When “more” becomes a trap!

One must have ambition, main sparkle of motivation. Be eager to aim higher and bigger. Very often we’re told the reason of stagnation and conformism is that we’re too conservative with our ambitions. That to excel we must push ourselves far above our known limits to keep raising them.

As somebody said once, one of the biggest achievements of mankind is to find out that they actually can do what they thought would be impossible or unattainable.

It’s a known fact that once you stop learning you stop living. You’re just repeating on and on your days as Robin Sharma said “Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life” and yes you can use your knowledge to teach but then you’re also learning. We learn what we teach and we learn from those we teach.

The distortion of the process is linked to self-image and the wrong idea that we’re what we have and what we get. The idea that we’re our possessions and accumulations. Our houses, our cars, our clothes and our fancy lifestyles. Once you fall inside this big wheel it’s difficult to get out. You base your happiness on “more” and “to get”. This car isn’t good anymore, this role I have doesn’t fit my ambitions, this neighborhood we live doesn’t match our lifestyle, and the list goes on year on year.

Once you have what you aimed for, soon you’ll feel the need of having something else or something bigger. This need for “more” is a loop. You fool yourself with the idea that getting what you want is the key to live a joyful life but it will never be enough.

There’s this problem that nowadays we tend to misunderstand self-worth and net-worth.

The perception that possessions gives us status and recognition leading many to “buy things they don’t want, with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t like.”

Perceptions are problems. And many of our problems come from having too much.

What happens when we can’t have those things or when we lose them after we’ve put so much effort to get them?

We’ve never seen so much depression, frustration, unhappiness, emptiness. We’re mad at the world shouting that life is unfair and we deserve better. Anger that we’re so unlucky despite working so hard and jealousy for those who seems that everything is easy and get all what they want?

Nothing is either good or bad, thinking it makes it so. Remember the old quote “you must not fool yourself, and you’re the easiest person to fool”.

Money or material things are by-products, it should be the path that matters not the “getting” of something.

We’re focus on the wrong side of the equation. We should forget what we aim for or put it aside for a bit. Having more, achieving a goal or objective shouldn’t be the ultimate motivation. The path and the journey are the important part. Follow the process not the prize. Base your days on what you experience and not on what you get. With that mindset you’ll find new objectives and ambitions along the way, but always having in mind the pleasure of the journey and not the fact that you have “more” in your life. When we go too fast somewhere we don’t just miss the landscape around us, we lose the reason why are we after that goal in first place.

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