Catching the same train as everyone else

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.
-Nassim Taleb

Life is full of pain and disappointment. Avoiding pain entirely is probably impossible or at least inadvisable. That doesn’t mean we can’t eliminate some of our pain. So I stopped running to catch the train.
How we feel about something depends on whether we consider it a failure or success. Much of our emotional pain comes from failing to complete what we were trying to achieve.

When you run to catch the train you decide to catch that specific train. You put in effort. You try. You push yourself. And when you don’t make it… it hurts.

Why does failure hurt? One way of thinking about it is in terms of limited resources. Your time, your energy, your willpower — all of these things are in limited supply. A failure is a waste of these resources. To conserve your resources you only want to engage in tasks you can successfully complete. Your emotions are a form of feedback that reminds you that success is good and failure is bad.

The train to represents a path to a certain destination, a way to get to a certain goal. What train you decide to take depends where you are trying to go. But sometimes there is more than one train you can take to the same location.

Most people don’t understand this. That’s why some trains are so popular. Most people believe that to arrive at destination X you must take train A. They don’t realize that you could also take train Y to destination A. Or you could take train Z to destination B. There are three things at play: The goal or destination, the method or route to the destination, and our emotional feedback (feeling of success or failure at any point in time).

Often we choose our goals and methods based on what the people around us are doing. Then we also define success our failure based on the expectations and opinions of the people attach to those goals and methods. Progress, innovation, positive change, improvement all of these things require us to try new things that might end in failure (both in your personal life and for society in general). So taking the same trains and heading to the same destinations as other people is not an option, life necessitates taking some risks (and thus opening up the possibility of failure or undesirable emotional feedback.)

The good news is, we can usually decide which destination to head towards, we don’t have to go to the same place as everyone else. Often, we also get some control over which train to take, which route to follow. We can independently set our goals and choose our methods of getting there. Most people don’t actively exercise their abilities to make these choices, they take the trains and routes that are the most popular (the ones most of the people around them are taking). This works most of the time, but sometimes you have to depart from popular opinion. When we go our own way we often continue to assess success or failure the same way; based on the expectations and the popular opinions of the people around us. But if we head to a popular destination or taking a popular train it makes no sense to evaluate our success or failure in terms of popular opinion. By evaluating ourselves in this way we set ourselves up for unnecessary to pain. Is always wanting to succeed by the standards of other people really a good idea?

Not living up to the idea of success other people expect of you only needs to be painful if their idea of success is what you are seeking. Is their idea of success really the right fit for you what you are trying to accomplish? You doom yourself to experiencing pain for ever if you seek to live up to their expectations if you can never reach those expectations…

What are you trying to achieve? What destination are you headed to?

How are you getting to that destination? What are your methods?

Are you evaluating your success or failure in regards to these questions in a way that makes sense? Don’t try to live up to expectations that don’t match your goals or methods. Only then will you feel good about boarding your train and riding it to the end of the line.

Which trains should you stop running to catch?