I am healthy and in a solid spot in life. That being said, I keep staying unsatisfied. My mind is always racing and pushing me to do more.
I read somewhere that ‘happiness is the absence of desire’ and I really believe that this hits the mark. I am grateful for where I am in life right now, but I am not satisfied. How to deal with this?
When is enough actually enough?
When I was younger, discipline felt effortless. Gym before lectures, eating well, showing up consistently. I didn't think of it as discipline at the time; it just felt like living, and it genuinely gave me energy.
Then I graduated and moved into a corporate role. Full time, decent salary, stable. On paper, the responsible choice.
Within a few months I was finding it harder to hit the gym, coming up with weak excuses. Ordering food instead of cooking. Telling myself I was too tired. And I was tired; sometimes I felt exhausted by the end of every day. I assumed that was just adult life. That discipline was something you had when you were young and had time, and that I'd simply grown out of it.
What I didn't see at the time was that the tiredness wasn't physical. The job wasn't always intense. It was that I was spending 8-10 hours a day doing something that gave me nothing back. No energy in, no energy out. Just a slow drain.
I've since changed course. I work on things that actually interest me now. And almost without trying, the discipline came back. I'm cooking again. Training again. Getting up early without negotiating with myself.
I don't think I was ever undisciplined. I think I was running on an uninspiring fuel and calling it laziness.
Can anyone else relate to this? I'm curious whether the discipline problem is ever really about discipline; or whether it's almost always about what's underneath it.