot of many people in my parent’s generation are suffering. Some of it is inevitable side effects of oldage. However, in some cases, I think it is at least partially the cost of choices they have made and how they have lived their earlier life. They were all physically fit and fine with easy to ignore signs of problems to come, until one day, all of a sudden, things deteriorated quickly. When we are young, our body recovers from abuse easily. But there comes a point when the body is not able to cope with its abuse anymore and irreversible damage starts happening. The problem is that the symptoms of irreversible damage often show up too late. So, listen to your body . Don’t ignore that insomnia or that back pain. Pay attention to the tobacco or alcohol usage you may be driven towards. Become consciously aware of it and do something about it. Acting early could make the difference between a painful old age vs a comfortable one.
Third, I now pay more attention to my values. We often operate reactively and in an automated manner at workplace. We do what others are doing. Now, I periodically pause and reflect on my actions, choices and decisions. Did I lose my temper? Did I fail to give due credit to someone? Did I lie. Did I feel jealous of someone? It is often very difficult to recognise when we breach our own value system — it requires deep self reflection and needs practice. I now periodically reflect and note down any breach in my value system and how I to fix it going forward. Whether you live according to your value system or not can be the difference between a guilt ridden future vs a future that is at peace of having lived the right way.
Forth, I now try to be consciously aware of my relationships and my role in the community. Am I making time for family and friends? Do I feel lonely in my down time? Early in my career, I used to think that it is time to focus on career first and I can spend time with friends and family after I have achieved my goals. While it is true that there are important life stages where education and career needs to take the front seat, it can’t take the front seat forever. Despite knowing that we have limited time on earth, we operate as if we have infinite time. We assume that we can always take care of our relationships later. Time never comes back. Thus, it is important to be mindful of the cost we are paying with regards to our relationships in the pursuit of our goals. Not doing so may not matter much today, but could make the difference between a lonely and regretful future vs one filled with love and care.
Fifth, I now periodically assess the investment that my goal will need. Is the benefit of the goal worth the investment? If not, can I set a smaller and more achievable goal? A good test that your goal is unachievable is that you are failing to get close to it despite sustained investments and are hurting in other departments of life in the process. Another sign that your goal may be unreasonable is if you are constantly blaming others for your lack of success. Self awareness is not easy — it is not easy to do an honest calibration of our own skills and capabilities. Often we have a desire by looking at others and just wish for this desire to somehow to met without having an honest conversation with ourselves if we really have the needed skills. We confuse desire with ambition.
Finding the right balance in setting goals is not easy — if you set too low a goal, you will underutilise your talent. If you set too high a goal, it may be too costly to achieve. However, through regular reflection and self-correction, if you set right sized goals and work towards them one step at a time in a mindful manner, in the long term, these small steps could add up to be something really big.
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Many of us run our life following the herd. Our joy from successful completion of a goal is rarely absolute — in most cases, it is relative to our peers. Did we get promoted faster than the peers. Did we make more money that the peers. Did our startup do better than other startups. We keep changing the peer group as we go along. What we fail to realise is that everyone has their own journey and we are only looking at someone at a particular point in time. We want what they have without knowing the past and future costs that they and their lineage has incurred or will incur in other dimensions of life. I can bet that if we had the opportunity to know the full story, most likely, we will not want to switch places with them. It is not easy to let go of peer comparison, but a mindful reminder that everyone has their own journey can help us get out of the trance.
Life is long and our desires will only end with our life. I now feel that it is better to pace ourselves so that we will be able to repeatedly set new goals and work towards them till the end of life in a sustainable and mindful manner. Sprinting towards certain goals as if our life depends on it and as if there is no tomorrow, most likely will take a costly toll on us and hurt us in the long run.
