Complacency: Breaking The Cycle
Until last year, I wanted what any ninth grade student wanted, the highest average in my grade. I did everything I could to reach my goal; I previewed my notes before class, I was active during class discussions, and I spent hours thoroughly going through my homework. At the end of the year, I achieved what I wanted — the highest male average, 91% (yes, that’s rounded up 🤫).
At first, I was thrilled. I immediately went go tell and show off to my parents so they would be proud of me, I bragged to all of my friends and called them “dumb” for getting nearly as high of a grade, every logical thing I could think of. But after a couple of days, that feeling was gone. I felt no sense of accomplishment or motivation. This feeling continued to snowball over the year.
I’d become complacent.
Complacency is a feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one’s achievements.
This has always been something I’ve struggled with. I compete with my peers and try my best to get to the top, but once I’m there, there’s no internal motivation to keep me going.
Since the beginning of the year, when I joined The Knowledge Society, I’ve become more mindful of my flaws while practicing mindsets and philosophy. I’ve learned that one of the biggest reasons for my complacency is because I don’t enjoy what I’m working on. I’d been working on projects I thought I should be doing. I was living my life for others.
Now, when deciding if I should take up or pass on an opportunity, I think about whether I would actually enjoy the process, then try to find a purpose greater than myself.
Every week I’ve been consuming more and more content, trying to learn how to live a life worth living. It wasn’t until recently, when I started reading about Peter Thiel, that I’ve learned how to develop anti-complacency.
For those who don’t know him, I highly recommend diving further into his background, but for now, Peter Andreas Thiel is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He has been involved in some moonshot companies such as PayPal, Palantir Technologies and Founders Fund. And not that money is everything, but he has a net worth of $2.5 billion!
When reading about him, I narrowed it down to what I think are his three most valuable lessons to break the cycle of complacency and live a meaningful life.
You are the entrepreneur of your own life.
He speaks about owning your own life. You get to become your own entrepreneur to decide what you think is important and what you want to prioritize. It’s important that I am grateful and take advantage of the opportunities that come with living in the greatest country in North America. *Happy Canada noises 🇨🇦*.
If you’re living someone else’s life, it’s impossible for you to achieve joyful fulfillment and live a life that brings you value. In the end, it doesn’t matter what career path you pursuit or what clothes you wear, if you aren’t happy with what you’re doing. For me, that’s trying to impact the world with emerging technologies.
Value substance over status.
Peter Thiel makes the point that you can chose to live a life of substance or a life of status. Too many people chase after short-term goals like buying a mansion or owning a fancy car, which to be honest doesn’t sound too bad, but in comparison to long-term goals, for most people, it means nothing. I’d rather live a happy life being able to say that I feel fulfilled, instead of being extremely wealthy and unhappy.
He also says, if you were to give your younger self advice, what would it be? For me, this is difficult. At six-years-old, I certainly didn’t have the same priorities as I do now. Then, I was focused on getting the Mario game or trying to play with my uncle’s friends, which for some odd reason didn’t appeal to them. The only advice I could give, is to stop getting so anxious when you can’t control everything. Since when do six-year-olds not practice stoicism?
Don’t lose sight of what’s valuable.
When you compete with your peers, you will get significantly better at that one thing, but on the other hand, you can very easily lose sight of what’s valuable. As a competitive person, I have a lot of experience with this, and I can confirm that it is true. When my group of friends discovers a new mobile game, it always brings the worst out of me (everyone’s been there).
I started playing Clash Royale a couple of years ago. The problem with these addictive games, is that you lose track of everything else. I was distracted in class, at home, and I discovered what it’s like to rage when you lose a video game. After a couple weeks of having a stupid game consume my life, I deleted it and moved on with the important aspects of my life.
I may have gone a bit off topic, but when you’ve only been alive for sixteen years, there aren’t too many wise analogies to be made. The lesson is that you need to prioritize things that actually matter.
Now, how does this help you build anti-complacency? Well, if you are looking to stop feeling smug with your achievements, you need to follow these three points.
By adjusting my perspective to become the entrepreneur of my life, value substance over status, and not lose sight of what’s important, I’ve become less complacent. Of course, I’m still working on it, but compared to my past, lethargic self, I think I’ve made significant improvement. I’m living a life for myself, and no one else.
Key Takeaways 🔑
- Complacency is being smug with your achievements.
- By following Peter Thiel’s lessons — becoming the entrepreneur of your life, valuing substance over status, and not losing sight of what’s important — you can break the cycle of complacency.
- All of this is a process. You need to be mindful of your flaws and learn how to develop them into your strengths.
