We live in a culture that tells us we can, and should, have it all. The perfect career, the perfect body, the perfect relationship, the perfect home. We’re told that if we just work harder, optimize more, and hustle longer, we can achieve this state of total completeness.
But this pursuit isn’t an abundance mindset. It’s the exact opposite. Trying to “have it all” is a scarcity mindset, since having enough or even having a lot still isn’t enough, and it is fundamentally destroying our happiness.
Here’s the paradox: true abundance comes not from accumulating everything, but from accepting where you are right now while still working toward growth. Research shows that this balance, contentment plus aspiration, actually leads to higher achievement and greater well-being than the relentless pursuit of “having it all” ever could.
The Difference Between Happiness and Contentment
Dr. Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, makes a crucial distinction in his conversation with Andrew Huberman: “When you think about happiness, it’s usually about when you’re achieving something. ‘I’m going to be happy when.’ ‘This will bring me happiness.’ Contentment is the opposite. Contentment is everything is just great as it is. I feel complete. I have enough.”
And here’s the surprising finding: “Part of my argument against the happiness research is that we don’t spend enough time helping people strive for contentment and we push people to strive for happiness, which there’s research to show backfires. If you’re waking up every day saying, ‘What am I going to do to be happy? What am I going to do to be happy?’ Chances are it’s not going to work out a lot and that kind of backfires to create more despair.”
The “having it all” mentality is quintessentially about future happiness: I’ll be happy when I get the promotion, when I make six figures, when I lose 20 pounds. This constant deferral of satisfaction creates a scarcity mindset where nothing you currently have feels like enough.
The “Old Happy” Trap: Why Striving for Everything Makes You Miserable
In her conversation on Young and Profiting with Hala Taha, happiness researcher Stephanie Harrison identifies what she calls “Old Happy.” This cultural model is built on three lies:
- You are not good enough: The belief that you are broken or insufficient as you are, and you must “perfect” yourself to be worthy.
- You must achieve more to be worthy: The belief that your value is contingent on your external accomplishments: your title, your salary, your accolades.
- You are separate from others: The belief that you must do it all alone, and that independence is the ultimate goal.
These lies create a “never enough” mentality. No matter how much you achieve, there is always more to do. No matter how much you buy, there is always something new to want. This is the definition of scarcity: the perpetual feeling that what you have and who you are is insufficient.
Harrison points out the core paradox: “We all kind of know the answer to happiness…everyone always says relationships, connection, service. But our actions are still trying to make more money, work harder, get achievements.” We know what makes us happy, yet we keep doing the opposite.
The drive to “have it all” forces us to chase extrinsic goals: goals imposed by society like money, fame, and status, rather than intrinsic goals like growth, connection, and service.
Extrinsic goals are easy to spot: “If you’re saying to yourself, ‘I’ll be happy when,’ that’s usually a sign that it’s an extrinsic goal,” Harrison explains. The goalpost keeps moving because the goal was never yours to begin with.
Here’s the most ironic finding from Harrison’s research: people who pursue extrinsic goals are much more likely to give up. They’re less likely to succeed because they don’t have real, internal motivation driving them. More importantly, chasing extrinsic goals makes us significantly more susceptible to depression, anxiety, lack of self-worth, and difficulty with resilience.
The Paradox of Growth: Accept Yourself AND Strive to Improve
So does this mean we should abandon ambition? Give up on goals? Stop trying to improve?
Absolutely not. And here’s where the research gets really interesting.
Author Yung Pueblo, in his conversation on Young and Profiting, describes what he calls “the paradox of growth”: “You need to simultaneously accept your imperfections, and you need to accept yourself for who you are, and then also understand that…I have a lot of growing to do. I can be an imperfect person, but I can simultaneously say okay, I’m not gonna expect perfection for myself, but it would be valuable for me to slow down instead of making decisions really fast.”
This is radically different from the “having it all” mindset. Instead of: “I’m not good enough, so I must achieve everything to become worthy,” the paradox of growth says: “I’m enough as I am, AND I can continue to grow.”
Self-Acceptance Actually Increases Achievement
When Hala Taha challenged Stephanie Harrison on this point, saying she worried self-acceptance would lead to mediocrity, Harrison responded with a counterintuitive truth: “Actually, paradoxically, the self-acceptance helps you to grow. So we think that if we can just change or improve ourselves, then we’ll become acceptable. But in reality, when we accept ourselves, we are able to grow and change and improve ourselves.”
Growth Mindset + Self-Compassion Outperforms Scarcity Mindset Every Time
Here’s where decades of research demolish the “having it all” approach: the combination of growth mindset and self-compassion consistently outperforms the scarcity-driven “I must be perfect” mindset.
Carol Dweck’s pioneering research on mindset at Stanford University reveals a fundamental truth: people who believe their abilities can grow (growth mindset) consistently outperform those who believe their abilities are fixed.
Dr. Alia Crum, in her conversation with Andrew Huberman, explains Dweck’s core finding: “If you have the mindset that intelligence is malleable, you’re motivated to work harder to grow your intelligence. If you have the mindset that it’s fixed, why work harder at math if you don’t think you’re good at it?”
