How Do I Balance Wanting Change & Appreciating What I Have?
Answering a Listener's Question
Every now & again, we revisit one of the listener questions we’ve answered in a previous episode. It’s been edited for clarity & brevity.
PATRICK: This question is from Ellen. She added a little context first, saying, “My kids are in their twenties. And I say that because I know people with younger kids don't have the freedom I have now.”
Here's her question: “Professionally speaking, how does one balance taking on risk or wanting change and also appreciating what they have right now?”
BEN: Gratitude and growth are not opposites. They coexist.
You can be incredibly grateful for where you are, the opportunities you have, and what you've achieved so far, and you can still be excited about more growth and achieving more goals. They are not inversely related. This is not a seesaw.
So that’s the first part.
Then, the part about taking on risk:
I think there's a difference between — because we've talked about this before in terms of like, you're not a tree. If you want to change, go move. And I think people can hear that and make reckless decisions. That's not what it's about at all.
It's about making a calculated decision. Know when to move, know when to stay, and avoid the recklessness part of it.
And here's how I would frame that up: are you moving towards or away from something? This is Phil Stutz's stuff.
There’s a terrific documentary on Netflix. You should check it out. It’s called Stutz.
BEN: I’ve read Stutz’s books, but the documentary's better - and that's rare to say. He’s a psychiatrist, and in the documentary, you get to see him interact with a patient, which makes it cool.
But one of his big things is Tools, and one of his big tools is this understanding that humans have three “unavoidables” - things that are inherent to humanity. And they're not positive.
Every human shares these three things: pain, work, and uncertainty.
So I would ask Ellen, are you trying to move away from one of those three things? If you're trying to move away from one of those three things, I think you're being reckless because you'll try to explore somewhere else and just run smack dab into it again.
Whereas if you're like, "Hey, I know that wherever I go, whatever I do, I'm still going to have to work as hard. I'm not going to avoid pain or suffering, and I'm not going to solve for uncertainty. But man, I feel like I would have so much more..."
You fill in the blank: passion, joy, fulfillment, health — with this other direction in my life moving towards something.
It's not like, "I work 40 hours a week. I want to go and move and try another job because I don't like working as much."
Work is work. They call it work for a reason. We’re not going to avoid it.
It's the same thing with, like, "I want more earning potential. I wanna earn more money so I don't have this level of uncertainty in my life." That doesn't go away. No matter who you are, where you are, you have it, you're not going to avoid that thing.
So, if you can figure out what you're moving towards rather than away from, that helps me frame up: Is this a calculated or reckless decision or risk?
PATRICK: I also think about the word risk. We nearly always use “risk” as a negative, so I need to avoid it or be careful. But there's also the risk of not doing anything. There's the risk of staying the same.
There's the risk of everything that happens if nothing changes.
So maybe we don't use the word “risk” because it’s not clear enough, or at least ask ourselves: What is the risk of changing, and what is the risk of staying the same?
Because if we can do that, we can at least look at things in a balanced, non-reckless way.
BEN: I love that, and maybe I brushed over that a little bit because, inherently, I enjoy risk.
I see it as a positive, and I think you're right. Most people see it as a negative. What I fear the most is being in the same spot five years from now.
I'm so fulfilled, happy, and grateful for my life right now, but what I want more than that is challenge, growth, and new experiences.
So, I would default to the risky side.
And that's a little bit of why I shaded back towards this: "Hey, don't just make the move to make the move."
PATRICK: Last thing, and I don't know if this is helpful, but it is what I was thinking about as I was reading Ellen's question, which is if we took out the work element and said, okay, this question's about relationships.
How do I balance being grateful for a relationship I have while also wanting it to get better and wanting it to change?
Everybody in a long-term relationship recognizes that it changes as it goes, and to resist that is actually the challenge or the trouble. The trouble is in not letting it change, not letting it evolve.
And so when I started thinking about this question, I was like, "Well, how can my relationship with my husband or wife, how can I be grateful for it but also want it to continue to get deeper?"
When you ask it like that, you recognize, I think, more quickly than in a work situation, that that's a false dichotomy - like you were saying at the top. These two things aren’t in opposition.