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Is Your Ego Ruining Your Life?
During my life I have spent a foolish amount of time pursuing pointless goals. From spending hundreds of hours playing RuneScape as a teenager, to spending hundreds more playing Playstation games in my early twenties. All aiming for a completely arbitrary goal.
Over the years I have spent thousands of hours pursuing things that have no tangible, transferable real-world benefit.
And yet, I regret none of them.
The activities were fun in and of themselves.
While I could have spent that time reading, starting a business or studying more, I had no desire to at the time.
In hindsight, this was because I had not yet been indoctrinated into the belief that I should use my time instrumentally, to generate future wealth and economic output.
Instead of trying hard to maximise my potential for future happiness, I was happy there and then.
Yet, as I grew older I began to understand the importance of spending time wisely, and eventually had a complete mindset change — but not in a good way.
Where I once spent hours upon hours playing games, I started to spend hours upon hours working.
I began treating time as an instrument.
“...when your relationship with time is almost entirely instrumental, the present moment starts to lose its meaning.” — Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks)
I spent an unnecessary amount of time pursuing goals that I thought I wanted, on hobbies I thought I enjoyed, without ever considering whether the return on investment was worth it.
I spent this time engaging in activities not for the enjoyment, but because of my ego.
This is what I regret.
Ego-Driven Goals
Until recently I pursued many of my goals not for the enjoyment, but for the status and recognition I believed I would receive upon achieving them.
And it worked.
I achieved a first-class honours degree and published my work — and received the recognition I was looking for. But at a cost.
The cost was missed time with friends, family and my partner. Irreplaceable time.
“Time on one thing means time away from another.” — Gary Keller (The One Thing)
At this point I had gone from wasting time playing video games to wasting time working towards unnecessary, ego-driven goals.
Getting a first-class degree was important to me, but it wasn’t absolutely necessary for my career, yet I spent hours upon hours trying to improve my grade.
Alongside this I spent even more hours tinkering and tinkering with my thesis so it would be perfect for publication. My reward? Losing days of my life striving for the unattainable.
My work was never going to be perfect to begin with.
So What?
If you’ve made it this far you may be wondering why I’m rambling to the point of ad nauseam, and I suppose my point is this…
If you’re a type A personality like myself, and have traits of competitiveness, impatience and ambition, take a step back and genuinely think about your goals.
Are they actually your goals? Or has your ego taken over?
Do you want to achieve the goal because you intrinsically enjoy the process itself? Would you be happy even if you couldn’t achieve your goal? Would your time be well spent?
With status-driven goals you’re playing a losing game. You cannot keep up with the Joneses indefinitely — you’ll just find new Joneses. And the cost of keeping up won’t just be your time, it’ll be your life.
You’ll lose the potential to create memories.
You’ll miss opportunities to meet new people and make new friends.
You’ll miss opportunities to do things for the sheer enjoyment of them.
This is the point of my rambling — I learned the hard way that some goals aren’t worth it. The 1% improvement in my grade was not worth the 10 hours it took to get there.
Fortunately I learnt this at a relatively young age, but the hope with this article is that someone younger than me will read this and reconsider their choices.
Some goals are worth it, but some certainly aren’t. Take a second to step back and assess your motivations. It may change your life.
“You must interrogate the logic, values and rationale behind your goals and ambitions as if your life depended on it — because it does.” — Steven Bartlett (Happy Sexy Millionaire)
Thank You
If you made it this far thank you — I appreciate you taking the time to read my work and sincerely hope you enjoyed it. If you would like to continue reading, I’ve included a few of my most popular articles below.
Thanks again,
Rob
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