The one thing you cannot chase: insecurity is the worst way to build your success

I just wanted to have a little check in on what motivates you. As cheesy as it is, why you’re doing what you’re doing has everything to do with how you will feel about yourself in a day. And how you spend a day is how you will spend a lifetime.

Motivation is complex. It is like a bundle of muscles that wind around each other, and we cannot so easily surgically separate one from the other. There are plenty of good reasons to do things and plenty of dumb ones as well. I’m not here to validate the good and critique the dumb. We all have to do things for dumb reasons sometimes. Give yourself the generosity of letting yourself be a dummy from time to time, and figure out how to be one less often. I, for one, just spent six months applying to business school to regain the love of a parent. I’m still wiping off the clown makeup.

Of all the dumb sources of motivation, there is one that is the absolute dumbest, which I will in fact make a fuss about, and that is achieving something so that you can feel worthy at last. So many clients come to me with a dampened sense of self-esteem and believe that they will finally be able to love themselves and feel confident when they finally do the thing. This is internalized capitalism at play, made worse if you grew up poor, made doubly worse if you or your parents came to a new land and are trying to prove that you’re good little immigrants.

Notice in your bundle of muscles whether this motivation shows up. It is less like a muscle and more like a hungry tumor that will grow and grow because nothing you do will ever be good enough. Many of the highest achieving people in this world have absurdly violent inner monologues that tell them they’re not good enough and nothing they ever do will be good enough and they better keep working or else everyone will see what a fraud they are and how terrible and worthless they really are. And rather than evict that voice—if any person ever talked to you like this, you would smack them—they believe it.

You will be successful if you have an inner voice like this, but I’m not sure that this is a type of success you want to have. Above all, you will not be happy because you have an asshole living in your head. And what is success without happiness?

The path forward is remember that you are worthy, today. It came to you innately. You didn’t do anything to deserve this. You simply just deserve it. Let the beauty of this thought become a warm bath. You can spend some time here soaking.

If you want to work together on any of this, please reach out. About me: immigrant, Stanford grad, ex-Silicon Valley, and happy expat living in Berlin. I help marginalized folks define and create their own success.

If you liked this piece and want more, please subscribe to my email list.