“If you want to be successful surround yourself with people that are more successful than you are, if you want to be happy surround yourself with people that are less successful than you are.” – Naval Ravikant (CEO and co-founder of Angellist.com)

One of the great privileges of not living on the edge of poverty, disease, or disaster, is that we are not ‘forced’ into anything. From the start we are there, we have made it.

Conversely, one of the great tragedies is lack drive, as a consequence of a lack of vision, as a consequence of a lack of a dire yet inspiring status quo to give birth to a real vision: A vision that is so compelling that your eagerness to achieve it makes you already experience its attainment through all of your senses – taste, feeling, sight – as it literally gives you goosebumps.

It is true that many people say they are determent. Yet there is a very important distinction between ‘determination’ and what I call ‘seeded determination‘, and it all has to with why.  A good example of ‘unseeded’ determination is the one you have for a new year’s resolution. Why did you stop smoking on January 1st? It was not because you fear for your health, or else you would have stopped sooner. It was because you felt like you should have resolution, because it is expected, or because somebody else also did it. In this case, the why is surely insufficient.

For the same reason, it is possible to say you feel ‘determent’ to reach success, because you like you should be determent. But will your drive be strong enough to overcome your self-serving bias to maintain your happiness and create illusions as to if you are in the best place to reach your ultimate goals? Will your drive be strong enough for you to consciously abandon your happiness and feeling of superiority to step into a world where you will (again) be at the bottom of the barrel?

The quote above from Naval Ravikant therefore illustrates exactly how important the why is, that creates a seeded determination. A drive that is founded by a deeply rooted desire, one that is upheld even in your unconscious, creating a deep pain whenever you are in a situation, however hedonistically satisfying, that does not optimally guide you to your ultimate goal.