October 2025
For a long time I never understood how a person can be content with where they are in life with respect to their career. We’re in a world where millionaires, founders, and successful business dominate much of social media—both as a way to boost their own businesses, and as a way to follow them as ‘characters.’ Funny enough I’ll often use social media as a way to escape my work, just to have personas from that realm of the world creep into my feed. It’s almost as though these people are injected into society at every corner, to remind us of what reaching the top of the mountain could look like. Constant motivation to keep running on the corporate treadmill, and climb that hill. My personal take on success from this angle is pretty convoluted. I do believe that with hard work one can achieve whatever they want to—even the most unrealistic dreams. Cynically, I also believe that rest and contentment is the enemy of constant success. As a result I tend to enjoy constantly surrounding myself with these larger than life business characters. It serves as a constant reminder of what I need to thrive to be. To be clear, I am not referring to their personalities, rather their achievements. Contentment in doses is great. When you’ve been pushed by your job, ideas, or business to the point of breaking, a break is usually needed. This break can be in the literal sense (vacation etc..) or just a general sense of appreciation for how far you’ve come in your life (contentment). Too much of this period though, and you’ll risk losing the motivation and drive that initially set you up in the first place. It’s pretty straightforward but much of motivation comes from momentum, anything that gets in the way of this momentum should be deemed as a threat and acted on accordingly. Mentally I believe there to be an inverse relationship between success and more success. Confusing right? Let me explain. When you’ve come extremely far from your baseline, it’s really easy to feel contentment. For example, let’s say you started lifting weights 12 months ago. You’ve gone from barely being able to lift the bar, to benching 1 plate for reps. Though you continue going to the gym, you’re pretty happy with how you look like and the amount of weight you’re pushing, and so you do not put as much effort as you used to. At this point most gym goers will plateau, attributing the lack of strength/muscle growth to the natural limits of their body when in reality they’ve plateaued because of their lack of drive, and contentment with their progress thus far. Right but how does one combat this? It’s natural to feel a sense of pride regarding your accomplishments. Again going from one no plates on the benchpress to one is a huge feat. The key however is doses. You can feel contentment in doses, but make sure it does not overcome your hunger to continue. The way I do it is to always look at what should come next. When I’m close to accomplishing one goal, say benching 1 plate, I begin to look into the next goal. That way I have 0 period in which a goal is completed. Instead I’m always looking forward to the next goal—2 plates, then 3 etc… Using this approach definitely has its drawbacks. It’s natural to be content in your achievements. When I find myself in a state of content it often makes me uncomfortable. This could be during times of true ‘rest’ including weekends, and vacations in which time should be spent away from climbing the achievement ladder and more towards bonding. This discomfort is a byproduct of my attitude towards contentment. The more you look at contentment as negative, the less you’ll want to feel it, and hopefully the more successful you’ll be.