The way of the malcontent #30
Hey all, and happy Friday.
Last week I wrote about how people are often limited by the goals they set. This week I want to continue that theme but give you an alternative approach to it. An approach that is simple, easy to follow and doesn’t involve any detailed planning.
I call it, the way of the malcontent.
Let’s start…
Often the advice for achieving great things in life is done via 3 steps…
Dream big
Set goals
Take action
It makes sense right? And it seems like simple advice.
But there is one flaw, people can’t always dream big.
One reason is, people are often limited by their horizons. And what I mean by that is, how can you set a goal or have a big dream if you don’t that know that the goal or dream exists?
Imagine, you live in medieval England, imagine you’re a peasant - you wouldn’t know a lot about the world. You wouldn’t know lions exist, so you could never aspire to see one. You wouldn’t know the Himalayas exists, so you would never dream of climbing Mount Everest.
And this type of thing happens to us all, sometimes we are limited by our own view of the world, our knowledge of what is achievable.
Let’s look at some examples from me…
When I was in my last year of school, I was walking across the yard with a friend. We were going to a special session on ‘careers advice’. As we got closer to the school my friend and I started walking in slightly different directions. We checked the room we were supposed to be going to and realised, we were going to different rooms.
Anyways, I got to the room I was supposed to be in and had the career talk I was supposed to hear.
Well, it took me about 10 years to realise what had happened on that day. We had been separated into two groups, one had a talk about ‘which college and university they would be going to’. And the other group, was asked - ‘what job do you want to do’? I was in the latter group.
(There’s a joke somewhere in here - something like - “imagine being so dumb that you didn’t realise you were in the dumb group”)
Now this seems harmless until you realise one thing…
For years I didn’t know what university was, that word didn’t exist in my vocabulary.
My parents never went to university, we didn’t have internet access to search for options and I had just been excluded from the one lesson which explained what university was.
So how could I ever aim to go to university if I didn’t know it existed?
The story of the malcontent
Let’s start with the definition, a malcontent is…
a person who is dissatisfied and rebellious.
Yes, it sounds like a person who is generally pissed off all the time. Maybe that is what it is. But let’s look at the opposite, imagine the extreme opposite example of a malcontent…
Someone gives you a shit sandwich and you lap it up.
I’d rather be a malcontent than be eating shit sandwiches for the rest of my life.
The malcontent in practice (and back to the story)
So there I am, a good 16-year-old boy, I left school and went straight into my ‘dream’ job (a dream job limited by my horizon) as a trainee car mechanic.
I hated it. The owner had a brother, he was a douchebag, he thought it was funny to drive a car at high speed towards me and another trainee at high speed and then turn away at the last minute, only narrowly missing us (it was scary). Or the time I went under a car to look at something and got a big pile of rust in my eyes and wasn’t allowed to get them checked out. I was there 6 weeks and I hated it. In my eyes, I had been given a rusty shit sandwich and was expected to take big bites out of it daily.
I bounced around jobs for a couple of years, including serving time at Burger King and McDonald’s, and eventually found my vocation - building aeroplanes.
For context, they recruited a bunch of young people in a single intake. I think my year of apprentices had about 50 people.
I was happy, for about 4 weeks, until I realised that there were 2 groups. The fitters (blue-collar workers) and the technicians (white-collar workers).
The technicians would ultimately get better training (degree level), eventually get paid more and sit in nice offices. The fitters got 1 year less training, got paid a good salary (but less than my technician brothers) and worked in a loud manufacturing environment.
Guess what - I wanted better education, better pay and a nicer working environment. My malcontent nature was starting to show.
At this time, I also met a girl (all great stories have a girl in there), she was just finishing her degree. I even took a week off work and went to stay with her at her university. You know, hanging about the university, going to student nights out, making 1 beer and a packet of peanuts last all night because you were student poor.
So here I am, between the ages of 18 and 21 finally being exposed to the term ‘university’, and at 21 years old I finally enrolled at a university.
At the age of 16, I could never have set a ‘5-year’ plan to get me to university, because I didn’t know university existed.
But, by being unhappy with my ‘lot in life’, and my discontent with my worldly fate, I was still able to get a degree.
What I am really saying here is…
I couldn’t have dreamed big, because I didn’t know something existed.
I could only dream as big as my biggest dream, which wasn’t so big.
And because I couldn’t dream big, I couldn’t set goals and I couldn’t take action towards those goals.
But I still got there, I was carried along by my superpower - my malcontent.
The reality
Being malcontent seems unhappy. But it’s not as bad as it seems. It’s not about walking around and being unhappy with things.
In fact, I’m the opposite. I’m still pretty zen, very grateful for everything I have, and try to live in the moment as much as possible.
But, as I go through the world and see beyond my horizon, and see new opportunities - I do consider my options. I readjust my goals.
In the past 6 months alone…
I’ve seen people earn great livings and only work 2 or 3 hours per day, so I ask myself - do I want that?
I’ve seen a bunch of folks get upwards of a $1.5m bonus and an extra $20m in shares, so I ask myself - do I want that?
I’ve seen a beautiful 33ft boat for sale, so I ask myself - do I eventually want one of those?
When you see these things with your own eyes your horizon is extended. You see beyond what you previously thought was possible, and rightly so - you need to adjust your goals.
After all, if I wasn’t like this - well I’d still be working in that shit garage that I started at when I was 16 years old.
The simplicity of it
I think it was Adam Grant who talked about this…
[In a job] you should be earning or learning, or ideally both.
This falls into the way of the malcontent nicely.
People often swap jobs because they get offered more salary. But after a while that salary becomes normal to them. People often adjust their life in line with their new salary and now feel just as poor as they did before.
People also swap jobs because they need a change, they feel stuck. They need to do something new.
So every now and again ask yourself:
Could you be earning more?
Could you be learning something new?
For me, my second superpower is being gifted with a short attention span. In career terms, it’s about 4 to 5 years. The periods of ‘earning’ are good for a while, but if I’m not ‘learning’ then I need to adjust.
My next ‘career’ move is aiming for the latter, learning. There is a very specific skill set I want to learn, something I haven’t seen first-hand before. I won’t be earning in this next stage but I will be learning. With the ultimate goal of seeing what is beyond that horizon.
And that’s it, a different way of seeing the world. A different way of getting through life while still moving forward.
Fin.
I hope you found this interesting, I’d ask you to like, share and subscribe - but it’s not YouTube, and you already do subscribe.
As always, wishing you a great weekend, perhaps a weekend where you think of the one thing you’re not happy with and start to change.
All the best,
John