For those who don’t know me, the only books that I ever read are coding and self-help books. I have convinced myself over the past years that I should never settle and the relentless pursuit to “be better” is neverending. As admirable of a goal as it sounds on paper, I am beginning to realize that it may not be the most human action. If there is always a neverending list of goals and you never stop to enjoy life along to way, to what end is the pursuit for? Clout?

This question has been irking me in the back of my mind for sometime and I feel like I have created some sort of concious realization recently after watching Ramit Sethi’s Talk at Google. That coupled with a few other things that I’ve been reading has made me rethink some simple but pure ideas like “what makes me happy?”.

I know that my friends and family make me happy. I know that making them happy also makes me happy. To be perfectly honest, when analyzed in isolation without that, I am not quite sure if I know anything else that fits into that category. My life for the last few years has been the pursuit of bettering myself, and I have equated my own happiness to be something akin to how much money I was making at the time, how much professional success I was having, or how many degrees/certificates that I had under my belt.

This is, as I perceived, to be a point of my life where I have introspectively analyzed and questioned myself if continuing down the same ruthless path of self-betterment was a healthy life choice. Undoubitably, there are other aspects to life; slowing down some aspects to celebrate the small victories and pick up some relaxing hobbies should increase the overall wellness of my existance much more than the single-minded pursuit of a vague notion of perfection.

tl;dr: it’s important to enjoy the small things