05/01/23

Quarter Life Crisis

notes on ambition, ego, and process vs. outcome 

I am 25 years old. I am fortunate to have all my “Things That Would Solve Everything”. I have the most supportive set of friends, a beautiful apartment, financial stability, mental health stability. I am in a job where I get to learn as much as I want in a field I am passionate about. I have the best mentors and advisors. My home base is in a city that is lively with a strong research community and I am surrounded by art at all times, both high end and experimental. (Research and art are both things that are super important to me). I am usually able to travel wherever I want whenever I want. I feel content and fulfilled. 

Yet, I often can’t seem to relish in it and keep wondering, “what’s next” or “am I living up to my fullest potential”. 

I’m a pretty ambitious person, but I am also devoted to making sure that my intentions are aligned with what I really want and need, and that I am present and in alignment. I wrote about all of this in How To Know What To Do and how I check-in with myself in It’s All For The Plot. 

What I want to talk about today is the idea of the process. Because I think that is what helps me answer my existential questions. 

One of my favourite verses from the Bhagavad Gita is  

Chapter 2, Verse 47—

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥ २-४७

In Roman scripts—

Karmanye vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana,
Ma Karmaphalaheturbhurma Te Sangostvakarmani

The meaning of the verse is—
You have the right to work only but never to its fruits.
Let not the fruits of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.

But how do we make sure that we are not chasing the fruits or the outcome? Aren’t we allowed to dream and want a certain future? Most people have a vision for the future in their minds – whether that’s fancy cars and mansions, or to travel to exotic places, or running a billion dollar fund, or exiting a startup, etc etc. You get the point. 

The fruits, or the outcomes, I believe are driven by external validation, and the yearn for external validation often comes from comparison and competition. It comes from entitlement, from hubris. Insecurity is rooted in entitlement. I believe that most times, people’s real core selves don’t really want or care about shiny cars or houses.

I find that I am the most anxious and uneasy when I am not honest with myself, when I am yearning for a certain (external) metric of success. I constantly see this around me as well. A friend once said to me, “I can’t believe I didn’t get Forbes 30 under 30 this year, I literally have X number of patents and have raised Y million dollars.” They were insecure that they weren’t good enough. They wanted this external metric of success. They felt they were entitled to this award. They wanted to control the narrative about themselves. They wanted people to know how cool they were. 

Entitlement comes from wanting to control the narrative, wanting people to think a certain way about you. Do you ever catch yourself wondering, “what does this person think of me” or acting in a particular way to make sure you maintain a certain persona in front of certain people. 

Yearning to constantly control the narrative is rooted in ego. Our ego is obsessed with what others think of us. It’s obsessed with external validation and therefore, with accomplishment. 

The best way I have found to focus on the process over the outcome is to work backwards to ego. 

external validation → accomplishment → entitlement → control → ego

I feel the most uneasy when I feel that I am straying away from my intentions or when I start to feel entitled to an accomplishment or the outcome. This friend of mine I mentioned earlier was consistently entitled to certain merits. They were also the most insecure and miserable person I’d ever met, despite the happy-go-lucky shell they appeared to show off to the world. 

Questions I try to ask myself include – Am I chasing external validation? Why do I want this outcome? How will this accomplishment make me feel? Am I acting entitled to this outcome or accomplishment? Am I trying to control the narrative here? Do I think I’m the smartest person in the room? Are my feelings and actions driven by ego? 

That usually helps ground me back to my intentions and the work. 

When I love the work, and I love my life and what I’ve built, it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. And usually, all the amazing “accomplishment” things end up coming as a positive by-product in perfect alignment with my intentions. 

Presence, Noticing, and Execution are obviously still important, but I guess this is my version of “manifestation” and as close to woo-woo stuff I’ll ever get. 

Entitlement, insecurity, external validation, outcome-driven work are all rooted in ego, in one way form or another. 

I learned this the hard way. I got all the outcomes I wanted, but I felt nothing when I got there because I was just looking forward to the reward and didn’t care about the toll my body was taking to get there or the work I was doing to get there. 

Here’s my take, and warning that this might be the (optimistic) nihilist in me, but I always go back to the big picture. Unless George Church figures out the longevity stuff and we get a special ticket to Davos in the next few decades, we – I – have around 60ish years left to live on this floating rock with no real rules and some semblance of free will. 

We owe it to ourselves and to the human experience we are so privileged to have, to do whatever makes us happy. We owe it to ourselves to not live behind excuses, and to introspect our intentions. To not chase after secondary indicators like money, status, or fame. To be curious about the universe around us. To give ourselves what we truly want. And if the money, status, or fame comes along with the work we do, then that's a great positive by-product. But chasing secondary motives is a recipe for unhappiness. 

I try to make sure that my decisions are not ego-driven – that I am not chasing after something out of comparison to my peers, or by external metrics of success. That I am not chasing the clout that comes with accomplishment or status signaling. Actually, I really try to make sure that I am never chasing the accomplishment or status itself – that my identity is who I am, and what I like, rather than a list of awards. I want to do good work for the sake of the work, for the sake of the process, because I like the work and the process, and not ever for the outcome. 

Does this really matter in the grand scheme of things? Will it really change how I feel about myself on the inside? Isn’t it more fruitful to work on how I feel on the inside, rather than how I look on the outside? What others think of me is none of my business. 

Shonda Rhimes says “My primary loyalty is to my story, not to the people consuming it”.

Focusing on the process for me also means that I don’t really care about feedback. I want my focus to be where it is supposed to be. 

Being human, I sometimes still struggle with this, but generally, competition or comparison or feedback are a non issue for me, especially when it comes to creative stuff. I do not want to be defined by other people’s opinions and I do not want their opinions to influence what I do. I actually noticed myself becoming obsessed with the analytics of this writing practice. Why were some essays getting 2000 views and others only 20? When I paid attention to that, I allowed that external influence to drive what I wrote about, rather than my curiosity. That external influence is outcome driven. If I am focused on the process, and the work, none of those metrics matter. This thing about not letting external factors influence my decisions is also the reason why I have severely limited my social media usage. I do not want perception to be the driver of my decisions ever.

I guess, my answers to those questions of “what’s next” or “am I living up to my fullest potential” literally do not matter when I recenter myself and focus on the process and on the present. The outcome does not matter. And when these questions evaporate – it’s all gravy, baby! I am exactly where I’m supposed to be, right here, right now, in this moment.

This piece is 31/50 from my 50 days of writing series. Subscribe to hear about new posts.