After achieving a major life goal, one can feel flat despite being happy. The insight is that a core part of joy comes from being in the process of creating something bigger. Feeling 'at home' in oneself requires engagement in a pursuit that demands extraordinary growth.
Related Insights
Adopt the mindset that "the top of one mountain is the bottom of the next." This frames success as a continuous journey, not a final destination. Reaching one major goal, like a degree or a bestseller, simply reveals the next, bigger challenge, preventing complacency and fueling sustained ambition.
Reaching your ultimate goals can trigger an existential crisis and feelings of emptiness, a form of chaos. The journey of building and facing challenges, though seemingly chaotic, provides purpose and true psychological stability. Therefore, one should prioritize the challenging journey over the destination.
We believe reaching a major goal (like a weight target or financial milestone) will bring lasting joy. However, due to brain homeostasis, we quickly return to our baseline. This "arrival fallacy" reveals that fulfillment is found in the progress and journey, not the often-hollow destination.
Achieving goals provides only fleeting satisfaction. The real, compounding reward is the person you become through the journey. The pursuit of difficult things builds lasting character traits like resilience and discipline, which is the true prize, not the goal itself.
Humans derive more satisfaction from progress and growth than from a static state of being. The journey of building wealth—the striving, learning, and overcoming challenges, especially with a partner—is often more rewarding and memorable than the destination of simply possessing wealth.
Founders often believe success will bring ease and happiness, but building meaningful things is a constant, hard grind. The goal shouldn't be happiness, which is fleeting, but contentment—the deep satisfaction derived from tackling important problems. The hardness itself is a privilege to be embraced.
Contrary to seeking complete satisfaction, professionals should be thankful for what they don't have. Unmet goals, knowledge gaps, and limitations are what create purpose, foster growth, and provide the forward momentum needed for a fulfilling and ambitious career.
Major achievements often feel anticlimactic or even negative. True gratitude and positive emotion are sparked not by the peak moment, but by contrasting it with the memory of the difficult journey—revisiting the places and feelings associated with the struggle provides the real emotional payoff.
Ambitious people operate under the illusion that intense work now will lead to rest and contentment later. In reality, success is an ever-receding horizon; achieving one goal only reveals the next, more ambitious one. This mindset, while driving achievement, creates a dangerous loop where one can end up missing their entire life while chasing a finish line that perpetually moves further away.
Motivation from "dark energy"—escaping inadequacy or proving others wrong—has a limited ceiling. A "light energy" of expansion, a positive pull toward a greater future, is a far more powerful and sustainable force. This shift can dramatically accelerate growth in wealth, relationships, and well-being.
