It is intrinsic to our human nature to strive for perfection.
It is built into our DNA and drives us at impulse level.
It is a good impulse a lot of the time but with the advent of the materialistic society that most of us are a part of today, we misuse this impulse – or allow it to misuse us.
The strive for always better is great to keep wanting to improve ourselves, to do better things in life than just watch TV and drink ourselves into oblivion or eat into obesity but it has a dark side too.
It is excellent for pushing ourselves to run that 5K faster, swim the 500m better, climb a harder mountain route, dive deeper, fly higher and so on and so forth.
It is not great however, to allow to sink into the endless search for a better sofa, TV, shoes, house, car and other things. Things, which to so many mean status and the only thing in life they have.
There is an increasing and constantly growing number of people who earn good money and instead of doing what they want, travel to incredible places, try new experiences, use their money to do good and help fix the world – they get stuck in the endless loop of perfecting every thing they own. Shoes, bikes, cars, bags, phones, houses.
How many have spent literally years upgrading their off road bike – front forks, rear suspension, saddle, handlebars, etc. So much time searching for those components, trying them, so much money buying them – time at work spent to earn the money. Was the ride really so much better?
I was guilty of this myself for a very long part of my life.
I wasted a lot of time and effort on the endless pursuit of “better versions of things”.
It is the ultimate mistake when this methodology is applied to people and we – as men or women – instead of focussing on the amazing world inside of us, on the personality of the person in front of us and enjoying being with them, we instead compare them to others we meet, questioning if we have the best “version”, keen to “upgrade” at every opportunity.
People are not an iPhone or a car. We are constantly evolving beings and in a relationship both partners grow and change – often an initially “bad” relationship can blossom and a great relationship can turn sour for many reasons.
People are a never finished story with many twists and turns. Those seemingly complete monsters and scoundrels have the capacity to turn into amazing human beings and there are examples where this has happened and amazing human beings can easily turn into scoundrels.
Consider this quote as said by Socrates, the character in the film Peaceful Warrior: “The ones who are hardest to love are usually the ones who need it the most”. Even in toxic relationships quitting is not always the solution. Sometimes there is just too much self-centredness. Focussing on the other sometimes is all that’s needed to fix the relationship. The capacity to change – in both directions – in humans is staggering and is greatly under-appreciated.
Many people are afraid of commitment and settling down because of the now so common FOMO (fear of missing out) that has permeated into relationships.
Human beings are not things and FOMO should not and cannot apply to relationships.
Many things in life don’t need the best model or option.
After a point – often very early on – they are plenty good enough.
To calibrate and understand when this “good enough” is, it is always good to see the extremes and to be very clear with yourself to understand why we need the object in question.
Seeing the extremes of poverty and experience for a short while the lifestyle, the simple life – makes you understand how many things in our lives are completely unnecessary. Trying for a short while using something much worse than what you normally use will most likely result in a realisation that even that much worse thing was “good enough” and what you have is too much – let alone needing to be upgraded.
If your priorities in life are seeing more places, or building a new idea – whatever it is – something like a car, or shoes or a phone are just tools to get there. Don’t get wrapped in an endless pursuit to find the perfect one or the other.
A car is a just a mechanism to get you from point A to point B. Sure, it feels very nice to drive a fast and comfortable car with a beautifully lit dashboard and a great sounding stereo. But do you need-need to? Ask yourself a question – what would happen if you didn’t? Nothing really? Then you don’t need it.
Headphones, bags, phones – there are new versions of these coming out every few months.
Sophisticated marketing and advertising tells us we must upgrade, must get a better version.
Every time you’re about to – ask yourself what is the major problem with your current. Most likely there is no problem. Out of a sporting interest and to test yourself – don’t get the upgrade and see what happens. Probably nothing. You’ll have more money to spend on things that matter.
It is all about being mindful. Acting after carefully deliberating our purpose, not going off impulse.
As Vinay Gupta said – “We’re still filled with exploitable reflexes that are artefacts of our primate evolution. And if you push those buttons, you get pathological behaviours out of us”.
An impulse is important and is what makes us human.
But as adults and as evolved mindful beings we can evaluate each impulse and decide whether to act upon it or not.
Some impulses are harmless and what gives us new openings in life – some things I would not have discovered if not for following an impulse.
The key is to not go into autopilot and to understand what impulses drive us and choose the ones worth following and discarding harmful, destructive and unproductive ones.
Mind Iterations 