Max Beauroyre

Am I chasing external validation? Why do I want this outcome? How will this accomplishment make me feel? Am I acting entitled to this outcome or accomplishment? Am I trying to control the narrative here? Do I think I’m the smartest person in the room? Are my feelings and actions driven by ego?

I find that I am the most anxious and uneasy when I am not honest with myself, when I am yearning for a certain (external) metric of success.

The need for work-life balance hints that there has to be a trade-off and that work cannot be fulfilling. It is predicated on two assumptions: 1) Work and life are distinct entities, and 2) The “life” elements are equally, if not more, important than the work elements

At last, halfway through your life, you are smart enough to see that it all amounts to nothing, even success amounts to nothing. But how does a person learn to see herself as nothing when she has already had so much trouble learning to see herself as, something in the first place? It’s so confusing. You spend the first half of your life learning... See more

I must be self-aware and check myself when I am regressing into default behaviour of achievement, and divert myself into the direction of authenticity. This will be my life’s work and it will be important to remind myself that the road will not be linear. (I write this as a message to my future self as I know I will be coming back to read this.)

Achievement for the sake of achievement becomes hollow when we run out of goals and there are no more objectives to attain, and we must come to terms with the difficult reality that there is nothing left to aim for.

Uncertainty gives room for agency and the conviction that our actions hold significance. Harnessing uncertainty allows us to consider multiple sides of a question, to find not merely the first solution, but the best one.

I worry the choices I have made weren’t mine and were infected with proving myself for external validation. It makes me want to break everything that is gluing together my present reality, the way I am currently experiencing life and start from scratch

The mode profile of people in the 80-99th percentile is always what you’d expect. The 99th to 100th percentile is unexpected. It’s never the ivy-leaguer. It's not the one who trained with a professional coach at the age of 5. The average person at Goldman Sachs went to Harvard. But the CEO of Goldman, David Solomon went to a small liberal arts... See more