There’s no such thing as an ideal life. Aiming for it will always lead to disappointment.
You can’t expect the world to stay still. Your context, and therefore your life, will keep changing.
You can’t expect your mind to stay still. It doesn’t know how to settle, it’ll always want more.
Hint: Unless you’re a kid working on the streets for food or something of the sort (which you’re not), you’re already living the dream.
Don’t go for a permanent status of happiness, that’s unattainable.
Instead, go for a life of no regrets, and be a good person.
In the end, that’s the only thing that will give you peace.
Sparked by Amy Segreti
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
The fact that live doesn’t stay still is just what makes life more interesting! Not knowing what are the challenges and adventures of tomorrow may be frightening but it’s certainly exiting. If life had no surprises, it’ll be so boring
You’re so right on point: living without regrets, the past is the past, and the future is ahead. So enjoy the moment with positive expectation of tomorrow! Not an easy task though with our mind never staying still, it likes going in the past or the future, rarely just be in the present. But just remembering to enjoy the moment, helps realizing that what we are looking for is actually already there…
Great sparking post!
What we are looking for is already here, amen. Professional success, materialism, is not that life is about. You already have all you need. Enjoy it, be thankful, and give back.
Thank you Nathalie, and thank you for the kind words.
It’s been said a million times, I know, but it’s true: the only constant in life is change.
If you’re happy with yourself, and comfortable saying that you aren’t happy sometimes, and are willing to go outside your comfort zone to pursue happiness, then you will be happy. Adaptability is the name of the game
I agree that there is no such thing as the ideal life; there’s only your life, and you make it what it is one day at a time.
Also, I think I’m hooked on these short OwlSpark posts now.
Exactly right Preston, and I like what you say about adaptability, we have to adapt our happiness when we succeed and when we fail as well. No failure should be big enough to make you lose sight of what’s important.
Glad you’re hooked! Would love to read more from you.
Thank you man.
Owlsparks is my new crack – short, concise, easy to digest, addictive.
You’re dead on here – life and everything around us will constantly be changing. In fact, CHANGE is the one constant in our lives. The whole change series, everything we talked about for a month, it all centers on the individual, and most importantly, how you deal with the inevitable change that happens to us all the time. Good stuff as always Carlos!
Like I said on Twitter, I’m not sure I should keep writing now! But oh well, lots of people enjoy crack, so it’s ok.
Absolutely Matt, how we embrace change affects directly on the way we perceive our happiness. Once we realize that change is just change, not good or bad, we can appreciate what can’t be changed: our attitude towards life.
Always nice to see you here. You’re always on the party list.
Think of it as happy, non-health damaging crack. Better? The easy-to-digest yet thought-provoking writing style is addictive and easy to digest – but you don’t need to tell me that, you’ve figured out the formula for success for yourself. Cheers Carlos!
When I first started reading this blog, I was like: “What is this? This is too weird. It is a pretentious way to write, blah blah.” But now I am really starting to like it. A great and concise way to generate ideas. By the density of your short phrases, you remind me of Elfriede Jelinek (but you are far from her craziness…which is good). Huge bonus points for being so short. I always want to click instead of “saving for later.” Keep this up! Looking forward to more posts.
Irina, I have nothing to say but “thank you”. Reading this lets me now I’m on the right track, and I’m kind of generating the effect I was going for. I’ll have to look up that Elfriede since I have to admit I’ve never heard of her!
Again, thanks, hopefully I’ll manage to keep you hooked.
Great post!
So many people are chasing a get rich quick lifestyle or 4 hour work weeks and a life on the beach. I think it is important to remind people that happiness doesn’t come from avoiding work, happiness is about working towards important things.
Being a good person, is about the contribution you can make to the world. We should all be working a 60 hour work week to that end.
John, first of all, thank you for your time. I like your idea to improve the world, that 60 hour work week, it’s nice. I don’t think happiness, true happiness, exists. I think it’s this picture that we have of it what makes us work for idealistic things. We need to stop pursuing the unattainable, and go for the memorable.
Carlos, this is absolutely beautiful, and I couldn’t agree more. Part of the reason I make sure to appreciate people, is because I don’t want to have any regrets. ‘Make every moment count,’ these are the words I try to live by. Another one that’s fitting: ‘the only way to live happily ever after is to do it one day at a time.’ Great post
I have this feeling that if we were to be coworkers, or real life friends, we would have a blast
I like what you say Sam, I really do. Thank you.
Yeah, definitely! That’s why you have to make it to the US someday! Until then, we’ll just have to make the most of being digital friends
While I agree that it is important to be realistic about striving for perfection (I’ve yet to meet the perfect person, not even any who were super close!) I also think that there is something very important to be said for people working towards making things better for themselves and those around them. Without a vision of a better tomorrow, what a sad place today could become. You don’t have to be living on the streets working for food to want more for yourself. You do, however, have to be realistic in what “more” is. Don’t strive for perfection, but don’t settle for mediocrity. We are all meant for so much more than we can even imagine, yet very few will work hard enough to attain it.
