What Would You Choose Happiness or 10X Growth?

A vicious puzzle to solve.

Last month, I had set a goal of just having one extra article published in September.

I felt like it was an easy one to achieve. If my fellow writers can publish one article daily, then I can add at least an extra article in a month, and it is easy.

I’m currently producing one article every week and four articles every month. I enjoy this rhythm. Along with my current skills, capacity, and day job, I can write four articles per month with joy and happiness. I’m in a comfort zone now.

And I get the point that if you want a 5X or 10X growth, you need to put in the effort, break the boundaries, and do something massive. I completely get that, but I also don’t want to lose the quality of every moment I live.

A simple solution is to break the larger goals into smaller ones. Execute the micro-activities that will effortlessly take you to the destination.

Yes, I’m doing that already and, that is not the problem.

For massive growth, you need to create massive goals. But you will take action when you deeply think about it, and it’s your priority. You need to create a burning desire that will push you to achieve smaller and larger goals.

One force engages me to think about my growth plans. And other force pushes to live in the current moment while performing activities for the goals.

Now the problem is-

• How do I continuously maintain a balance between these strong forces?
• How can I keep the burning desire alive and still live a fulfilled life?

If one can truly live a fulfilled life, what else is required?

And that’s the core nature of being.

Imagine if you can produce 30 articles per month, can you push yourself to mass-produce 60, 120, or 180? To achieve this, you need to give 100 percent and go through a learning curve. This enormous push will put you on sleepless nights. Not just because you are stretching, but also because the 10X growth is in your mind all the time. And you keep on thinking about it day and night.

When you have a strong desire, you put an effort and start improving bit by bit. During this process, you will gain something but, you also lose, it’s a trade-off.

It can be the quality of your sleep or the relationship or a smaller issue that you did not observe to date. So, you are compromising on peace, fulfillment, and ultimately your happiness.

To me, happiness is a state when your mind and body work together to fill you with compassion and joy. And then everything seems to be beautiful and peaceful.

Also as Wikipedia says-

The term happiness is used in the context of mental or emotional states, including positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. It is also used in the context of life satisfaction, subjective well-being, eudaimonia, flourishing and well-being.

This state gets disrupted when you want to achieve something but not having it with you. You may not experience any negative feelings, but you are still not happy.

I sometimes feel the same way when I get lost in the feeds of social apps. It's probably because of the endless information I consume and lose a direction to stay on track for my goals.

With profound observations, I found that we live in a vicious cycle of pleasure and pain. Like we start a work to find a pleasure but get trapped into a pain by overdoing it.

A common example- many of us use the twitter app to increase the followers, get more views, or to build a brand. And to get followers, we need to continuously create content, engage, follow someone, add a comment, and wait for a comment. Slowly this vicious cycle sucks us in.

Initially, it is fun, then you start to feel hollowness and eventually experience pain due to its addictive cycle of engagement.

Medium is no exception.

I know many esteemed growth hackers have created a system to follow and live into a focus zone like a horse.

But I’m still learning. I did many experiments and had success, that stayed for a month and vanished.

I’m in the search to balance out this vicious cycle of pleasure and pain.

But I’m not running for the happiness anymore, and I know it’s within us. It coexists while we are growing. Andy Rooney also said-

“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it”.

Now the questions to think deeply are-

• How much should you target to achieve so that you do not lose the quality of your life and still grow massively?
• Is it 1.01X or 5X or 10X or 100X?

I’m sure you all can find your ’n’ X and still be compassionate, peaceful, and live a happier life.

Yours truly.

I’m leaving out a few links related to stress, anger, and personal growth; you may find them useful.