Becoming Someone you Admire, by Being who you Already are...

We all want to feel purposeful, fulfil our potential and do some good in the world. We also want to enjoy ourselves along the way.

We wonder if it's possible to achieve ambitious goals, while also being satisfied with what we already have. We question how to become a greater version of ourselves tomorrow, while also being content with who we are today.

This is often seen as an binary choice: to have more of one means less for the other.

But I think this way of seeing things is contradictory, and unhelpful because it asks us to sacrifice the thing we want (happiness, contentment, purpose) for the thing that's supposed to deliver it ('success'). 

The way I see it is that life is simply a series of moments, one after the other. Each moment is born out of the one that proceeds it, and the next moment is shaped by the experience of the current one.

The person you are in this moment gives birth to the person you are in the next one. The person you become is born out of the person you are now.

Your ability to enjoy future moments, is dependent on your ability to enjoy your present moments. (And if i can let you in on a little secret, they’re ALL present moments!)

The implications for this are rather radical. We must learn to be satisfied right now if we want to have a happy future. To become someone we admire, we must be able appreciate ourselves now.