published! https://open.substack.com/pub/ramimaalouf/p/how-satisfaction-quietly-kills-your
I’ve been noticing something in myself lately. There’s this internal pull to coach and support people I see potential in. I find myself naturally stepping into the role of a cheerleader, trying to help them see what they’re capable of. But recently I turned that same lens on myself and didn’t like what I found
I have this quiet voice in me that doesn’t want to know who I could become if I actually went all in and became the person i wanna be. Or maybe it doesn’t care enough to know. Because I’m somewhat satisfied with how my life is right now and who I am. And that’s the problem. Satisfaction quietly kills ambition. There’s this Goldilocks spot where you’re dissatisfied enough to care but not desperate enough to actually change and grow. So you ride that wave of comfort.
side note: satisfaction is not the same as gratitude and not being satisfied is not the same as not being grateful
Changing is simple actually
Why is it so hard to push through that resistance and change? maybe because it takes so much energy to change and we know it. We also know energy is a scarce resource and we treat it like a scarce resource (will tie in towards the end), so we prefer not to use that energy to change and instead remain stagnant. So it’s not that change is hard and complicated, it’s actually very simple; it just requires energy and deep intention to change. Two things that are very hard to get a grasp of these days
For starters, most people are sleep-deprived, don’t eat well, and are constantly bombarded by noise (physically, digitally, and emotionally/mentally). That combination makes it nearly impossible to actually think for yourself. But if we dive even deeper, you’ll realize the problem is more than just that.
The hard part
Most people are stuck in a narrow view of what’s possible and it’s not their fault. It’s inherited. It’s mainly because of how our parents believed we should see the world: through a handful of pathways, when in reality, there are so many paths you can take in life. The cool thing is that once you go towards a certain unique path, you will find a lot more cooler paths that you can take from there. That’s the serendipitous thing about taking a unique path in life. Once you’re in the middle of it, your life won’t ever look the same. The potential paths you see from there are VERY different from the “typical” paths. This is where you need to narrow down the scope of people you can take advice from.
The advice you get from people who took the “typical” route simply can’t be applied to the route you’re currently in. If you took that advice you wouldn’t even have reached this point of your life
The people who took the conventional path can’t really guide you once you’ve left it. I learned this the hard way. Someone I trust told me to never let an opportunity pass - take whatever comes your way. So when a TA role landed in my lap without me even applying, I said yes. A month later, Boardy.ai reached out for a part-time position leading to full-time after graduation, exactly the kind of thing I’d been building toward. But I couldn’t take it. I was already working part-time, and as a Canadian international student you can’t exceed 25 hours a week.
The TA role closed the door. I mean I don’t know what’s best for me. Maybe it’s for the best I didn’t take that role idk. but my point still remains. You should take advice from people who have never gone through your path with a grain of salt. And the only way to do that consistently is to have a strong enough vision that you can tell the difference between an opportunity worth taking and one that just feels safe. Without that, you’ll give up before things start paying off - or worse, take the wrong doors just because they were open
Trading certainty for freedom
Back to our point regarding life paths: the older you get, the less potential paths you can pursue and experiment with. Unfortunately, the world right now is not set up like that. It is not set up in a way that helps people truly believe what they’re capable of and pursue it. We’re stuck in fear and doubt because we believe the consequences of things not working out are so incredibly high. As humans, we love certainty, and that is one of our biggest weaknesses. Most people trade Certainty for freedom. But if we really think about something deep enough, you’ll come to notice that most of these fears are very irrational and the consequences of failing are much lower than you think. Not only that but even if you fail you’ve made huge progress towards something you care about. As I mentioned previously, pursuing a certain path will open up opportunities that you would’ve never considered. Regardless of the outcome. Whether you fail or succeed. That is something that is very underlooked when people plan their lives.
We cling on to things that we’ve seen work or have been told by others that it works. but that’s a dangerous thing to do, especially as the world continues to accelerate and change every single day. This, in turn, means that the paths that are open for us is changing faster and more drastically than ever.
that means the ones who win the most are the ones who are able to adapt, and be comfortable and confident enough, and knowledgeable enough, to pave their own path.
Visualizing your roadmap through role models
all the knowledge that I just shared is easy to grasp. But that last point about being confident enough to pave your own path, that is the hard part. having a clear roadmap is not easy because a lot of things change all the time, and you kind of have to have a very clear vision to be able to have a clear path, metaphorically and literally. so, how do you attain that?
the best answer I can provide at this point is looking at your role models and people who you inspire to live like or become like for whatever reason. See how they managed to reach this point in their life and what they preach for others to do. If your role model is someone who’s very well-educated and gives genuinely useful advice, then the path to become like them shouldn’t be that complicated. It just seems complicated in our heads, but once we write it down somewhere and visualize it, we’ll be able to have a better grasp of it and the exact steps you have to take to reach it. Best e.g. i’ve seen is Naval Ravikant. He has several videos of him sharing exactly what young people should do to be successful: https://youtu.be/7f7fgMGOXVs, https://youtu.be/diEB1yyQ8PU
one important thing to keep in mind here is to let go of any perceived conception of how right this path is, how easy, how hard this path is. You’ll notice, when listening to these people giving advice on how to live a life, your brain automatically becomes defensive because it just loves where it’s currently at. Your brain doesn’t want to change. It’s surviving perfectly fine. you have to remember that your natural instinct is to survive and not thrive.
Two major roadblocks in that journey
let’s say you do actually move past that hurdle and carve out a more intentional path in life, there are two things that might hold you back.
The first is scarcity mindset. When you’re operating from scarcity, every decision feels like potential loss. You spend your energy protecting what you already have instead of building more of it. The brutal irony is that the energy you burn on protection is the same energy you could use to grow. This is the thing that keeps poor people poor and pushes middle-class people towards going broke. it is the same idea that we discussed at the beginning of this article.
Key terms related to Scarcity mindset: Loss Aversion & Sunk Cost Fallacy
The second is lack of motivation. The default solution I’ve gravitated towards was creating urgency like deadlines, stakes, and external pressure. These work short term, but they run out the second the pressure lifts. I’ve come to notice that if I continue to put myself and make myself feel under pressure and make that my default state, then the pressure becomes normal. So in other words, I get accustomed to that feeling and it no longer pushes me. Either that or I just get burnt out from always pushing myself and forcing myself to do something.
There has to be something in the work itself that pulls you towards it. Something you’d show up for even if nobody was watching, even if there wasn’t any deadline.
If you’re only moving when something external forces you to, you’ll stop every time that thing disappears (and we are experts in conditioning ourselves. Shoutout pavlovs dogs)
So what else can be done here?
I’m still exploring that side of things. Here’s a video i dropped recently about it:
https://youtube.com/shorts/RnIdvJCgqjw
I’m also building an ai workflow that helps with that process. I’ll make a YouTube video about it once it’s complete. Also my previous 2 articles talk about this problem as well so i urge you to check em out