Let me ask you this Elisa: Do you think mediocre people are unhappy people? It’s ok to strive for perfection, if that’s what you want, because you always have to go for it if you’re alive. Again, no regrets. But does it stop? Will you ever be fulfilled? My prediction is that you won’t, and people tend to focus on more and more, losing sight of what’s important.
Do you really believe that ALL of us are meant for “so much more”? I don’t, there’s a natural balance in everything, including success and failure. Some will win, some will lose, that’s just how it goes But none of that has to matter if we all focus on being good to each other. I just don’t buy the idea of “working hard” as the reason behind success and failure. Some people don’t get a chance. A kid getting killed in the streets of Liberia at the age of 8, did he get a chance?
If you have the opportunity to “strive for perfection”, you’re already there. You already have enough. Don’t settle, but don’t get carried away with meaningless goals.}
Loved this comment from you Elisa, I’m all for the debate.
From the beginning I have said that it is important to be realistic about striving for perfection, and that I had never met anyone close to being the perfect person. I’m quite sure the perfect person does not in any way exist. And most certainly, there are circumstances that are dealt to us that inhibit our abilities to fulfill the dreams we might have (for example, my extreme lack of height giftedness will probably always preclude me from a position in the WNBA.) The 8 year old killed in the streets..well…that’s just a situation that hurts my heart it’s so wrong. He should have had a chance…so very much should have…
You are right, some of us win and some of us lose. Are you saying that it is merely fate’s hand steering the winners and losers in life, that we have no control over the destiny laid out for us? That successful people have somehow won some lottery and haven’t worked to get to where they are? If people were content to settle for the mediocrity in their lives we would not have symphonies, great works of literature, heck…even the electric lightbulb (if Edison had given up on way 27 of “how not to make a lightbulb” where might we be?)
For me, mediocrity would be to settle. Mediocrity does not strike me as a great goal to have in life…I hope to one day be average? I don’t think mediocre people are unhappy. As long as you are always working towards your goals you are far from mediocre. Wouldn’t finally fulfilling your goals mean that you have perfected them? Thus, back to the beginning, where no one can achieve perfection.
As for debating, I’m so not a good debater…but I’d love to hear your thoughts.
You have good points Elisa, very good points, but I realize now where lies the biggest difference between our opinions:
You give great examples of people who worked hard for reaching their goals. But I don’t relate professional success with success in life. What I do at “work” is a way of living, but it’s not my goal. How many people that got far professionally turned out to be bad people? Think about the 1500’s, do you think that people back then thought about work the way we do? But my goals would have been the same at that time.
Like Akhila says below, ambition is a good thing, no doubt about it. But let’s not define our impact on human life by what we do on our living rooms or in our offices. Because, in the end, discovering the light bulb is not what will give you peace of mind, if you forgot the important things in life.
Carlos, I will definitely agree that I think we were coming at the discussion from two different points. I also agree, for me my impact on life and people is based more on the differences I was able to make by living a good life and trying to be a good person. To attribute all that you are as a human being to the work that you do would make for a very sad existence.
In those terms, though, how would life be if people only put a mediocre effort into being good and nice people? If everyone was only “average” at trying to be happy. Wouldn’t it be better to try to live every day better than the last in some way and strive (there’s that word again) to make a difference. Cause that isn’t always something that happens. Perhaps if people made more of an effort at that then we wouldn’t have situations where children are paying the price for our ignorant attempts.
This is great, and so much said in such a short post
I think it’s true; we’re all already living the dream. Billions of people are living on less than $2 a day, and they want what we have. It’s okay to be unsatisfied and yearn for more, and it’s always a good thing to have ambition. But it’s not okay to stop appreciating the immense gift we’ve been given. Just the fact that we’re blogging and have free time to go online means we’re incredibly lucky. We have to be happy where we are. Happiness won’t come if you try to chase it, but it’s there for you to cultivate and keep.
Akhila, your last sentence is beautiful. Let’s cultivate happiness, since it’s already there. Let’s stop chasing it and start making other people happy as well. We have the responsibility to appreciate it.
@Elisa
Ah, I love debating because there’s always some middle point out there, you just have to dig to find it! I’m with you on this one, that’s why I always say “no regrets”. We have to give our best, we have to enjoy the possibilities that were given to us, we have to fight ignorance. But let’s not define our impact on the world by our “breakthroughs”. Maybe that’s just the impact we had in ourselves (how many people must look back at their lifes with disappointment…
Thanks for great discussion!