I came to this realization today. AI has been a wonderful tool to identify these issues of internal problems. A rationalization for emotional difficulties that many people experience. I enter how I felt in a given moment, and it outputs a reflection that, in many ways, expresses how I feel with vocabulary that I’m unable to express it. I then summarize the output in my own words, so that the internet is less full of AI slop.

As a reference, I achieved a 4.0 GPA, a quant job, but suffered internally for about 4 years after college. Conventionally successful, but aimless and passionless. I made good money, but didn’t feel anything. I’ve been told to stop thinking, which is what I did for about 6 months since I started therapy. Someone always told me that we are all trying to seek some external in some way–money, status, fame, title. People respect you in society based on the role you play, and in an era of title, grade, credential inflation; it’s overwhelming to know where you stand in that society.

I’ve always been a bit more internally driven–by problems and parental validation rather than any version of success. America is a society build on external validation: trophies, visible wins, smiling, money, big houses. Where I’m from–India– is a much more spiritual place, focused on internal goals. The population is so big that, if the western definition of success applied, we’d have no one being happy and the entire country would (and 1/7th of the world’s population) be in near constant revolt. Religion is the opium of the masses, and India’s society is stabilized through religion.

But I’m in the west now, and as a citizen of this wonderful, broken, lovely country, I need to balance my unique upbringing with the pressures of American success. Answering the fundamental question of “What is happiness in such a rich bountiful, but sometimes spiritually empty and externally driven country?” is impossible. Some of the things I’ve heard are:

1. A college prof told me “Just make money” (my ex-boss told me that he started taking shrooms at 28)
2. Family friends told me”Get an MBA[/MS/whatever next degree]” (I was told these programs are “cash cows”)
3. A VC said “Start a company” (the world has enough AI and prediction market trading companies)
4. An ex told me “Go to bars” (I tried but I’m not nearly loud or funny enough)
5. A buddy told me “Work at Citadel” (I choked the interview)
6. I was on a skiing hill and someone said “Just send it” (I’m overthinking and depressed, what the fuck am I supposed to do here, send it over a cliff?)

I’m pretty academic so I’m prone to overthinking things. Breaking free of that is a difficult process, since there is no unique guide to doing so. Here’s what I’ve tried so far.

1. Acknowledge that the traditional form of achievement is not a satisfying goal. It’s a treadmill, causing you to jump from achievement to achievement, never being satisfied at one level of success. It’s not a tool for living; it’s a tool for hiding. So many quants I know are on this hedonic treadmill of “money as a scoreboard.” Be angry at society, but not bitter.
2. Acknowledge that you failed. Badly. As a quant. You couldn’t sell your achievements in a meaningful way to get paid enough to be happy. Regardless of how intelligent you are, your brain said you failed.
3. TV is a great way to see stories. Rewatching old TV is a great way of seeing the emotional stories that other people have gone through. There’s no point in feeling stupid that you don’t read a lot–everyone doesn’t read a lot nowadays
4. Acknowledge the loneliness. It wasn’t just isolation; it was peerless isolation.  I was surrounded by people who admired my life, yet I couldn’t share the truth with a single one of them. The higher I rose, the fewer people I felt I could trust with the reality of my pain. Bosses tried to connect with me on that, but I failed to realize that many of them were equally as lonely as I was. The more money you make and the more you feel like a failure, the bigger the dissonance gets.
5. Corporate structures are fundamentally misaligned with feeling successful as an individual. The incentives of corporates (make money) are not the same as for human thriving (Maslow). Both can certainly exist, but humans fundamentally seek security and power in the absence of survival pressure forcing you to make money. That’s corrosive and dehumanizing to people “beneath them” in the hierarchy. It’s a hollow goal.
6. Acknowledge that many problems are unknowable and out of your control. PnL is not a reflection of your worth and will not bring you fulfillment. You spent two years trying to solve a data problem that was a hardware one
7. Embrace being a mid-pack runner. You’ve spent your entire life trying (and honestly failing) to be the best at everything. Who are you if you’re not the straight-A student, the quant who makes “millions,” the marathon runner? It now feels like the most necessary and terrifying question I’ve ever answered. I was brilliant enough to manage complex financial derivatives, but I felt too stupid and weak to manage my own emotional life.
8. Take your pills. You can’t make good decisions when depression overtakes every other feeling. You’re reactive to emotions rather than proactive. Can’t critically think when reactive.

What is the standard definition of success? Metrics, right? Top schools, top grades, top money. But there’s so many standards of success. Relationships, education, love, experiences, family. Achievement is a metric for success, Labor creates value, Money is a conduit for getting things done in a capitalist society, power is a tool for getting others to help you. Nothing more, nothing less. The only finite resource is time and health, which is characterized by entropy.

The biggest issue is not knowing what you don’t know. That grad school is a great time, that your parents don’t understand the emotional life, that there’s more to life than being successful. The business world is forgiving of failure. I am finally learning to separate my self-worth from my net worth and my academic record. The journey now is about finding intrinsic value—the person who can make a decision because they want to, not because they should.