Ambitious but at peace | Hacker News Reader

Ambitious but at peace

jugheadjones10.github.io

87 pointsjuggy6963 comments

I will humbly restate this advice slightly based on 2-3X the life experience: Don’t have “end goals”. There’s no way to be satisfied with that approach. Either you reach the end and haven’t achieved them (you’re a “failure”), or you achieve them but aren’t at the end (now what?).

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.

"Journey before destination"?

More like ”journey is all there is”.

I have a Steve Jobs book with "The Journey is the reward" as the subtitle on the spline that I pretty much kept just for that.

I have learned some time ago that goals are mere milestones. I have found myself not being happy/excited enough (as in how I see others get excited on things) when I get something. It's very short lived, I find myself more excited 'before' getting it then 'on' getting it. I get the thing, it may or may not have changed the world for me at all, now what, repeat.

> Don’t have “end goals”.

> 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.

Yes indeed. It’s still good to celebrate when you reach a particularly good state during the process. Just don’t overconstrain the set of potential good states ahead of time, because the process might take you somewhere else.

I feel like I'm on a completely different journey, one in which I realize my effort is up to me, but the results of my efforts are not--at all.

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).

This attempts to disassociate fuel from acceleration. Your dissatisfaction is the fuel. You can't dump fuel and maintain the same potential energy. If you manage that it would be the motivational equivalent of a reactionless drive. As is, our propulsion is found in our discontent. Most of us can burn it a lot more efficiently though.

I think "it would be cool if ..." is a better long term motivator than "it sucks that ...".

"it would be cool if ..." runs into "but effort" and dies, while "it sucks that ..." is something that gnaws at you

Effort seems to be a quite malleable kind of experience. It can be enjoyed or despised depending on how you've trained your impulses around that certain kind of effort. This further speaks to using the "it would be cool if ..." narrative.

Trying to build upon "it sucks that ..." seems to create a bunch of weird self sabotaging behaviours in my experience. Since I tried moving away from that I've found it easier to motivate myself to do things that aren't immediately rewarding. And perhaps more importantly, the journey there seems more enjoyable.

And I think it makes a lot of sense that using a carrot instead of a stick on yourself produces more consistent behaviour. You move towards a carrot and you flee from a stick. You can flee in most directions.

Changing the way you think about yourself takes a lot of time though. Impulses are deeply rooted.

> carrot instead of a stick

But wanting the carrot and not wanting to get hit are both kinds of discontent. The donkey is dissatisfied at not having the carrot so it pulls the cart that would otherwise be still.

It's very subtle.

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.

There's a lot of overlap with ideas in Terror Management Theory. A lot of TMT is denial of death & not facing it, but also some people have a far more head on approach, motivate by watching the candle burn. Theres a variety of new page browser extensions that show life-left clocks of various sorts, for example.

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.

Going with that analogy, there are a lot of different fuels you can use. Using dissatisfaction or self-loathing may be an effective fuel, but it tends to be like putting NOS in your engine. You can go really fast, but you are likely doing long-term damage to the engine or risking catastrophic failure. Perhaps a good strategy for a 30-second street race, but not a good one for a cross-country road trip.

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.

You don't need to be 100% in love with yourself to 'love yourself' or be kind to yourself to some degree. I think sometimes people (me) hear stuff like this, and feel like it's all or nothing.

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.

> Real strength comes from knowing that there is absolutely nothing that can happen to you that will stop you from continuing forward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths

Dead people aren't usually concerned with whether they're progressing or not.

I don't think that's the point. Death is just a dead-obvious example of the fundamental reality that our actions are constrained. Like I guess I could grudgingly admit that maybe hustle culture's absolutely absurd levels of optimism or self belief might somehow help a person overcome obstacles, but I can't help but feel that a person who thinks this way just fundamentally doesn't understand how the universe works.

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.

There is a very important teaching in the Bhagavad Gita that's related.

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/

Somewhat related, there's a teaching in the Pirkei Avot (attributed to Rabbi Tarfon): "It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either"

reminds me of this essay, a favorite of mine

> ...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.

https://archive.is/2I3T4

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

This feels a bit off. Change/Progress doesn’t tend to happen for most people until the status quo is more painful than the effort it takes to change or make progress. Just human nature. If you’re happy where you are, you’re not likely to change your situation on purpose.

This is only if the position you're happy being at is static. You can be happy where you are in the sense that you know you're working in the direction you want to go. Say, someone who is content with working under a bad boss because they know they are on the track to being out of that situation soon.

I completely agree that a marathon mindset is more powerful than a sprint mindset. In your 20s you have so much energy but you don't understand the world well yet or yourself.

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.

I probably had more energy in my 40s than I did in my 20s. And in my 50s, I had more time too (kids were grown and gone).

In my 60s, yeah, energy down significantly, and time moves so fast.

> 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?

I would not say so. I prefer serendipity to routine, which I fear may be a mistake.

Please elaborate on this idea of time moving so fast in your 60s. It is terrifying to me. I'm in my early 40s and I already feel like it is slipping away from me so quickly. I want to achieve my ambitions and I also want to enjoy life, and despite being at the peak of my competency, it just feels like there's never enough time for both.

