I used to blame and complain. Every one of my failures was due to something different. My name, my lack of capital, my poor confidence, where I lived, my nationality, my parents, my car, even my big ears.<p>Then one of my brothers died.<p>As painful as it is to write this, his death and only his death was the only thing that would open my eyes.<p>Life is way short to even complain. To pay attention to petty details. To yell at the waiter because the soup is cold, or my steak is not cooked. To give up when my code won't compile, even though I may not have the slightest clue why.<p>Its only been three years. My adventures as a re-born man have only just begun. The future, though a bit fuzzy, looks promising. I'm not sure if any of my ideas will take off, but I'm sure I'll enjoy each hustling for each and every one of them.<p>I've already made a good bunch of friends through this community. People so incredible that it blows my mind. People I actually look up to.<p>And even though browsing HN reminds me how limited my talents may be, it also pushes me to realize that limits are just rules. And rules are meant to be challenged.<p>I'm still not an optimist. Because we are all still going to die and be forgotten. What I am is a bit more practical. I call it an active life enjoyer (made up word).<p>My main goal is not to be rich (though it would be nice to have a new car, and live in a better place), nor to be famous (but having friends is cool). I don't even want to become the next big tech superstar. I just want my adventure to go as long as possible. And to enjoy every second of it. So far, so good.<p>To be totally honest, I founded my startup due to such attitude. What's the worse that could happen? I'm already not rich, not famous. Money comes and goes. But life. Life just goes. I'd rather live it in a way that when the time comes for me to depart, I can take my last breath and say: "Would do it again."
<i>I need to clarify: I feel 100% happy now.</i><p>I've got to say, I still don't understand the obsession these days with "happiness". Who sits around reflecting on (and measuring) their happiness, as if it's some numerical, achievable end-goal? Not only that, the most important thing in life is not what you can do, but who you daily choose to be - your character and integrity. Money and things will fade, but character never dies.<p>Happiness is nice if it comes as a byproduct of life, but if happiness is really the pinnacle of that which we are striving for -- if it's really our greatest purpose in life -- we have a foundation softer than sand, constantly shifting with every direction the wind blows. Martin Luther King hints at his purpose in his "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" speech, noting that he's willing to sacrifice a long life for his purpose:<p><i>Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!</i><p>It also surprises me that as someone who was a "devoted Christian for 25 years" who would at least have some Biblical knowledge, Ryan doesn't at least acknowledge the inherent spiritual incompleteness of placing his hope in worldly and material things - number six on his list being the exception. (Ecclesiastes, Ryan? Or Job 1:21? Or Phil 4:12?)
The way I feel happy with my lot (despite wanting to achieve goals too) is to read and listen to history books. A large chunk of humankind has had to put up with heartbreaking misery and torture and learning about it makes me incredibly grateful to be living here and now, even if I'm having a bad week. Building up some empathy for my fellow man isn't a bad side effect either(!)<p>I'm currently a third of the way into "Gulag: A History" by Anne Applebaum. Good book but very hard to bear. Millions, including innocent Soviet citizens, were tortured, massacred, or worked to death over a whole 30 years. It puts waking up with a headache and having to drive to the office into perspective I find.. :-)
I assume for HN readers the basic needs (food,home,friends) are covered. After that, happyness is mostly a decision.<p>Are your goals life-changing? If you sell your current startup successfully, what would you do afterwards? Start the next one? Basically the same daily routine? Congratulations you are already happy. Maybe you didn't know that.
I must say I feel a bit bad for the writer, especially after the update. He reads, to me, as feeling a lot of pressure to self-identify as happy. As if a truly brilliant entrepreneur, a real success, couldn't struggle with, for example, anxiety.<p>He writes a post about experiencing anxiety despite his obvious success so far, about "constantly fighting" his temptation to feel bad about where he is, about his drive to dissociate from his current live in favor of an imagined "perfect" future life that's constantly changing. He's sharing a set of feelings I think a lot of people, especially ambitious people, can relate to.<p>But then he feels the need to say he's "100% happy." What does that even mean? Why does he (probably correctly) think that his social context demands that he be unnaturally happy, and that sharing inner struggles will be problematic for him as a public figure? I wish he was OK admitting that sometimes he's not happy. That inexplicably (and yet predictably), meeting one's goals often doesn't actually help you feel any better.
I think goals are a way to drive yourself to do something productive/stimulating so that you don't get bored. However, the accomplishment of goals and fulfilling your every desire, albeit important, is not what makes a person happy.<p>I think happiness comes from something much more abstract. It is a visceral reaction to your life and everything in it. I truly believe that in the end, the thing that makes you happy in life is when you live uncompromisingly, upholding the beliefs/principles/truths/etc. that resonate deep within your heart; whatever they may be.
