If You’re an Overachiever, Watch This! | Eckhart Tolle on Balancing Achievement and Acceptance

So that has to be the foundation for your life and becoming, embracing the isness of this moment. How can you run away from it? How do I strike a healthy balance between simply accepting life as it unfolds and actively working towards and striving towards goals, destinations, aspirations? Balance between accepting life as it unfolds and actively working towards and striving towards goals, destinations, aspirations? Well, accepting life as it unfolds, of course, is the foundation for conscious and sane living. Accepting whatever unfolds in the present moment. There is nothing else that's the foundation. Does that mean you cannot have goals, you cannot have aspirations? Wanting to achieve this, do this, do that, it's perfectly compatible with accepting what is arising in this moment. One difference between the unconscious state which denies this moment and wants to make it into a means to an end all the time. The difference then is what is the motivation for your doing. If you deny this moment, can never embrace it, honor it, appreciate it, then the motivation for your action is basically dissatisfaction with what is. And the action is looked towards as a possible way of overcoming the discontent and the dissatisfaction that you feel with the present moment. And that's a very normal pattern. And that's for many, many people, that is what motivates them. They don't feel good enough. They don't feel. They feel there's something fundamental missing in their lives. They don't feel recognized, they don't feel loved. And so they try to find something, achieve something that will bring them that which they feel is missing. They don't realize that that is not going to work. You need to start with the foundation for your life, which is this moment, and go deeply into that and become okay with it, friendly with it, realize it's the only thing there ever is, just this moment. Nothing ever exists that's not this moment. So you might as well become friendly with it and appreciate it and look around and see how actually it's okay. This moment is actually okay. And if it's not okay, you can still say, well, that's what is right now. Something goes wrong, that's what is. And then things will come in that you want to do. Suddenly an idea comes, or you need to do something to make a living. And then out of that state of becoming one with the isness of the present moment, something arises and wants to take form in the world that perhaps you want to create. And then you create it out of the joy of doing instead of out of a feeling of lack that you need something to make you complete or happy. So the motivation Changes from neediness and discontent to joyful doing. It's not stressed anymore. When stress is a sign that you've lost the present moment, the next moment has become more important than life itself. The next moment was being only a thought. So the future is a thought in your head, nothing else. Let me know if I'm wrong. If you ever meet the future, let me know. So you have to, in your own experience, you have to see whether I'm right, whether the future can actually be. Which seems so important, doesn't it? More important than this moment, surely, isn't it? Well, if it's so important, then where is it? Does it ever come? As I said, let me know if you find it. You won't, of course. There's only this moment. So that has to be the foundation for your life and becoming. Embracing the isness of this moment. How can you run away from it? There's nowhere to go except in your mind. And the mind does it all the time. It always goes somewhere else. So you can still do, because you enjoy doing. And you see how it contributes to the awakening in one way or another. If you practice present moment living, you cannot not contribute. Whatever you do, you cannot not contribute to the awakening. You can have the simplest job. You can have a job at a toll booth at the bridge, and the cars come up and you say, $5, please. And even there, you interact with hundreds of people every day for few seconds. Even there, if you are completely present, something will flow. As you take their money and say, have a nice day. Something will flow out of you to the other person and you contribute to the awakening. No matter what you do, your present state of consciousness spreads, affects others. So discontent as the motivation for doing is replaced by the enjoyment of doing what you do. Because what is the point if you are not enjoying what you do? What is the point? Now sometimes you may say, oh, I can't possibly enjoy this. But you may be surprised how many things you can enjoy doing. And if, definitely, if you find that absolutely you cannot enjoy something, whatever your job is, then of course you need to walk out. And don't stay with unhappiness, live with unhappiness and do something that you cannot tolerate and be and surrender to and do with, if not with joy, at least in a state of acceptance. The world is full of people who are doing what they don't really want to be doing. Not only their jobs, but also any action they do at the moment. If you really look closely into them, they're going about their daily business and a lot of the time, what they're doing, something inside them just doesn't really want. They don't want to be where they are, but they are there, and they're doing this, but they really don't want to be doing what they're doing. So there's a reluctance often in people, there's a resistance to what they're doing, to where they are, where they have to go. It's so common. People, many people live with it their whole lives, and they don't even know it anymore. Because when you have lived with an inner state for so long, you don't even know it. It's like the humming of the refrigerator. It goes on for a long time. You don't even hear it anymore. When it stops suddenly, then you say, what?