Chasing Success

Human brain has evolved to being lazy [1]. It's the natural state of things. It is also more likely than not you're average - it's the very definition of it. In our society, neither of this is adequate.

Personally, there's a huge correlation between the rise of social media and the feeling of inadequacy. Are you adequate in life? Are you married? Do you have a wife? Do you own a home? Do you have kids? Are you a good parent to your kids? Do you have friends? Are you a good friend? How many life skills do you know? How many do you excel at? Can you cook? Do you read? How many books do you read a year/week? Do you travel? How many countries have you travelled to? Are you a manager yet? Do you love programming? Do you contribute to open-source? Are you keeping yourself up to date with technology?

We have become this society where it's not enough that we do something because we like it/love it. We want to be the best at it or, more accurately, be better than the people in your social circle. This has become even more acute with the free time we have due to the pandemic. We're don't appreciate ourselves enought for what we've learnt or achieved in general and especially so during this trying times.

We tend to correlate success with happiness. Ironically, we might find success if we are happy, and we might be happier if we accept that an average existence is a mighty good existence.


[1] Boris Cheval, Eda Tipura, Nicolas Burra, Jaromil Frossard, Julien Chanal, Dan Orsholits, RĂ©mi Radel, Matthieu P. Boisgontier. Avoiding sedentary behaviors requires more cortical resources than avoiding physical activity: An EEG study. Neuropsychologia, 2018; 119: 68 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.07.029


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