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Daily Meditation 872–7/20/2024
Here’s the rub, Jack — numbers won’t bring you any happiness in life. Well, maybe some, but it will prove fleeting and empty, evaporating like a swift rain on a desert highway.
Whether it’s YouTube follows, your weight, how many cars you sell in a year, how many men you sleep with on a vacation, or the amount of money you “need” to retire, numbers are the ultimate ghost to chase.
Here’s the secret — numbers cannot be the goal.
Meaningful work — the journey — is the goal. Any success in numbers must be “icing on the cake.”
That’s it.
The issue with numbers as the goal is that, well, there’s an infinite quantity of them and just one more integer will always be “better” than the one you’ve chose as your goal.
If you’re trying to gain muscle — 160 pounds up to 180 — then you hit the goal, now it morphs to 200 pounds. Then at 200, you’re frustrated you can’t hit 205.
If you’re trying to day trade $1000 up to $10,000 (a herculean feat for many), when you cross that 10 and then decide on 100, you’ll be infuriated and make countless errors as you take a couple losses.
If you’re grinding YouTube follows for the sake of follows, your content ends up being flavorless drivel that is clearly intended for…well…follows!
The work itself must be the goal in order to create actual, lasting and joyful success with numbers.
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These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”