Not long ago, I heard someone say that they aligned much of what gave their life meaning, and much of their fulfillment, with how their achievements were going. The idea was that if they placed their happiness on what they were capable of doing, they could perform better, stay motivated, and eventually achieve more.
I’ve always had some of those mindsets myself, and I’ve never completely discarded them.
I believe people should try difficult things because those are often the things that are eventually worth doing. You should try multiple things and approach problems almost scientifically. If you try enough, experiment enough, and keep going for long enough, you’ll probably get results that most people never see.
I also think you should be capable of radically changing what you believe.
You might have certain ideas or ways of thinking that you’ve carried with you for years, only to realize that you’re not getting the results you want because some of them are wrong. Sometimes you have to discard a part of yourself. Some parts of you eventually have to die
And, in a more practical sense, you have to risk something. You can’t always operate from a position where everything is calculated and the upside is protected. Overthinking, in many cases, is almost like fear trying to sound logical. Not always, but often enough.
I’ve volunteered in different parts of Peru, and I’ve also watched many interviews with people from low-income backgrounds who are still trying to find themselves and figure out what they want to become. Something I’ve noticed is how much they value education as a way of saying, “I want to be someone in life.”
And that desire is good.
Of course you should pursue education. Of course you should want to progress in life. But there is something I increasingly believe you should never do: place your happiness on your achievements.
I know there is one possible advantage to doing it. You might perform better.
In a very practical sense, you can tell yourself, “I’ll be happy when I finish these tasks.” And yes, maybe that gives you an incentive. Just like telling yourself that you’ll get your favorite ice cream after finishing your work might make you finish faster.
But it isn’t worth it.
It absolutely isn’t worth it.
You can’t constantly live against the clock, measuring your life by how many things you’ve mastered or how much you’ve accomplished.
I’ve always found wealth particularly interesting in this regard. Wealth doesn’t solve happiness. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg can wake up tomorrow and eat a hamburger, and that hamburger isn’t fundamentally different from one I could go and eat at McDonald’s. It doesn’t taste different because they’re billionaires. If they lose someone they love, they’ll suffer just as another person would.
Eventually, material things don’t satisfy you for very long either.
The smartphone you always wanted, the computer you wanted, the places you always dreamed of visiting. They don’t necessarily become boring, but they become normal.
That’s why I would never place my happiness or sense of self-realization on those things.
I’ve actually noticed myself becoming increasingly desensitized to numbers recently. A lot of good things have happened to me after a lot of work. But I’ve also noticed that even as the numbers grew, the result was ultimately similar to before.
You don’t need to kill yourself trying to create more and more things.
You should never place your happiness or self-realization on your achievements or on anything you do. You’re already a complete person today.
If your life story ended today, hopefully it doesn’t, but if it did: you made it.
You did it.
Life is incredibly variable, and there isn’t room for everyone to be first. Not everyone can be the best at something. You might not even accomplish everything you want to accomplish.
Luck and bad luck aren’t distributed equally. And sometimes things work. Sometimes they simply don’t.
Gratitude is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest sources of happiness available to us right now, and I think it will remain that way regardless of what happens next. Even post-AI, after all the changes that are going to happen over the next few years, that will still be true.
And I think there’s something beautiful about that.
The reason I’m writing this is that this has been one of the most unexpected years of my life. I’ve written and talked a lot about 2023 and 2024, but 2025 and 2026 have been incredibly good.
It has been an incredibly consequential and positive year. Almost everything I doubted I would ever achieve, or hoped I might at least reach 90% of, I’ve surpassed by a long distance.
And after all of that, this is what I keep coming back to:
Don’t place your happiness on the achievement.
It’s not worth it.
Not personally, and really, not at any level.