When somebody cooks a dish for us, at home, in a restaurant, in a café, whether we like it depends on a few things.
Our expectations.
What we think a good meal is supposed to be.
The right amount of salt.
The right amount of “cooked.”
The right presentation and portion size.
Some people love medium steak. For me, that’s raw. I wouldn’t eat it if you paid me.
Then there are our preferences.
What we crave on that particular day.
Sweet or salty.
Light or heavy. Exciting or comforting.
We love different food.
We admire different people.
We strive for different things at different stages of life.
None of this is good or bad.
Right or wrong.
It’s simply what matches our expectations, preferences, values, desires, and needs right now.
The challenging part in life is often...
Sometimes we cling to an outdated idea of who we are for too long.
What we need.
What we like.
What we’re supposed to want. What we’re supposed to have by now.
Even when life starts sending clear signals that something has shifted, that we need to evolve and change.
A seed in a garden doesn’t get mad at the change of seasons.
It changes with the season, so it can grow.
With all the ways we’ve adapted the world to us, we sometimes forget that we still have to adapt to the world as well.
And the world never stops changing.
Unlike plants, we get angry at that.
Or sad.
Or resistant.
And that resistance makes change far more painful than it needs to be.
I love this simple formula:
Happiness = Reality − Expectations
It’s a reminder that happiness is mostly an inside job because expectations are the only thing we actually control.
I recently finished this beautiful book The Other Side of Change: who we become when life makes other plans by Maya Shankar.
The core message reminded me:
The most important work is matching our evolution to the change as it unfolds.
Not clinging to old identities just because we’ve had them for a long time.
Change is the only constant.
Which means you have to be evolving all the time too.
So how do you do that, without losing yourself? Parts of you that make you - YOU?
One of the most useful tools in the book, for me, was asking a deceptively simple question:
“Why do I do the things that I do?”
The why tends to be long-lasting.
The what will keep changing, especially in a world that’s accelerating this fast.
When Maya Shankar had to stop being a violinist, she didn’t just ask, What else can I do?
She asked, Why did I love being a violinist in the first place?
And then she found another way to live those same values, eventually becoming a brilliant cognitive scientist.
Vera Wang transitioned from a competitive figure skater who was getting ready for the Olympic team to a groundbreaking fashion designer and bridal industry icon by asking why.
That question did the same thing for me - that’s how I’m not afraid of the world of AI.
Why do I do my work?
To unlock human potential in people who are striving.
The roles change.
The tools change.
The formats change.
The why doesn’t.
And as many of you will have to change what you do “on paper” multiple times in your lives now, this question becomes essential:
Why do I do the things that I do?
And what else could fulfil the same why as the world changes?
Over to you, dear reader,
Why do YOU do your work?
And what other paths might let keep that why alive?