There’s a fire inside you

One of the students in my classes recently asked me this question - “What do you think about a person who was working a 9 to 5, was married to somebody with a couple of kids, and probably goes on two to three holidays a year? Do you think a person like that could be happy?”

To this question, I answered “I’ll say congratulations to that person. And I would genuinely mean it.”

It’s an interesting question and I will talk about this today extensively.

A normal job leads to a normal lifestyle where things are very black and white.

Most of your problems are either family-related,

involve kids,

disputes over property,

bills,

and maybe money at times.

And even those problems don’t last a long time.

You spend with managed expectations, make compromises, and know that there are some things you can only dream about.

All this is fine. Nobody should ever look down on a life like this. In fact, most people who I ever see in such a normal setup seem perfectly fine and happy to me most of the time.

But some people are not just born that way.

Certain people have a fire inside them that can’t be extinguished by beans on toast or watching TV at night.

These people guarantee that their time on this planet will be eventful, their death will be eventful, and that they will have made a bigger ripple on the planet just because being “average” doesn’t sit well with them.

A man should have absolutely no interest in whether he's actually happy or not.

If I wake up and I'm unhappy, I will do the exact same things as if I am happy.

I will go to the gym the same, I will work the same.

How I feel has no impact on how I live my life.

I don't think happiness as an index is a healthy view for a person to have.

If you're waking up and going “Ah I’m not happy or I don’t feel a certain type of happiness today that I felt yesterday”, you’re looking at life wrong!

When you put “happiness” down the scale and actually ask questions like:

Am I successful?

Am I competent?

Am I achieving things?

Am I respected?

These indicators of your life are going to end up making you happier than eating cake on a late Saturday night in front of a TV screen or staying up all night talking to a girl you like.

Earning half a million dollars a year is definitely good, but a million dollars is better, isn’t it?

As soon as you stop pushing forward, as soon as you go stagnant, you're dying.

As soon as you stay in one place, you're slowly on the way down.

Going to an office and doing the SAME EXACT THING for the rest of your life doesn’t earn you anything but a paycheck that you’d end up spending on things you don’t need.

Setting for ‘average’ is okay when you know you aren’t competent enough or can’t put up a fight with life.

But staying average even when you have the chance of becoming something better is a failure, and you can’t just fail.

How would you sleep a night knowing that you could have done so much in life but settled for a 6LPA package when there are people who make that kind of money in a matter of a few hours only?