I think at the very beginning of the process of figuring out what you want you have to say do I want the whole trade-off that other people have made?

Do I really want all of the downsides that go with those particular

upsides? I think that's such a liberating place to begin. You really immediately push past that totally false and unhelpful thinking and instead say,

what is it I was built to do, born to do, what did I come here to do? What's the right set of work that I maybe even uniquely

can bring to the world? To me that's the essential path. That's what it means ultimately to be an essentialist.

Most of us have been raised to ask three dollar questions. I was raised to think about those questions

myself, but we really should be asking $30,000 questions. The big ones, do I have a

good job and am I paid well? Am I automatically saving and investing? If I'm married or if I'm in a

relationship, is it with the right person? Which is probably the most

controversial one of all. But most of us were asking these questions, should I buy a latte?

When in reality if we get these five to ten big wins in life right,

we never have to worry about latte's or any other three dollar questions. No matter how good we have it.

No matter how good we have it, we always want something more.

And I think that's just the way we evolved.

I think it's probably pretty good for our survival as a species and pretty bad for our

happiness as an individual. But we're stuck with it. There's nothing we can do about it. So sometimes going after more is good for us.

Sometimes it's got minimal consequences such as when we eat that second donut, but sometimes it can have devastating

consequences such as when we're unfaithful and put a long-term relationship

at risk.

So I think that we go through life to some degree

needing to be aware of these dopaminergic merges

and realizing that they are primitive emotional urges and

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