The Many Worlds of Enough - More To That

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• “Isn’t having billions of dollars enough?”

• That final word is often viewed as the antidote to any strain of desire. That if you could stop moving the goalpost, you’ll be able to disregard the pull of greed, longing, or any variant of these feelings.

• The problem, however, is that this future self is a projection of your present-day desires. When you’re defining what enough means, you’re effectively saying, “Given what I want today, I just need this much more of it to be satisfied in the future.” But how plausible is it that what you want today will remain unchanged as you march onward to your goal?

• We are woefully incapable of being satisfied with a prior desire, and many people argue that this is just a part of the human condition.

• The way your progress toward a goal creates an entirely new identity.

• Controversially, Everett believed that both these timelines exist, but only one can be experienced at any moment.

• It’s commonly known as the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI), although Everett himself didn’t call it that. Physicist Bryce DeWitt was the first one to call it “many worlds.” When we hear about parallel universes, this is where the idea comes from.

• This is where Everett will likely throw his hands up in despair. Because he clearly stated that the two worlds could never communicate with one another, nor could anyone ever travel between the two (this is really important to remember).

• As you progress toward your goal of Enough, you gain so much in the form of skill and experience that a fundamentally different version of your identity branches out

• This “new version” of you can no longer identify with the one that started out at zero. Even though you haven’t hit that Enough goal yet, it won’t sound like the perfect ideal it once was.

• And the more you move up this new spectrum, you gain even more confidence in your abilities, which causes another branch-out (and thus moving up Enough once again).

• The cyclical nature of this process is what makes it so difficult to stop, and is what prevents us from ever settling on what Enough means.

• One thing I need to clarify here: this view is very different from the traditional idea of goalpost moving.

• Goalpost moving implies that once you hit a certain goal, you’ll shift it higher because of whatever new desires emerge.

• Enough is elusive because when you reach it, you’re no longer the person that once desired it.

• In the beginning, it’s important for these worlds to keep branching upward. It’s great that you didn’t settle for the fast food restaurant when you recognized that you had the potential to be a great software engineer.

• These branching of new worlds are driven by ambition, which is the key to actualizing whatever potential lives within you.

• The reason why ambition feels like a dirty word is because it’s often mistaken for greed. Both ambition and greed result in the Worlds of Enough branching upward, so they’re often treated as surrogates for one another.

• Ambition is largely driven by self-actualization, or the desire to become a more capable person. And when this happens, it’s only natural that good outcomes arise.

• Greed, however, is when those outcomes become your primary desires.

• There’s always a point in which one’s desire to self-actualize (ambition) morphs into the desire to externally control (greed). And the key is to be acutely aware of where this intersection point resides.

• Enough is what remains when you remove these desires for approval or praise.

• If you’re well aware that reading a great book will make you happy, do you really need to go out and get that expensive car? Do you really need to make more money to support your family, when what your family needs is your attention? What’s driving your desires: your authentic being or your conditioned mind?

• William Blake once said, “You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”

• This type of course correction is a different kind of identity change. One where you understand what is truly essential, and adopt a mindset that emphasizes a new barometer to live by.

• But if I was working on something I was truly passionate about, I may be in a world where Enough is actually lower than the position I currently occupy.

• This continuous interplay of ambition, greed, and self-awareness will find its way through your Many Worlds of Enough. Since these forces are always in motion, there will never be an absolute satisfactory goal. That is why there is no magic number or formula that you can rely upon.

• With that said, wisdom is the ability to bring Enough within a narrow range. It’s to use the tool of self-awareness to make the upward and corrective trends less dramatic, and to have them converge toward equanimity whenever possible.

• Whenever possible, you want to be the one directing the way your worlds branch, instead of having it be a mere reaction to events.

• You must self-adjust your definition of enough, instead of having it forced upon you. Wisdom is in self-correction, while misery is in coerced correction.