Constant happy inspiration versus endlessly unhappy motivation | Why I would rather my son be a garbageman than a doctor
Posted: March 21st, 2024, 2:15 pm
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You will notice in many part of the rest of this post I use phrases like "seemingly high-achievers" and "conventionally high-esteemed". Those adverb qualifiers are key, so please take note of them. Namely, they accommodate the fact that I absolutely would not consider someone be a true "high-achiever", in an objective unqualified sense of the word, if they get great grades in school, get a incredibly high paying job that many people want, become filthy rich, have a great reputation in their society, live in a huge beautiful mansion, have the most comfortable bed in the world, have very proud parents who brag about them, have a beautiful trophy spouse or such, and are unhappy. They haven't achieved happiness, meaning the true happiness that is free-spirited inner peace, so I would see them as an extremely low achiever, really a no achiever. They have effectively achieved nothing of value at all in my eyes if they haven't achieved at least some noteworthy degree of spiritual freedom and inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness)--the kind of happiness that doesn't depend on those other things at all and can be most easily had without them.
Anyone who has achieved significant spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) and inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness) is a high achiever in my eyes. They have achieved the only thing that is a true achievement. The own the only thing that is truly worth anything: themselves, meaning in a sense their own freedom.
When talking about achievement, and by extension high or even higher achievement, always remember to consider what is being achieved. A sex addict may be great at achieving sex. A gambling addict may be great at a achieving gambling. An anxious depressed workaholic might be great at achieving a high amount of anxiety, depression, and anxiety-inducing work projects to do. A money addict might be great at achieving money. What are you actually achieving and does it make you happy, truly happy, in the sense of invincible graceful free-spirited inner peace?
Have you achieved a state of invincible inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness)? Have you achieved spiritual freedom (a,k,a, self-discipline)? These are the achievements I think of when I think of the unqualified word achievement or unqualified word 'high-achiever'. Spiritual freedom and happiness are essentially the only things I'd consider true unqualified objective achievements. Or, to put it shorter rougher words, freedom and happiness are the only achievements I consider true achievements.
I'd much rather my son and daughter grow up to be broke, happy, and spiritually free than be rich, famous, and unhappy or spiritually enslaved or feeling like a miserable prisoner in their own body.
And those things tend to often be negatively correlated, due to factors like compensation and overcompensation, meaning the same reason the smallest dogs bark the most and scared insecure guys are the ones who walk around with their shoulders puffed out the most and buy the biggest and loudest trucks or such. It's not just the case that appearances can be deceiving, but rather that they usually are. Generally, nobody wears a mask that looks exactly like their face. Things tend towards being the exact opposite of how they superficially appear. The predator does his best to appear like a harmless bush or trusted or weak friend, and the weakling pretends to be a strong dangerous monster. I've seen unarmed humans scare off bears, and butterfly wings scare away birds. Those who do not achieve true happiness and spiritual freedom desperately overcompensate by tending to be the ones who most chase the pseudo-achievements that are conventional high-achievement; they are desperate miserable addicts for money, power, fame, awards, fancy titles, attention, reputation, people-pleasing, and conventionally high-esteemed jobs, roles, and positions.
The below is actually an excerpt from the much longer answer I gave in a recent mentoring Q&A about choosing a career path:
All else the same, I'd probably feel safer if my son told me he was choosing to be a garbageman versus choosing to be a doctor or dentist or lawyer or other such high-paying or conventionally high-esteemed career.
Granted, the real reason certain seemingly desirable careers tend to come with such high depression and suicide rates is because they weren't desired by the job-haver but by the anxiety-inducing pressurers in the job-haver's life, whether that is literal overbearing pressuring parents or it's just an egotistical greedy imaginary voice in someone's own mind acting like an overbearing pressuring parent except harder to escape since the egotistical greedy insatiable anxiety-inducing pressuring voice is in their own head. It follows them around everywhere they go 24/7, always putting that critical pressuring on them.
