Feeling Progress vs. the Pride of Having Progressed

One of the healthiest feelings in the world is the feeling you get when you are growing toward a goal, toward unity, toward integrity, toward excellence, truth, and beauty.

One of the most satisfying feelings in the world is the feeling of having progressed.

Choose the former.

When you are progressing, “do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.” Live in the zone of quiet progress. Be in the moment with your growth, and feel it instead of thinking about it.

When your conscious mind starts peacocking about having made progress, your body is going to spend less energy actually progressing.

Once you start to process the fact that you’re moving forward, your temptation will be to look back. In your pride you will close yourself off to the awareness, the urgency, and the subconscious joy of moving toward your ideal.

Your ideal will go from being guiding star to a shiny piece of metal in your hand. You will have concretized it as something won in your past, instead of something waiting and calling to you. This will kill your ideal until life reminds you that your shiny piece of metal is not a substitute for continued growth.

Instead of thinking about having made progress, actually make progress. And move so fast toward your ideal that you don’t have time to think about achieving it.

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James Walpole is a writer, startup marketer, intellectual explorer, and perpetual apprentice. He opted out of college to join the Praxis startup apprenticeship program and currently manages marketing and communications at bitcoin payment technology company BitPay. He writes daily at jameswalpole.com.