I've come to realize I'd be more happy whenever I have more freedom. Freedom is quite abstract, but for me it envelopes economic freedom and freedom to make my own decisions in work. I enjoy my work as a software developer, but I hate the processes around it in a lot of company settings. I feel a company like Valve gives it's employees a lot of freedom and I wish more companies would treat their employees the same way.<p>For the aforementioned reasons I'll be starting a company with a friend in June / July of this year. This friend of mine will work on acquiring the leads (he's proven in the last few years he can get work for me) while my main focus will be on developing the solutions for the clients and guiding our clients through the realization process. With this company we will aim for the following goals:
- earn much more money, I expect I can make around 2000 to 3000 EUR more a month in this setting, though I have to spend some of this money on benefit my employer would normally pay for (holidays, retirement, etc...).
- use my own work processes (I'm not very fond of SCRUM for example - at least not in the way it's executed at my current employer).
- take a leadership / guiding role in some projects, especially since we expect we'll be able to outsource some work within a year or so. We've already worked with an Android developer from eastern Europe recently and this worked out well for us. We can imagine making use of more eastern European mobile developers if we don't have the time ourselves for the projects.
- be more flexible with my working hours. My currently employer wants me in the office from 09:00 - 17:00, while I prefer to work from say 09:00 - 13:00, followed by some relaxation / sports and work again between 18:00 and 00:00.<p>The money will help me gain more economic freedom once I've payed off my mortgage and student loan dept. I don't necessarily need to live in a giant house, but I would like to have a second home in a southern-European country from where I can work in the winter seasons - this is a long term goal I'll strive for.<p>I believe that by constantly visualizing my goals I will get closer to achieving them. I promised myself I will realize the above goals before I reach the age of 40 (currently I'm 30 years old).
Man, I have this same problem. It's a real headache, but every now and then I have a feeling of clarity, like somehow everything is actually pretty OK as it is.<p>I don't make lists though - usually it's something I'm told by somebody else, like one of my sisters or my mother. Somebody who knows me and my life well. That usually does the trick.<p>But I can't independently convince myself of my own personal happiness at the drop of a hat when that demon of looking forward to the brighter future rears it's ugly head - I hope I can figure it out like you have!
Reminds me of this true story of 2 women:<p>Esther1 was the born to a very poor family. Her parents were killed in an accident when she was 8 so she had to drop out of school and raise her 3 younger brothers. She worked hard and never had anything material for her entire life. She was an old lady when I was a child. Some of the things I clearly remember her saying:<p><pre><code> "I love every one of you."
"I can't wait to see you again."
"We had a wonderful time!"
"Don't worry. It'll be fine."
"If you look for trouble, you'll probably find it. So don't look so much."
"I thank God every night of my life."
</code></pre>
Esther2 came from almost identical circumstances. She was even born and died the same week as Esther1. Some of the things I remember her saying:<p><pre><code> "Joe is so lucky. I could never get that lucky."
"You can't beat city hall, so why bother."
"Things would be different if we lived in a different neighborhood."
"They all inherited a lot but we inherited nothing."
"Life's not fair, sonny."
"If only I had more money."
</code></pre>
Esther1 was my grandmother. Esther2 was her neighbor. Whenever I have OP's temptation to worry about my own happiness, I just look at the 4 letters on the wall above my desk, "WWGT" (What would Grandma think?) That "fixes" me every time.
You can also try to distance yourself from the goals. Goals do not define your life or who you are, they are only things you want to do.<p>That way you can say, "Everything IS perfect or close to it now. By the way, I'll bump up my revenues 1000% and move to Cambodia."<p>The really hard thing is to retain the needed passion to succeed at those goals while remaining distant enough for them not to make you believe they are life defining events, as they usually aren't, even significantly big ones.
Great post. I would add the following to the list: films and books. To many these may seem like escapism but I think the insight gained from such varying perspectives gives you better insight into your own life, and I've found it can enhance your "here and now" value system.<p>Paraphrasing Shawn Achor: you'll never reach happiness if it is always on the other side of some constantly shifting horizon.
Off-topic, but this really stuck out for me:<p><i>I’d set this bar at 50-70% net profit margin. We can aim high because there is no additional cost for each new customer once we reach profitability.</i><p>That's a common misconception. You <i>are</i> indeed spending money on getting each additional customer, you are just not accounting for it correctly. It's easy to consider all marketing/advertising/sales/customer service expenses as fixed costs, when indeed these costs go up with each additional customer you on-board.<p>Also, even if you reach the 50-70% profit margins, how sustainable would that be? The simple law of efficient markets dictates that you will have competitors who will be willing to undercut you. There is no relatively stable company out there that is able to make such margins unless they have constructed entry barriers around themselves (patents, laws etc.).
