Sometimes I feel that I just need to pick myself up together and decide what to do with my life. Find some new dreams I can achieve but instead I just stay in my own mediocrity doing nothing and wondering why nothing changes...
I don't think success necessarily correlates with the amount of wealth you have but it correlates with the amount of self worth you feel and how proud you are of what you did at the end of the day. It's way too easy though to enter a vicious circle where because you failed at something you just stop really trying. Like the author, I tried, I created a business, it failed spectacularly last year due to my own incompetence at managing people and now I'm just there regretting all that I did wrong and thinking that maybe I shouldn't even have tried.
I'm sorry for rambling, I'm probably writing this more for myself than for anyone else. I need to get up, stop pitying myself and find some new dreams to follow instead of just settling for mediocrity.
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Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential — as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.
To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.
-- Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin & Hobbes)
<quote>
... At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, the late Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, the author Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch 22 over its whole history.
Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . Enough.”
</quote>
(Extra paragraphing added.)
Although the OP makes no mention of it, when I've talked with friends & family about "success" and all that, following dreams is great. One big thing to keep in mind is that the future is also uncertain. Retirement is the biggest thing that comes to mind. I have many friends who have foregone saving for retirement in order to follow their dreams, no matter how "irrational" that may be (I use quotes because that might not be the right term).
20, 30, 40 years down the road, who is going to be paying for retirement? It's great that "you" have memories of doing great things! But the bills have to be paid. Is it going to be your friends, who worked those boring, monotonous jobs? Will their 401k accounts be taxed so that they have to pay for your retirement? Will mine?
What about kids? I have family members who did follow their dreams to do whatever it is they want to do, and then start having kids. Without a solid job, boring or not, someone has to pay for the kids. Either it's charity from family, or it's the government via taxes.
Anyways, that's some things that I think about when these topics come up.
One of those friends has been writing poetry her whole life, has become phenomenal at it, got into the Iowa Writers Workshop, has been published in the New Yorker on multiple occasions, and earns a respectable living in academia. The other abruptly quit his day job at the age of 33, declared himself a poet, and enrolled in some beginner's classes. I support his dreams, but I do not support the order in which he took those actions.
People often forget that chasing "dreams" is hard work, and it follows the same principles as chasing success by more conventional means. In fact, the less conventional of a career you chose, the more conventionally hard you'll have to work to make that career remunerative. Following your passion is a wonderful thing, but you need to do it sensibly, strategically, and skillfully.
That's a great misconception about the social net. It is considered a socialist idea, but really it has its place in capitalism too. Knowing that you do not risk being in the street with health cover for you, your wife, your kids and dependents is a great relief that stimulate people starting new businesses.
Obviously the downside is that other more (money-)conservative people will have to pay in taxes. However, that's a political scapegoat. The real reason why people complain they are being taxed to pay the lifestyle of others is mainly because middle class is slowly disappearing. They are getting poorer, an other people lifestyle is hastening that process, however not causing it.
I had a recruiter contact me for a developer position recently at a good, interesting company. I politely declined, saying I'd started my own small company. He said again that it was a rare opportunity, likely to disappear, and began going through all their upsides again (or, at least, the ones he figured would appeal) and finished with "and they have a foozball table!"
I don't want to belittle fulltime jobs, fun working environments, or large companies, but in my opinion the chance at working for yourself - even if you suck at it - is worth more than regular access to a foozball table.
Best of luck with your dream. I'm pullin' for you, brother.
I hope one day I'll be able to be at your position and say "I run my own business" :)
That you might feel happier working for yourself is a personality trait that you, and I, may have but not everyone does. You may find you don't have it either once you start your own place.
Not feeling very successful right now.
If being successful means getting what you want, what people seem to want is relatedness, competence and autonomy, whatever that translates to for each person.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory#Basic...
Edit: Affiliate free link: http://www.amazon.com/Underachievers-Manifesto-Accomplishing...
For me, I took satisfaction from knowing I made that decision, and felt like I actually had control of my destiny somewhat.
I'm 21 and my net worth is about 20 times more than most people my age (putting me in the top 0.05% of the world by income). But I definitely don't feel successful (no real relationships in my life), but maybe that's okay—plenty of time to figure things out in the future.
Why would you keep doing something that doesn't make you feel successful if you have no real obligations?
USA is a country where there is tremendous pressure to be successful, purely for the sake of being successful. This is mad for me, and I am strongly against this attitude, but it's factual.
There were interesting comments in a post, a short time ago, comparing the cultures in USA and New Zealand. The latter would fit very much in what you would define as "be satisfied".
It's mostly the typical division of A and B-type personalities.
My personal opinion is that to live in a very fulfilled way a bit of both is required. One needs a bit of "success" to overcome some inevitable obstacles, and a the sime time, "satisfied" to get a true feeling of himself and what's around him.
The excessively laid-down people I've met were afflicted with subtle and not immediately visible problems. As a matter of fact, one needs to carve his space in life, otherwise he's going to be very limited, if not crushed.
The type of problems which affect the opposite type of attitude are more "visible" - mostly, neurotic behavior.
We all know what kind of shit code you produce after working to long, it's not helping anyone if you do that every week.
Engineering should be striving towards excellence, not creating more shit and more work for everyone.
I think this is common to all EU countries, save for maybe the UK (don't know, but they seem to be a bit less socialist than continental western europe).
