The Hustler and the Yogi

To live a life of achievement or satisfaction?

On the one hand there’s the part of you that wants to improve; to go out and make a name for yourself. He’s the ambitious entrepreneur, the inspired artist, the driven athlete that wants to succeed. He wants to build a business, influence people, change the world. 

He wants to grow. And in order to grow he needs to identify the destination - where he’s growing towards, which creates a gap. This gap is what creates motivation. By seeing the discrepancy between where he’s at now and where he wants to be, an internal fire is ignited to help get him there. 

This is the part of you that wakes you up early with a sense of urgency to begin your day and keeps you up late to finish what you started. It’s what forgoes leisure in favor of hard work, sacrificing near term enjoyment for productivity in order to close that gap.

But the upper bound doesn’t stagnate. As you approach your goals, he’s not satisfied. He always wants more. Unsatiated, always wanting to push the boundaries he moves the goalposts to maintain that gap so you never lose your drive. 

This comes at a cost. With a perpetual difference between where you are and where you want to be there’s no room for contentment, no space to congratulate yourself. To say I did it, I’m satisfied with my present state of affairs. To reap the benefits of hard work, temporarily ceasing, if for only a moment, the tension created by the need to do more.  

And then there’s the yogi, meditating on the side of a mountain, free from all attachment to the material world. The venn diagram of what he wants and what he has is a circle and thus exists in a perpetual state of equanimity. 

He wakes up with a smile on his face and goes to sleep with those same cheek muscles activated. His mind is unshakeable, imperturbable, any challenge he encounters is handled with grace as he recognizes the impermanence of all thoughts, feelings, and emotions. 

He understands the deepest truths about the world and that we’re just little compilations of atoms on a spinning rock in the middle of an incomprehensibly vast, empty Universe. And he embodies what it means to live with this knowledge, knowing we’ll one day return our atoms to that rock and so until then, it appears to him childlike to create unnecessary suffering. 

This part of you finds beauty in the little things, extracting meaning from a grain of sand or a wispy cloud. He lives in the ever enduring present moment. 

But what impact does he leave on this world? With all his needs satisfied, this yogi has no reason to scale a business, grow a following, or do anything in the world of companies, investing, and social media. 

Caught between these polarities, what’s one to do? He who seeks truth, examines life, and feels a deep sense of purpose in achievement while simultaneously wanting to be at peace? 

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Part II

Thought of the Day

I had a pretty fun life experience a year ago. Learned a whole lot from it.