Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

Only with distance could Rubio begin to see the cost of this drive,
what important things we miss when we give ourselves over to it
entirely. As he wrote, “I think I understand now that the restlessness
we feel as we make our plans and chase our ambitions is not the
effect of their importance to our happiness and our eagerness to
attain them. We are restless because deep in our hearts we know now
that our happiness is found elsewhere, and our work, no matter how
valuable it is to us or to others, cannot take its place. But we hurry on
anyway, and attend to our business because we need to matter, and
we don’t always realize we already do.”
Have you ever held a gold medal or a Grammy or a Super Bowl
ring? Have you ever seen a bank balance nudging up into the seven
figures? Maybe you have, maybe you possess these things yourself. If
you do, then you know: They are nice but they change nothing. They
are just pieces of metal, dirty paper in your pocket, or plaques on a
wall. They are not made of anything strong or malleable enough to
plug even the tiniest hole in a person’s soul. Nor do they extend the
length of one’s life even one minute. On the contrary, they may
shorten it!
They can also take the joy out of the thing we used to love to do.
More does nothing for the one who feels less than, who cannot see
the wealth that was given to them at birth, that they have
accumulated in their relationships and experiences. Solving your
problem of poverty is an achievable goal and can be fixed by earning
and saving money. No one could seriously claim otherwise. The issue
is when we think these activities can address spiritual poverty.
Accomplishment. Money. Fame. Respect. Piles and piles of them
will never make a person feel content.
If you believe there is ever some point where you will feel like
you’ve “made it,” when you’ll finally be good, you are in for an
unpleasant surprise. Or worse, a sort of Sisyphean torture where just
as that feeling appears to be within reach, the goal is moved just a
little bit farther up the mountain and out of reach.
You will never feel okay by way of external accomplishments.
Enough comes from the inside. It comes from stepping off the train.
From seeing what you already have, what you’ve always had.