Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Haroon Aslam

I once thought about starting a company, and I named it the “Ambitious Fox”. I felt like it perfectly encapsulated me as a person — and more importantly, the culture of my company. Foxes are these dashing little underdogs, feisty yet friendly from a distance, and always ready to go all-in on a hunt, or a hunch. My life is mostly about hunches. 🤷🏻‍

I’ve spent a decade chasing down and achieving unrealistic ambitions. Along the way, it got less and less meaningful. Like most things, the more we have of something, the less happiness we derive from it. We adapt to the new levels of success, and then try chasing the next level, hoping it will make us happier. Often, we don’t acknowledge the diminishing returns, in our careers or otherwise. This is an idea in happiness research known as the hedonic treadmill. You’ll never reach the carrot you’re chasing.

So, what happened to the Ambitious Fox? A lot of things changed since then. In my career, ambition has always served me well. I pushed to one peak, remained unsatisfied, and pushed again, and again. And now, I stopped. At age 31, I feel like I’ve reached the sum of my ambitions. This feels weird to say, but I’ve had thoughts of retirement cross my mind. I have felt my happiness dwindle, and I decided to focus my ambition elsewhere: relationships (dating and otherwise)… More on that juicy topic in a second.

Every one of us will reach this point — your ambitions, and your mindset will evolve. It will come at different times, and different forms for all of us. Whether it’s getting married and having kids, or traveling the world. You will accomplish your goal, and then feel yourself reaching for what’s next. The idea I want to share with you today is about deriving happiness from the pursuit of your ambition, and not the result.

The Setup

I’ve been reading a lot about the psychology of happiness, and how ambition is often the antithesis to it. Specifically, there’s a great book written by Meik Wiking called “The Little Book of Lykke”. Beyond ambition, it covers wonderful topics and stories from around the world, about how people find happiness.

In a chapter about wealth, Meik discusses the psychological impact around arriving at our stated goal — and realizing it isn’t actually all it was hyped up to be. You’ll experience this in every aspect of your life. Our minds have a heroic ability to adapt and overcome. This is incredibly useful in times of great loss and sadness, you will be fine and you will move on. It’s as important to recognize this phenomenon with happiness. You can have all the wealth and success you were chasing, but your mind will adapt.

I want to discuss this idea in the pursuit of love. There is no shortage of stories criticizing the current state of affairs in dating. Many have argued the pros and cons of having so much choice. I’ve previously talked about how fragile attention is. Going through this experience now, I am beginning to see how the hedonic treadmill is making all of us chase a level of love that, ironically, sets us up for disappointment.

The Problem

There’s this interesting tension between ambition and working hard. In our careers, ambition is great because it drives us to work hard. In dating, it’s also great to be ambitious — you deserve to find something and someone that fulfill your ambitions. However, now we’ve stopped working hard at it. It has become far too easy to meet people, which resulted in this shitty cycle of repetitive dates telling the same life stories, drinking and eating the same thing. We deserve better, you deserve better.

It’s even a small miracle to get to the aforementioned date. We’ve developed some bad behaviors that reinforce a lack of detail on these dating platforms. Juggling the start of conversations and maintaining conversations is this incomprehensible puzzle of attention. Too many apps, with too many matches each, with same looking profile cards with the same information — or lack thereof. Quick request to humanity:

I swear if I read wanderlust or love of wine one more time.
Stop putting pictures of your snapchat filter. Just. F**king. Stop it. **composes self**

The Ideas

Somewhere along the way in my career — I learned a valuable lesson, to enjoy the process and not the result. Likewise in dating, where all of us have great ambitions, here’s two ideas where we can invest in the process and enjoy it. I think there are little lessons in here for people already in relationships. The trick, I feel, is that positivity will help you shine in front of the person you want to be happy with.

Process #1: See more of fewer people

This is blasphemy in this day. It’s far too easy to avoid putting in the hard work to get to know someone now, with the allure of the next person being able to solve this person’s problems. We are under the illusion of what looks like endless supply. There’s a hidden problem here — you just created higher expectations for the next person you date. And on, and on it goes. Stick with it, spend more time seeing the same people.

To do this successfully, you have to learn to be more direct and cut off those that are clearly not worth your time. Invest more to see people in person, and resist the temptation of interacting digitally. In all this, value your attention, and consciously distribute it.

Process #2: Make an intention to make friends

There’s this saying that people enjoy: #nonewfriends. It’s a statement of pride, that your current social group is great and there isn’t space or need for any one new. Let me tell you, life gets hard, people get married, have kids, and move away. There are not a lot of means to generate meaningful human connections. For all its faults, credit dating for opening doors. Look past the surface and consider it a chance in discovering new ideas, new thinking, and just maybe — a new friend.

Take that a step further, and think about dates as events you would do with friends. Do things that are going to be fun for everyone, and that genuinely break the monotony. Go on a day trip, visit a new part of town, get outside and walk, or do something creative together. If you want to be ambitious, then work hard for it.

I am by no means doing this right. I probably wouldn’t be writing this if I was. Both these ideas are about appreciating the moment and the process, and not burdening yourself with a lofty end result. It’s scientifically proven that it will disappoint you. And who wants that? In all aspects of life, I hope you’ll find appreciation in your process and effort, and unburden your mind from the result.

I’m trying my best, and I hope you will too.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/2d749a7f6bc22884efb452458b6a98d5/href">https://medium.com/media/2d749a7f6bc22884efb452458b6a98d5/href</a><a href="https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href">https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href</a>

Ambitious Foxes: Pursuing Careers and Relationships was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ambitious Foxes: Pursuing Careers and Relationships

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