211 - dissatisfaction and success?: pt. 1 🧠
Hey there, !
Does dissatisfaction lead to greater success in life?
This is the question to explore today. I feel like there are a lot of things that push us towards being dissatisfied with our lives, constantly wanting more, or setting goals that we need to reach. It's never enough. There's a constant treadmill of things to achieve, life stages to arrive at, and work that needs to get done. It never stops!
Like any good essay, we gotta start by defining terms. So, what do I mean by:
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dissatisfaction?: the general discontent, unhappiness, frustration, disappointment etc. that stems from unfulfilled desires, expectations, needs, wants - whatever. You're just kinda not happy, because the world is not the way you wish it to be. A pertinent question here could also be: 'well then, is anyone ever really truly satisfied?' which...okay, but I'm not gonna answer that one here. The world is likely never the way you wish it to be - and even if you achieved the world you wanted, it's likely that the grass is not greener, the coffee does not taste better, and you'll still want to find an even better looking rainbow.
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greater success?: being able to get closer to your own idealised life than before - and this term implies comparison; that your success is by definition better than someone elses. Or perhaps it's compared to a benchmark of others...which does lead me to my next point...
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life?: I feel like this is actually the hardest one to define. Every person's life is so different and multifaceted, and to say that someone has had more success in life than another is somewhat misleading. There's no common yardstick that you should be defining people against - otherwise we would all just be trying to be the same person. I think what I mean here is the 'idealised life', or, your own concept of what life should be, and there are generally accepted areas of life that I think would work - in terms of status, happiness, love, work, purpose etc.
(NB: I had a whole essay written already before I came back to this section, and I threw all that out because I think I'm clearer on what my question is here! Ahhh....Year 10 English thank you for teaching me to define key terms)
1. dissatisfaction and the Idealised Life
To begin, I think we have to find out where the dissatisfaction may come from. In this particular question, I believe that the simplest expression is that it's caused by not achieving an idealised life, or being in a state where you are not yet achieving that idealised life.
If you thought you'd be a pro football player by 25, and you don't achieve it, you'd be disappointed, and dissatisfied. If you want to earn a million dollars, but you haven't yet, you'd be frustrated. If you wanted to have kids, but you weren't able to for whatever reason, that would 100% lead to shit feelings.
So then, if that's the case, how might this correlate with achieving greater success?
Easy - it's motivation. It's striving. It's trying to achieve that goal, planning on how to get there, working on it, having a vision in mind, it's The Secret, it's giving self-actualisation (or at least, some step towards it).
If you're not where you want to be, take steps to get there. Easy enough, right? Maybe it requires effort, or patience, or a little bit of luck, but you have a vision of a life that you're trying to achieve.
I feel a lot of this is obvious, but it is still worth stepping through for clarity.
2. dissatisfaction: a spectrum
If you are more dissatisfied, do you gain greater success?
The more annoyed or frustrated you are with not getting to where you want to be must be motivating for a little bit. To get to a million dollars, you might need to plan your way to it, however long that may take, or find someone to help you plan it; if you want to get to the Olympics, you train for it, and it's motivating to want to achieve gold.
But then...if you're only a little dissatisfied, do you gain less success? I'm not too sure. Isn't that why there is "the Path", or why people can use shortcuts / adopt what others do regarding what The Idealised Life should be? In this way, they can stay relatively satisfied, but still gain success - the road more traveled is better mapped out, eh?
[I wanted to put in a graph here that would illustrate this difficulty, but I'm not even sure what the distribution would look like. Initially, I thought perhaps a curve that plateaus - where greater dissatisfaction will reach an upper limit of higher outcomes...but with so many people who are very dissatisfied, that never achieve what they want to, perhaps it's a curve with confidence intervals? I'm not really sure...]
Maybe this dissatisfaction spectrum, or score, or whatever it is, could be summed up by the following factors:
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the gap between you and your idealised life: a larger gap causes greater dissatisfaction
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having a strategy or plan to close that gap: without a plan, there is greater frustration because you don't know how to close the gap
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the perceived strength of your plan to achieve that life: if you have no confidence in the plan, you are more likely to be annoyed. In addition, if you have great confidence that it will work, then you are likely to be more satisfied with where you are (as your systems are working!)