If we open our hearts, we can almost hear the imaginary nasty-toned voice some of those seemingly high-achievers have in their mind that understandably drives them to at least fantasize about killing themselves just to shut it up: "You're only that kind of doctor?" "You're only the second best dentist in the state?" "You are not good enough!" "You should be different." "You should be doing different." "You could be doing better." "You could have done better" "You should do more." "You need to do more." "When are you going to do that?" "When are you going to achieve that?" "You need to hurry up." "You need to make a decision." "You need to get going now." "Where you are right now is not good enough!" "What you are doing is not good enough." "You simply are not good enough."
To anyone who hears those kinds of voices, whether those voices are coming from real human people and entering your ears, or they are coming from corridors in your mind and popping into the inner monologue of which you are the conscious listener, I advise you so strongly: Don't listen to them. Be the loving rebellious free spirit that you truly are by realizing, without even necessarily needing to think the words but just merely truly realizing that no matter what those wrong words from those foolish voices say, you are good enough. You already are good enough, and so you don't need to do anything to become good enough.
They fear if they told you the truth--that you are good enough--you would lack motivation to do anything and sit around and starve to death. They don't want that for you so they pave a road to hell with good intentions, thinking they are saving you when they are only pushing you towards damnation with their scared, cowardly, and allegedly good intentions. But, I tell you, there is a thing called happy free-spirited creativity. I tell you, you can be good enough and know you are good enough and still take action. You can eat and make art. You can make your whole life into a piece of art. I call that happy inspiration, versus unhappy motivation. You don't act because you are using your actions to desperately chase happiness from an unhappy state, with that happiness you chase always seeming to be just a little further in the future, like you are running on a treadmill with a carrot hanging from a fishing line a few feet in front of your face, just miserably hungry and miserably running forever, never actually catching the carrot. No, no, you can be happy while you act. You can have your carrot and eat it too. You can be free and happy, and still inspiration finds you and moves through you. You become like the artist rather than the slave, like the free playful child playing freely, rather than the prisoner. Life becomes like recess rather than an anxious test. You are free, without master and without strict assignment. You aren't trapped on someone else's path, like a train stuck to a track; No, you are happily free to happily choose and create your own path. You are so very free.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.
You will notice in many part of the rest of this post I use phrases like "seemingly high-achievers" and "conventionally high-esteemed". Those adverb qualifiers are key, so please take note of them. Namely, they accommodate the fact that I absolutely would not consider someone be a true "high-achiever", in an objective unqualified sense of the word, if they get great grades in school, get a incredibly high paying job that many people want, become filthy rich, have a great reputation in their society, live in a huge beautiful mansion, have the most comfortable bed in the world, have very proud parents who brag about them, have a beautiful trophy spouse or such, and are unhappy. They haven't achieved happiness, meaning the true happiness that is free-spirited inner peace, so I would see them as an extremely low achiever, really a no achiever. They have effectively achieved nothing of value at all in my eyes if they haven't achieved at least some noteworthy degree of spiritual freedom and inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness)--the kind of happiness that doesn't depend on those other things at all and can be most easily had without them.
Anyone who has achieved significant spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) and inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness) is a high achiever in my eyes. They have achieved the only thing that is a true achievement. The own the only thing that is truly worth anything: themselves, meaning in a sense their own freedom.
When talking about achievement, and by extension high or even higher achievement, always remember to consider what is being achieved. A sex addict may be great at achieving sex. A gambling addict may be great at a achieving gambling. An anxious depressed workaholic might be great at achieving a high amount of anxiety, depression, and anxiety-inducing work projects to do. A money addict might be great at achieving money. What are you actually achieving and does it make you happy, truly happy, in the sense of invincible graceful free-spirited inner peace?
Have you achieved a state of invincible inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness)? Have you achieved spiritual freedom (a,k,a, self-discipline)? These are the achievements I think of when I think of the unqualified word achievement or unqualified word 'high-achiever'. Spiritual freedom and happiness are essentially the only things I'd consider true unqualified objective achievements. Or, to put it shorter rougher words, freedom and happiness are the only achievements I consider true achievements.
