Aaron Ross moved from not thinking about meaning, to chasing happiness as life's purpose, to realizing growth matters more. He argues constant happiness is a myth. Real fulfillment comes from learning, facing fear, and feeling all your emotions without judgment.
You gotta focus. Okay, you're in focus. Okay. Kind of. Okay, it's going? Yes! Alright! Hello! It's Aaron Ross. I think you should probably know that if you're here, wherever this video's going. And, you know, one of the things I've, in my progression from a young boy to a man, I've realized He said there's been 3 stages of how I think about the meaning of life and the purpose of life. And the first stage, from, I don't know, 0 to 35, was probably not realizing there really was a purpose to life, or never thinking about it. I never thought about meaning. I might have unconsciously, you know, done things or thought about it. I never really thought about, hey, what's the purpose of life? What would be meaningful to me? So I guess that's the not thinking about it phase. And then from about 35 to— for a few years, this is after I left the venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, it was like, you know, all this technology stuff doesn't feel meaningful. I don't care if I make money or not. It just, it doesn't feel like I matter if I do it. You know, who needs another damn Facebook widget or something? So there's that phase when I was sort of traveling and doing consulting and creating things like Unique Genius and Predictable Revenue. Where I thought, okay, I started to read some books around the science of happiness and other stuff like that. Okay, the purpose of life is to be happy. And of course, even when I was creating this unique— I started creating this unique genius idea and some content. You realize there's actually different versions of purpose. You can, you know, your purpose is to be happy, and part of that is by helping people. And if you sort of get more and more specific, you can get really specific with your purpose and turn that into a business. But in general, it's okay. The general purpose for everyone is to be happy or happier. And then over the last, I'd say, year, I've realized that yes, you know, being happy is part of your purpose, but not really. I don't even think it's that important to most people, really. It's important but the much more important thing is this idea of growth and connection and experience, especially growth. So growth, what does that mean? Well, it's learning, it's growing as a person, being able to explain. It's really growing past your fears or the kinds of fears that just hold you back, that cause stress and anxiety, that cause you to do things that sabotage yourself. Instead of happiness, which is related to growth, but it's not the same. Because the more you grow, the more happy you're able, the more fulfilling and happy you're able to feel. But growth is really the point of life. You know, I might change my mind in the future, but it's really growth. And you're not supposed to be happy all the time. So this is, I think, important. One thing I realized is that you're not supposed to be happy all the time. First of all, it's not realistic. No one's happy all the time. I for sure am not. You're not. Deepak Chopra isn't, or whoever else is like a current happiness guru. If they pretend like they're happy all the time, they're full of bullshit. But you're not supposed to be happy all the time. It's like you're supposed to— part of growth is learning how to be more authentic more of the time. You know, when you're sad, you just— you're supposed to be sad. When you're angry, you're supposed to be angry. It doesn't mean you hit people and you stay angry. It means when you're feeling that emotion, whatever it is, that feeling, that's what you should be. Which is not always happy. And then you come out of it and whatever you need to do, and you feel a lot more alive for it. Because that's— so feeling alive isn't always about feeling happy. That makes sense. So if you feel guilty for not feeling happy all the time, I think hopefully this will give you some permission to feel more like yourself instead of not happy. And a lot of the media makes— markets happiness as a way to make you feel like you're not good enough. So, you know, just let it go. Yes, you want to be happier, but you're not supposed to be happy all the time. And really, it's just about being you and feeling whatever you're feeling at the moment. And that is my realization here in Maui that I wanted to share with you.
