I found contentment required years of therapy and two types of antidepressants. Turns out if you feel you always need something new you may be depressed! Who knew.
Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?
51–60 of 329 posts
Re: Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?
#52I believe if you learn to love and enjoy the most mundane tasks like sweeping the floor, washing your hands, walking to the mailbox, etc, and appreciate the opportunity they provide you to recognize the eternal present and all its glory, everything else will fall into place.
Re: Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?
#53There's no such thing as perfect anything, so by definition it can never be good enough
Re: Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?
#54In my subjective opinion, I would say it’s probably not meaningful to you for whatever reason. Only you can know what’s meaningful to you, and this might be something that you need to discover. I find that a writing session can help (like 1-3 hour one time session), like write down what makes you happy, sad, annoyed, what you’re doing, what you want to do, and so on. It might give you a clue of what is meaningful to you, and how you can incorporate it into your life.
From what I understand about humans we have evolved over time, suffering in order to motivate ourselves to fix the suffering in our life. When there is no suffering we still on the lookout for problems to solve, or fun to be had, or things to learn.
Maybe even something simple like planning and doing a fun weekend adventure with your family will bring meaning in that moment, then next weekend you read a book about something interesting. Only you can discover it for yourself.
Here is a metaphor to explain it differently: I think we have evolved to climb the mountain, not hang out at the top for the rest of our life. Once you climb enough mountains, that can become meaningless, and maybe it’s time to try swimming.
Re: Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?
#55Have you tried taking risks in life? Sounds like you enjoy being left to your own devices, so why not try solo travel in a remote region? South America and places in Southeast Asia can be really fun to do alone. You might even end up in situations which will untangle you from work or as you call it "the perfect job", and I can say from experience it is extremely liberating. And you will meet a lot of people along the…
>> I have a house, a good relationship with my wife, and young and healthy kids.
> why not try solo travel in a remote region? South America and places in Southeast Asia can be really fun to do alone.
Sounds like the risky solo intercontinental travel portion of this guy's life has elapsed. Doing this when you're single and 25 is adventurous. Doing this when you're married with kids and a homeowner is a midlife crisis, even if being 35 makes it an early one. Leaving the responsibility of raising the children and running the household to his wife while he goes on adventures to sate his restlessness would be pretty self-absorbed.
Re: Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?
#56You are describing the hedonic treadmill. Essentially, you become used to your surroundings, and while they are objectively great, from the perspective of inside your own head, this is now normal and you / your monkey mind wants more. There have been a lot of post floating around the internet with various solutions, the most popular being Stoicism > Positive Psychology / Happiness research > Buddhism / Meditation. I'…
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Re: Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?
#57Focusing on other people will take your focus off yourself.
I have found satisfaction in helping others. The less personal time I have, the more I value it and the more satisfying life generally is. Also, this is very likely temporary, as your kids get older your life will change with them. They will have more and more adult and complicated life needs.
I found that forcing myself to do things differently based on other people's advice (especially when I didn't feel like it) often brought extremely unexpected results. But there is a massive inertia with changing who you are and the day to day choices you make.
Re: Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?
#58I've found that living through my job was never going to be ultimately satisfying. I enjoy my job well enough, and I've been at the same one now for 28 years, but it's not where I look for fulfillment. Instead I focus my needs for exploration, meaning, social connection, and creative energy into hobbies. A hobby is much easier to change or entirely dump without much consequence when it is no longer satisfying. I've played around with and very much enjoyed classic cars, watch repair, old clocks, beer brewing, fishing, firearms, archery, hunting, cooking, volunteering at a hospital, volunteering at a museum, and plenty more. All of them allowed me to learn something new, meet new people, and just overall enjoy a new journey. And when my interest waned (and it did naturally on all of it) I just happily closed the book and moved on, sometimes coming back to something, sometimes not. And as a bonus, the friendships I made each time still continue on.
Re: Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?
#59What is your job?
Re: Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?
#60No this is not the dream.
You’re still in debt. You still owe society a lot of work. You want to finish paying the mortgage, send your kids to uni and start something without putting everything at risk.
Keep working. Keep working.
This is the american dream. Work does not liberate you from work. It allows you to set enough aside to retire all right.
The only way to get more is to risk more. These are the rules of the game. You could have had family money, but sadly you don’t so you have to risk that comfy situation to try and gain your financial independance.
It’s effed up