Carl Richards is a Certified Financial Planner™ and creator of the Sketch Guy column, appearing weekly in The New York Times since 2010. The following article is reproduced with permission from his weekly newsletter and his website can be found here.
Greetings, Carl here.
Getting ahead is overrated as a goal. In fact, it might even be just plain stupid.
The problem with getting ahead is that it’s a zero-sum game. There’s only one winner. And in this game, it’s possible that even the winners are losers. How many of us want to be remembered as the person who spent their lives striving to get ahead of everyone else?
Instead of fixating on getting ahead, what if we simply focused on having enough?
Turns out, you’re allowed to do that!
You don’t have to participate in a game that will constantly pit you against the competition (i.e., everyone else in the world). You can opt for simple satisfaction instead.
Just for a minute, imagine what it might feel like to be satisfied with simply having “Enough.” How might that change your priorities? Your daily schedule? It’s important you actually sit down and think about it because only you can define “Enough.”
What I’m hoping to accomplish here is just to encourage or allow or create space for you to explore this idea a bit. That’s all.
What might happen if you were to make this shift? Would you work less? Would you spend less? Would you sleep more? Would you quit your job and start something new? Would you give more to charity?
Maybe nothing new would happen. But what I can tell you is this: If you can’t find a way to be satisfied with enough, you may never be satisfied with anything. There will always be someone else ahead of you, even if the only person ahead of you is the future self you are constantly killing your current self to become.
Now tell me, does that sound like how you want to live?
-Carl
P.S. As always, if you want to use this week’s sketch, you can buy it here.