I'd much rather my son and daughter grow up to be broke, happy, and spiritually free than be rich, famous, and unhappy or spiritually enslaved or feeling like a miserable prisoner in their own body.
And those things tend to often be negatively correlated, due to factors like compensation and overcompensation, meaning the same reason the smallest dogs bark the most and scared insecure guys are the ones who walk around with their shoulders puffed out the most and buy the biggest and loudest trucks or such. It's not just the case that appearances can be deceiving, but rather that they usually are. Generally, nobody wears a mask that looks exactly like their face. Things tend towards being the exact opposite of how they superficially appear. The predator does his best to appear like a harmless bush or trusted or weak friend, and the weakling pretends to be a strong dangerous monster. I've seen unarmed humans scare off bears, and butterfly wings scare away birds. Those who do not achieve true happiness and spiritual freedom desperately overcompensate by tending to be the ones who most chase the pseudo-achievements that are conventional high-achievement; they are desperate miserable addicts for money, power, fame, awards, fancy titles, attention, reputation, people-pleasing, and conventionally high-esteemed jobs, roles, and positions.
The below is actually an excerpt from the much longer answer I gave in a recent mentoring Q&A about choosing a career path:
All else the same, I'd probably feel safer if my son told me he was choosing to be a garbageman versus choosing to be a doctor or dentist or lawyer or other such high-paying or conventionally high-esteemed career.
Granted, the real reason certain seemingly desirable careers tend to come with such high depression and suicide rates is because they weren't desired by the job-haver but by the anxiety-inducing pressurers in the job-haver's life, whether that is literal overbearing pressuring parents or it's just an egotistical greedy imaginary voice in someone's own mind acting like an overbearing pressuring parent except harder to escape since the egotistical greedy insatiable anxiety-inducing pressuring voice is in their own head. It follows them around everywhere they go 24/7, always putting that critical pressuring on them.
If we open our hearts, we can almost hear the imaginary nasty-toned voice some of those seemingly high-achievers have in their mind that understandably drives them to at least fantasize about killing themselves just to shut it up: "You're only that kind of doctor?" "You're only the second best dentist in the state?" "You are not good enough!" "You should be different." "You should be doing different." "You could be doing better." "You could have done better" "You should do more." "You need to do more." "When are you going to do that?" "When are you going to achieve that?" "You need to hurry up." "You need to make a decision." "You need to get going now." "Where you are right now is not good enough!" "What you are doing is not good enough." "You simply are not good enough."
To anyone who hears those kinds of voices, whether those voices are coming from real human people and entering your ears, or they are coming from corridors in your mind and popping into the inner monologue of which you are the conscious listener, I advise you so strongly: Don't listen to them. Be the loving rebellious free spirit that you truly are by realizing, without even necessarily needing to think the words but just merely truly realizing that no matter what those wrong words from those foolish voices say, you are good enough. You already are good enough, and so you don't need to do anything to become good enough.
They fear if they told you the truth--that you are good enough--you would lack motivation to do anything and sit around and starve to death. They don't want that for you so they pave a road to hell with good intentions, thinking they are saving you when they are only pushing you towards damnation with their scared, cowardly, and allegedly good intentions. But, I tell you, there is a thing called happy free-spirited creativity. I tell you, you can be good enough and know you are good enough and still take action. You can eat and make art. You can make your whole life into a piece of art. I call that happy inspiration, versus unhappy motivation. You don't act because you are using your actions to desperately chase happiness from an unhappy state, with that happiness you chase always seeming to be just a little further in the future, like you are running on a treadmill with a carrot hanging from a fishing line a few feet in front of your face, just miserably hungry and miserably running forever, never actually catching the carrot. No, no, you can be happy while you act. You can have your carrot and eat it too. You can be free and happy, and still inspiration finds you and moves through you. You become like the artist rather than the slave, like the free playful child playing freely, rather than the prisoner. Life becomes like recess rather than an anxious test. You are free, without master and without strict assignment. You aren't trapped on someone else's path, like a train stuck to a track; No, you are happily free to happily choose and create your own path. You are so very free.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.