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comparisons with others who are trying to achieve similar goals: the more that others around you are achieving those goals you are trying to achieve, the more stark the gap feels to you
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the patience or effort required to implement that plan: the more effort required, or the more patience it asks of you, the more dissatisfied you will be
And following on from that last point - the more dissatisfied you are, the more frustrated and emotionally invested you get in something, the more likely you'll lose patience and rush, or do something rash, which jeopardises your long-term goals. Maybe it's putting all your chips on red, or maybe it's buying crypto with your life savings, or maybe it's going on a crazy diet to try and cut weight to achieve goals.
All of these things probably contribute to how dissatisfied you are, and then would potentially correlate with life success in some way (either positively or negatively). Maybe there's a golden point along that spectrum which gives you just enough motivation to achieve your goals, but not too much dissatisfaction that would dissuade you from continuing.
I wonder how you would even measure these things...
3. why'd I think about this anyway?
Well...I've just been thinking about how there are some people in life who never seem to be satisfied with where they are. They're always frustrated with stagnation, constantly looking to achieve the next thing, or they don't seem to go with the flow, and want the world to conform to their Way.
I think of people who seem highly successful - like a Magnus Carlsen, or a Jeff Bezos, for example, who have achieved so much but have also observed how that thirst and ambition doesn't seem to turn off, or doesn't seem to bring the happiness that you'd think it would. Elon Musk buying Twitter, or building SpaceX, and sticking to his guns about what he wants the world to be rather than how it is, is really interesting. There's so much irrationality required to decide you are just going to see something through to the end, everyone else be damned. (A thought for another day - do people who seemingly ignore 'being cancelled' just never get cancelled? What does it actually take to get Cancelled?).
A lot of entrepreneurs want to shape the world to the way they think it should be. They must have a view of the future that they believe they can bring about. For example, there are people who want to achieve as long a lifespan as possible, or build the AI that'll end up taking over the world, or who want to make this crypto thing really take off. Are these ambitions driven from dissatisfaction? Ambition? Maybe both.
The ambition can help push you along to great success, but surely there's a level of constant dissatisfaction with the way you are, all the time? And of course, I'm sure there are the mental health considerations of being annoyed and frustrated at a goal all the time - perhaps thats why people shift their goals and settle for things that are more in their control.
Hmm.
It ended up in a spectrum again. Damn it.
Ah well, that's enough for today - I ran out of time.
In our next instalment (whenever I get around to writing it), let's dive into how we could be less dissatisfied? Or find that balance.
'Til then, chat soon :)
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✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Shackfuyu - a Japanese fusion-ish place that had some nice little goodies. It was one of the first places we went to while in Japan, and I went mainly because it had been on the Off Menu podcast. The chicken wings, which were supposed to be really good, were just alright. But the dessert - a kinako french toast with matcha ice cream - was sublime. Absolute highlight dessert of the trip!
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Carlotta - thank you Steph for the recommendation because WHOOEY what a cool upscale lil' place! Some divine Italian food, fun cocktails, very vibey and atmospheric - I walked through a high tea-like area bedecked with gold and drippy glass features, went down into a hidden away mirrored, glamorous, dark and muted bar area buzzing with life. There, I was served pretty much Nonna's pasta, with big, blue, traditional plates of pasta that kind of clashed, but kind of super fit in with the vibe. Highly recommended - though a bit pricey!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Play on ertdfgcvb - stumbling on the weirdest, wonderful things on the internet. It's an ASCII art generator where you can play with the code if you want to - just fascinating to watch your browser writhe with text. It can even show you ASCII art through your camera as well!
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Internet Artifacts - really fascinating history lesson of the Internet - such a fun way to explore nostalgia. I found the helicopter game again through this!
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That Time the City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32m Emails for 40 Dollars - sometimes, data is just that easy to get.