I've been learning the same lesson in life over and over again, from all different parts of my life. I wanted to share that lesson with you all.

The key to happiness is a subtle shift in expectations. The shift is from wanting a goal, and striving to get it, to wanting a direction, and going in that direction. Taking the steps in that direction, to see if that’s where you want to go, what you want to do, what you want your life to be like, what the project should look like. Each step, an experiment. Managing expectations that instead of expecting the grand goal at the end, expecting to learn something about yourself, about the project, about life, about whatever. Learning, iterataing, and getting a better sense of what direction to head in next.

The opposite approach, wanting something and striving to get it, only sets us up for disappointment and burnout. The idea, “I want X and I will do what I can to get there”, is fatally flawed. Wherever we are at in life, in work, in our journey for whatever, we only know so much, and we can only see so far. Just like how we can see things close to us, things farther away are fuzzier, and things very far are practically unknown to us, so it is with time as well. Near term, we have a clear sense of what is possible. Farther, it’s a bit more fuzzy. A long time from now, we really have no idea. So if we want some grand thing in the future, chances are that even if we get there it’s not like what we thought it would be. Focusing too much on that distant goal can detract from it because not only do we not know if we can get there, we don’t know if it even exists, or if we’re going in the right direction. The best we can do it start heading in the direction we want to head in, maybe hoping that what we want is in that direction, and getting a better sense of where to go from there. That’s how we explore life, projects, work, startups, relationships, everything. We try things. And we learn. And we iterate. But if we want these things to look a specific way, then we’re only setting ourselves up for disappointment. We can strive to make them look a certain way, but we’ll get a better sense of what we want them to look like as we move in the direction that we think we want to head in.

This plays well into our psychology. Our minds and bodies reward us for doing things, and if we focus more on moving in a direction, instead of achieving some goal, then it becomes easier to move in that direction because we reward ourselves for the steps we take. If we focus too much on the final goal, we don’t reward ourselves with the pleasure of achievement because no matter how many steps we take, since we’re not at the final destination, we don’t allow ourselves the pleasure of reward and each step becomes harder and harder. We eventually become frustrated that we haven’t achieved the goal, because that’s all we care about, we don’t care about the steps, and we burnout. This is a core element of depression - learned helplessness from lack of intermediate reward.

Always a grand goal in mind, never about the direction, all about the destination.

How can I find my way in the world if I have my sights set on something I can’t see? Something that really only exists in my imagination, thinking what it might look like. I can see what’s ahead of me, and what comes roughly in the near future. And I can navigate life with that. But nothing further.

The things I enjoyed the most, I just enjoyed for them, and pursing them step-by-step. I’d continue these things, because I enjoyed them, so I knew to keep going in that direction.

If we don’t expect to achieve something, then we can’t be disappointed if we don’t get it. All we need to expect is that we will try something and learn from it.

I’ve heard that term, “you’re learning” a lot. Learning. Huh. A word I usually associated with school, and studying, and exams. But this kind of learning is different. It’s like, I’m navigating an unknown space, and I’m slowly getting a sense of where I want to be in the space. And that space is life. And the learning is really a discovery of what parts of the space entail, how much I like them, and how well I fit into them. That’s really it.

When I go about finding the next steps for whatever I do in life, it’s a discovery process. I’ll talk to people. I’ll interview. I’ll work on projects. I’ll learn. And I’ll get a better sense. But I don’t need to work at a specific company. I don’t need to have a certain salary. I want to do something meaningful, and have impact of some kind. And I can figure out what that is. I know the rough direction to head in, and I’ll iterate and iterate towards where I think I belong, what I like, what I find meaningful. But it doesn’t need to be anything specific. If I think like that, then I’ll just be disappointed if I don’t get it, or worse, I’ll be stressed and anxious and cling to the thing if I do get it. Stressed that I don’t want to lose it. Anxious that I might lose it. Clingy because I don’t want to lose it. This applies to all parts of life, relationships too.

This is essentially a rewording of the phrase "it's about the journey not about the destination", but I guess that saying alone never really clicked with me. I prefer thinking about it differently, as mentioned above.

Alright that's it, thnx for coming to my TED talk.