How can a person strive for success and excellence while simultaneously trying to be content?
If you’re content, where is the motivation to achieve more? But if you’re always trying to better your life, then how can you be content?” The Harvard MBA says: The question of contentment vs. ambition is one of the fundamental questions that most of us face. I have friends who are never content and are always paranoid, and whose self-inflicted misery makes them extremely successful and productive workaholics. I was chatting with one of them yesterday; I asked him what he had planned for the weekend, and he replied that he was probably going to be working. “I’m doing a consulting job for a friend, and I’m not satisfied with my report, so I’m going to work hard this weekend to bring it up to my standards.” This is the sort of fellow many have in mind when they wonder if contentment will blunt their edge. According to this mindset, motivation is like hunger. The drive to strive for success and excellence results from the gulf between desires and reality. The logical corollary to this is
