There seems to be a paradox between achievement and contentment.
On one hand, it’s important to move forward in life by figuring out what you want, setting goals and achieving them. But the motivating force behind that is you want something you don’t have so you are discontent with the current state of your life. That’s the only reason you do the hard and uncomfortable things necessary to achieve your goals.
You may find yourself achieving goals but by the time you get there, you’ll have already set the goalpost further down so you aren’t satisfied even upon achieving a goal.
So the paradox is that in order to have the motivation to do something difficult you need to be discontent with your current state of being, but if you are discontent with your current state of being, there is a high likelihood that you’ll be discontent with your next state of being.
This is a perplexing Catch-22.
Tony Robbins has some material that addresses this issue. He calls it The Science of Achievement vs The Art of Fulfillment.
The Science of Achievement means that success is a formula or a recipe. There are certain rules to success, that when followed diligently will lead to the desired results. This applies to various areas of life such as education, financial success, the physical body, etc.
The Art of Fulfillment acknowledges that when you reach your goals, you may not necessarily be fulfilled or satisfied. The art of fulfillment is tricky because there isn’t a set path to achieving fulfillment. Fulfillment comes from within and cannot be found in the outside world. In order to master the art of fulfillment, you need to find ways to be grateful for what you have in life.
Tony Robbins is certainly pointing out an interesting phenomenon that happens in the world. Given my experience studying mediation, psychology and eastern religions, I have a slightly different way of looking at this paradox.
I see this paradox as Ego Development vs Flow State.
Ego Development is the building of our mental model of the world. This is something we create in our minds and are constantly testing and adjusting. It is an extremely useful mechanism because it allows you to make calculations about events, actions and outcomes.
A well developed mental model of the world is sort of like a mental sandbox where you can test ideas before taking action on them. A silly example of this is if you’re standing on top of a cliff and think it’d be cool to be able to fly, you can run the scenario of you jumping off the cliff in an attempt to fly in your mind and it’s going to tell you that the probability of that working out isn’t very good. Our mental model is useful in that it can save us a lot of time and energy and keeps us from making the same mistakes over and over.
We are constantly updating our mental model as new information becomes available. When we look at an event, make a prediction and that prediction comes true, that acts as a feedback mechanism that our model is correct. On the flip side, if we make a prediction that is wrong, then we have to re-evaluate our model and adjust it to account for the reality of what happened.
In regard to The Science of Achievement, we set goals that are outside of our current realm of comfort and work diligently to achieve them. In doing so we expand our mental model and demonstrate to ourselves that we are increasing in competence and this increases our sense of self-worth and self-confidence. And it should. If you demonstrate consistently that you’re able to manifest the things you’d like to see in the world and overcome any obstacles that get in your way, clearly there is less in the world for you to be afraid of since you are so capable of overcoming adversity.
But ego development is not without risk. Living life exclusively through your mental model will only allow you to experience a fraction of what is happening. You see, our mental models are complex but only trained to deal with certain progress-oriented stimulus. Ego development is designed to enable us to better interact with the world of man, not necessarily the natural world.
Flow State
Strong ego development can lead to an inability to be present in the real world. It’s easy to get lost in the experimental laboratory of your mental model and never actually experience the moments happening in real life. In your mental model, you analyze the past to predict the future and consequently you spend all your time either in the past or future.
Our minds are great tools but can also be our jailors. No matter how much we learn about the world, we are only capable of processing a tiny fraction of what is actually going on. If you want to become aware of your mental prison, go outside and just start walking in any direction. Keep walking in that direction until that voice in your head comes in to inquire about what you are doing. It will at first try to convince you that this is a stupid exercise and you should turn around. If you keep going it will get progressively more abusive and eventually inflict actual pain on you. Keep walking. Eventually the pain will stop and you’ll be a bit baffled at what just happened. You were just walking in a direction, why did your mind throw a tantrum? You didn’t hurt anyone or do anything immoral or illegal. What you did is you walked through a wall of your mental prison, that voice that tried to stop you is your jailor. These are the walls of your comfort zone and any attempts to leave this zone result in discomfort.
“The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.” -Simone Well
I’m sure you’ve heard of the phenomenon called “Flow State”. Flow State is when you are completely enrapt in a moment, unaware of yourself, the past or the future. I believe this is why extreme sports are so appealing, because the inherent risk involved it forces you to be present to avoid seriously injuring yourself.
The good news is you don’t need to risk your life to experience flow state. It can be experienced anytime anywhere. At its core, it is just the ability to be present, not judging a moment, not desiring or fearing an outcome. Just being present and watching life unfold. This is a way different experience than ego development where you have an agenda on what you’d like to have happen in each moment and are using the unfolding events to update your mental model.
If you get trapped in ego development, it is like you’re working 24/7, because you are.
So is there a way to have our cake and eat it too?
I’m inclined to think so. Ego development allows us to excel in the world or man, while flow state allows us to appreciate the miracle of being alive and experiencing this incredible world.
Ego development comes from figuring out what you want, setting goals and achieving them.
Flow state is more nuanced but you can start by beginning to watch your mental chatter. Watch what your mind likes and what it doesn’t and question why that is. Starting a meditation practice will give you some separation between your mind an external world. As your practice evolves, you’ll find a growing separation between stimulus and response. This allows you to experience moments more fully without instantly judging them.
To finish with a gym analogy: Ego development is like strength training and flow state is like mobility training. You can do either in isolation but if you work on both, they complement each other very well.