If I "blinked" when I was 40 (in the sense of not paying much attention to what was happening over what felt like a not particularly long period of time), maybe a week would go by.

Now, it's months. Or maybe it's an effect closer to memory "time compression". When I was 40, 6 months of memories was quite a distinct cluster of different things. Now, 6 months of memories is closer to one memory. It's not precisely like that, and certainly not all the time, but that's a handwaving general description of how I perceive things these days.

Yeah, this is absolutely horrifying. I have seen this phenomenon discussed before, and I can perceive its impact in my own life. It implies that from the standpoint of perception my life may already be mostly over without me having realized it.

Same conclusion. I would even add: it’s not the end of the world if you don’t happen to achieve your goals. If you’re in peace with yourself, you can easily say “there’s still time” (if there’s actually time left) or simply “well, it was worth the journey “)

One exception to this is the efforts of anti-war folks: if they fail at their initiative, it truly is game over for many.

If one was naive, one might also describe democracy this way.

Humility is loving yourself unconditionally, and pride is loving yourself conditionally.

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.

https://www.facebook.com/PoetDavidWhyte/posts/ambitionis-a-w...

> Ambition is about the magnitude of your end goals, not about your mental state on the way there.

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 right, and that's one of my internal conflicts. I think there still is a way to have "internal peace" while still believing the world isn't good enough.

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.

I agree focusing on the journey is more healthy (many cognitive therapies focus on trying to re-frame your thinking like this), but realistically all of our social/rewards structures are focused on the outcome, hence it's so difficult to detach from it.

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.

I don't know if they're totally at odds if you separate your ambition from your identity and sense of self-worth. I live in a fairly constant state of discontentment (maybe as a symptom of ambition), but when I step back and self-evaluate I rest easy.

A steady state of always feeling peace in the background seems pretty impossible though under any circumstances.

> if you separate your ambition from your identity and sense of self-worth

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?

The buddhists would say that expectation and attachment are the root of suffering, and to completely let go of them is the only way to transcend the pain of being.

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".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdjqZGzMGtE

I disagree that the two are fundamentally at odds. If your goal is specifically to be a millionaire by 30, yeah, you're bound to be unhappy if you aren't near that by 29. But on the other hand, if you're more open minded about the flexibility of your goals, it can be a lot less painful. You just need the self-confidence that even if things don't go as expected, you're capable of finding another way or of changing the goal to something else that you find to give you similar or greater value.

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.

At some point I had a post-it that said "happily unsatisfied" next to my desk. My bf had told me to think of making the changes I needed, with a timespan of five years, not "asap". That helped a lot.

I'm also in my early twenties, and also (at least in certain ways) quite ambitious.

I liked this.

The way I approach this is integrating wisdom to my ambition. First step is to understand what the source of my ambition is. If my ambition stems from my need to impress others or gain superficial status then I understand my ambitious is misplaced and delusional. Kinda takes deep self-awareness to access the cause. I refuse to to leave my life in delusion. But if my ambition stems from a genuine internal desire and intrinsic motivation then I know I am in the right direction. In essence you want to align you goals with the truth of your being.

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”.

Like so many pontificating without life experience, this seems a little shallow, please repost once you’ve had a little more experience, kid.

I'm only 30, but this exact same realization has brought me a great deal of mental peace in the last few years.

Separating the doing from the feeling (and especially the feeling-about-doing from the doing) makes weathering setbacks much easier.

Agreed. I'm just over halfway through my 20s, but this same realization has led me to finally just enjoying life a little.

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.

Feels like a cheap shot, even if the author is in their twenties.

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.

"I'm glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He's suffering over the choosing right now. It's a painful thing to watch."

- 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.

Wow, I've had that book on my to-read list for as long as I can remember. I guess I should read it.

Ambitious but at peace, thank you

Nice piece.

"fuck the wallfacer project"

Give it another 5 years and come back to me

Can you add more detail here? What is your prediction? That they will (1) change their mind and not be at peace, because this feeling doesn't last or (2) they will not accomplish much because ambition is not compatible with being satisfied?

(this is my wild guess based on the tone of your post, just trying to understand it)

My 5 cents is that sometimes you can reach your ambitions and it might be hard for you to get new ambitions, no matter how you feel about yourself.

It can also happen that you end up with wrong ambitions and only find out once you reach those ambitions.

define wrong ambitions.

I get from the text that you can have peace of mind and progress towards your goal. That peace of mind allows you to progress easily, less troubled. It doesn't say your ambitions are invariable once you choose them.

The fact you realize your original ambition is not what you want anymore you still got all the learnings from the path.

You missed my point. Wrong ambitions that I'm talking about are the ones that make you take actions that have consequences, you chase an ambition that makes you lose other things and you may only realize that once those things are lost forever.

Yes just a few more years of ambition boiling away inside soon to be reduced by half as they realize the average person’s support network for ambition is non-existent.

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.

> 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...

I agree. My point was less “outcompete and recognize network advantage” and more “without support you will burn up your ambition faster and move slower”. A lot of the time people look up to those who have made it and wondering how they can be equivalent; you can be just as successful as Richie Rich if you have people actually supporting your ambitions…which many successful people have but do not acknowledge.

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