To the commenters: Any time these off topic subjects come up they spawn some interesting discussions and comments.<p>With no facts, whatsoever. For fucks sake, reddit has more research citations than HN does in a discussion like this.<p>Thanks for contributing to the stereotype that technologists are the worst group when it comes to thinking that success in one field gives license to ignorantly spout opinions as fact in other fields.<p>References to the bible and self help books, no references to any actual psychology of happiness research.<p>I've got some all natural homeopathic depression/disappointment/malaise remedies to sell. I think I just found my target demo.
I read once (can't find the link now) that the feeling of anticipation is stronger then the feeling of happiness, which makes sense to me, because in nature only the adapting species will survive long enough. So having something to strive for might be quite important, maybe even more then feeling happy. And I don't just mean life threatening situations, I mean that we might actually want to "pursue happiness", not "have happiness". Ever thought about that?
I define happiness in the very short term, kind of like Steve Jobs: do I want to get out of bed this morning and do the work on my plate?<p>Sometimes the answer is no, but most days it's yes. As long as I average more yeses than noes, I don't think about it much. It's when the noes pile up for more than a month that I think about making a change.
I think ryancarson.com is down or incorrectly configured.<p>In case, you want to read it.<p><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Aryanleecarson.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F23284176896%2Ftemptation" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Aryanl...</a>
I've found that by achieving some of my life goals, I haven't reached a point where I find myself content and without any more goals, but I do notice a huge improve in my average happiness compared to years ago. I find myself content instead with the fact that I'll always have awesome new goals.
I really loved the line "It’s like I’m waiting for the movie of my life to begin instead of realizing that I’m already living it." I feel like that a lot. I have to remind myself to focus on now.
I prefer joy to happiness. Joy is more an attitude, whereas happiness seems to come from something "external", like I have bought a new car, that VIP said hi to me, etc.
There's always a conflict between goal-directed, sacrifice-oriented work patterns and life-directed, interpersonal-directed work patterns. If you're goal-directed, you're looking at that 100MM in sales. If you're life-directed, you're counting the days until the baby takes its first steps.<p>I'm unhappy with <i>everything</i> I've read along these lines, and I've read a lot of it on HN and elsewhere. I'm also unhappy with my own balance many times. The problem is that both extremes are not lives I would want to have. I do not want to be a Buddhist, sitting around in loose-fitting clothing feeling perfect happiness. I also do not want to be a driven type-A sort that is counting pennies the last day of his life.<p>My best guess so far is to start out enjoying the struggle -- go freaking do something with yourself and the world. As you begin to gain traction, back off and actually have a life. The trick, of course, is learning when and how to back off, so I probably haven't added much to the discussion. :)<p>One thing I know for sure is I agree with this thesis: happiness cannot be just around the corner. It must be whatever you are doing right now.
Reading this made me recall and reflect on a lot of things in life.<p>I am 27 now, but when I was 21 I used to think that I can be happy no matter what the situations in life. Soon I had to come to face with the reality. You need money to solve your own and the worlds problems.<p>Just like the author I come to always to the point <i>“Everything will be perfect when ….”</i>.<p>And you will never be free, because first you will want a college degree, then its a home, then its a car, then clothes, and then in comparison with whatever everybody else has. And then as you have a family it just goes on and on...<p>So it happened that I went with relative of mine to check out a luxury flat he was about to buy here in Bangalore. As I was checking out the flat with him, he asked me if I would buy if I had the money. And then he asked me to reply with an honest opinion. I paused for a moment and replied... That I would like to buy it now, but I would like to buy it now just because you are buying it. And I'm comparing myself with you, but If I were you and in your shoes then probably I would like to buy what somebody else in your peer group might be buying it. And that might mean a super luxury flat.<p>I realized a simple fact. We are never free. We are always a slave to the question that the author asks <i>“Everything will be perfect when ….”</i><p>We will never be happy because we need money to solve our problems and buy all we want to buy, no amount of it is ever sufficient. And the answer to that is not 'stop having expectations'.
Very well written.
I have a similar feeling. We strive for happiness <i>in future</i> but sometimes tend to overlook our current life and how happy things are.It just depends on how you look at it. Lately, I have been wondering what is missing in my life even though I have a great wife, great family, great friends, healthy life (so far:)). I guess it is just a startup itch that I am looking to scratch. Other than that, I feel pretty good.