You Should Be Thrilled With a Mediocre Life
Talent and ambition can come at a heavy price to your happiness.
Sean Kernan
Sean Kernan
Oct 21, 2020 · 5 min read
Source: pic via istock photos
The pig was sprawled across the table with an apple in its mouth.
I was 6-years-old. It was my first Filipino birthday party as a westerner (my dad was in the Navy). To a Filipino boy, this was a normal cultural practice. In fact, it was a luxury. To me, it was a shocking afront to my Disney upbringing.
It wasn’t my first culture shock or my last. Traveling “off base” offered a stark contrast to the world I’d come from. Large families shared small huts, often without running water or temperature controls. For many kids, working in blistering fields wasn’t a goal, but an inevitability.
When I returned to the US, I saw countless cliche posters across our classroom school walls: “Reach for the stars”, “Be a movie star”, “Be a doctor”. Was this the path to contentment? Were these people happier than those living in the huts?
Society does a great job of confusing people on what brings happiness. I was no exception.
Money Buys Happiness — To a Point
The US places a huge premium on becoming rich and famous. People have lost sight of the virtues of living a good and normal life.
A study by Purdue University found that the ideal salary for emotional wellbeing was $60K-$75K. This is the income at which basic necessities feel covered without the constant fear of financial hardship. The same study also states that $95K is the average income at which you feel a sense of life achievement.
There’s some obvious wiggle room in the joints on such sweeping macro stats. For example, an artist who makes $58K per year will generally hang their head high, while a doctor with a $95K salary tends to grumble. The exception for below-norm salary happiness comes from those who draw special, non-monetary value from their career.
High Levels of Talent Can Be a Trap
You’d think the most intelligent, capable people would maximize for life satisfaction. They’d presumably know to prioritize such a goal.
Yet it’s quite the opposite. Their calling to achieve tends to overwhelm all other priorities. They fall into absolutes, the need to be “The best ___ in the world,” which is a difficult task, even for the top .1% of a given talent pool, demanding not only extreme effort but great luck and circumstance.
Consequently, highly accomplished and smart people tend to be less happy than those with average accomplishments.¹ And if you are one of those unhappy high achievers, you should consider if it’s time for a change. My uncle was one of the best neurosurgeons in the world. But he also suffered from depression and compensated by smoking cigarettes and eating terribly. He died at age 50 of a heart attack.
You Probably Don’t Want a High Paying Job As Badly As You Think
If you assume, as most do, that high paying jobs tend to be all-consuming and miserable, you’d tend to be right. I was a financial analyst for 7 years. I was the small guy in the boardroom as I took notes for my regional RVP.
If you hear how they talk about people you’d be mortified. Most employees are no more than pawn pieces to a company. I’ve heard them casually say, between jokes, “We’re going to fire Joe on Tuesday.” Then I’ve walked out of that boardroom and bumped into Joe, who is smiling and eager to show me pictures of his new baby (this isn’t an exaggeration).
Additionally, everyone in that board room made north of $200K. And having spent some time around them, they paid a steep and cutting price for that money.
We were at a company waterpark event and I was sitting with my RVP’s wife. We were having a beer and chatting. She made an offhand remark after her husband went to the bathroom, “I just wish he didn’t work so much. It never stops and he won’t listen to me. He misses all of our daughter’s events.” It was a rare and unguarded glimpse into the strains these jobs cause on people.
Are there people who sunbathe and drink pina Coladas, making $250K a year? Sure. But they are far from the norm.
Remember, we are all numbers on a spreadsheet with corporate. The moment that number turns red, you are gone. This is what keeps so many of them up, working late at night. The bigger your paycheck, the bigger the target on your back.
Focus On You, Not Them
Studies show that how content you feel is heavily grounded in how you compare yourself to others.² If you see those around you as having more and doing better, you’ll tend to feel inadequate. More bluntly, the grass is greener complex is built into your DNA. It’s an ancient survival tactic that bleeds our modern psyche.
Focus on you. You can still travel and own a home without being a VP. You’ll have more time for yourself. You can work on your hobbies, art, crafts, things you actually enjoy doing. You won’t be a stranger to your partner and kids. A person can be incredibly valuable and talented without attaining fancy job titles.
Even further, if you look at life through that style of ranking, you’re signing up for a lot of discontent. It’s statistically impossible for us all to be in the top 1%. That mindset will just make you more judgmental, of yourself, and others.
The Takeaway? Mediocrity Can Be Awesome
I live a great life. I’ve dipped my toes into the path to luxury and expensive vacations. But I was haunted by the specter of success: the deadlines, constant threats to my livelihood, the organizational tilts, and macro traumas to our company finances, always had me on edge.
If you find that job that pays a quarter million a year and demands only 35 hours a week, more power to you. But to the rest of you? Don’t sweat it too much. Economization has made most luxuries available through off-brands for relatively cheap. You can also travel to most places if you budget right.
As I learned overseas, your situation could always be more difficult. There are other versions of you, working in hot fields at all daylight hours just to make ends meet. But who knows? Maybe your happiness wouldn’t be that much different?
We are all subject to hedonic adaptation, the phenomenon where you become accustomed to any situation you find yourself in. It’s why, if today, you were paralyzed from the waist down, or if you won the lottery, both selves would eventually return to roughly the same levels of happiness. It’s further proof that happiness comes from within.
There’s nothing wrong with living in a normal-sized house, with staying in your hometown. Work to achieve. Be your best self. But don’t let that come at the expense of you
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