But here’s the critical distinction: a growth mindset is NOT the same as the scarcity-driven “I must have it all” mindset.
Scarcity mindset says: “I’m not good enough, so I must achieve everything to prove my worth.”
Growth mindset says: “I have the capacity to learn and grow.”
See the difference? One is rooted in inadequacy and fear. The other is rooted in possibility and learning.
The Research on Gratitude: Contentment Actually Boosts Performance
But what about the worry that appreciating what you have will make you complacent?
Dr. Andrew Huberman addresses this directly in his conversation with Dr. Marc Brackett: “I think a lot of people default to the assumption that a gratitude practice will make them complacent and stop seeking to reach their goals. But actually the opposite is true. There’s research…where if people do a regular gratitude practice, even five minutes a day, their achievement actually increases as well. So, gratitude and complacency are not in the same bin.”
The data on gratitude practices is striking. Studies show that regular gratitude practice improves:
- Neurotransmitter expression
- Happiness rating scales
- Learning ability
- Resilience to trauma
- Long-term wellbeing
- And yes, achievement levels
Brackett explains why: “If our brains are just endlessly searching for what’s better that’s out there than what I have, we’re not experiencing any gratitude for what we have…I spent a lot of time helping people really understand, like, take a look, like, look where you’re at…Think about what you have the opportunity to learn. Think about the opportunities you have in life. And all of a sudden it’s like, oh yeah, my life is pretty good, as opposed to everyone else’s life is better than mine.”
When you’re grateful for where you are, you have more energy and motivation to grow, not less. You’re not constantly depleting yourself trying to fill an unfillable hole of “not enough.”
From Scarcity to Sufficiency: A New Way Forward
The antidote to the scarcity of “having it all” isn’t giving up on growth. It’s what Harrison calls “New Happy,” which boils down to two steps:
- Be who you are: Accept yourself as you are, flaws and all. Recognize that your self-worth is intrinsic, not earned through achievement.
- Use it to help others: Take your unique gifts and share them with the world.
When you shift your focus from “What can I get?” (scarcity) to “What can I give?” (abundance), the pressure to be perfect dissolves. You no longer need to “have it all” because you realize you are enough, and you have enough to share.
Practical Steps: Cultivating Contentment While Pursuing Growth
Here’s how to practice this balance in your daily life:
1. Practice Daily Gratitude (It Won’t Make You Complacent)
Start each morning with a simple gratitude practice. Before you even get out of bed, identify three things you’re grateful for. This isn’t about forcing false positivity. It’s about recognizing what’s already working in your life.
As the research shows, this won’t make you lazy. It will actually increase your achievement by giving you a foundation of sufficiency to build from.
2. Distinguish Between Contentment and Complacency
Contentment says: “I have enough right now, AND I can continue to grow.”
Complacency says: “This is fine, so I’ll stop trying.”
Contentment is active. It’s appreciating your current life while simultaneously working toward your intrinsic goals. It’s saying “I’m enough as I am” AND “I want to become even more myself.”
3. Audit Your Goals: Extrinsic or Intrinsic?
Harrison recommends asking yourself:
- Did somebody tell me I need to achieve this to be successful?
- Am I using someone else’s benchmark as my own?
- Does this goal come from genuine excitement about the good I can create, or from fear of not measuring up?
If you’re chasing extrinsic goals, you’re more likely to give up AND you’ll be miserable in the process. Find your intrinsic motivation instead: “I always want to tell people, don’t chase an extrinsic motivation that doesn’t belong to you. Find the one that exists within you because it is so much stronger than anything out there.”
4. Practice Self-Acceptance While Working to Improve
This is the paradox of growth in action. When you make a mistake or fall short of a goal:
- First, practice acceptance: “I’m still worthy. This doesn’t change my fundamental value as a person.”
- Then, ask: “What can I learn from this? How can I grow?”
This isn’t letting yourself off the hook. It’s creating the psychological safety that allows real growth to happen.
5. Measure Progress, Not Position
Instead of comparing yourself to others (the scarcity mindset), measure yourself against yourself:
- Am I healthier than last year?
- Are my relationships deeper?
- Am I more skilled in my craft?
- Do I have more to give?
These questions orient you toward personal growth rather than endless comparison.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Here’s what makes the “having it all” mentality so insidious: it masquerades as ambition. We tell ourselves we’re being driven, focused, aspirational. But scratch the surface and you’ll find fear. Fear that we’re not enough. Fear that we’ll miss out. Fear that if we don’t grab everything, we’ll end up with nothing.
Real abundance isn’t about having everything. It’s about recognizing you already have what you need to make a meaningful contribution right now, while still being excited about who you’re becoming.
The scarcity mindset says: “I’m not enough, so I must accumulate more, achieve more, become more.”
The contentment-with-growth mindset says: “I am enough, and I have enough to give, AND I’m excited to keep growing.”
One leaves you perpetually exhausted, miserable, and ironically more likely to give up on your goals.
The other gives you the psychological foundation to actually achieve more, while being happier in the process.
Which mindset are you operating from today?
References
- Stephanie Harrison on Young and Profiting: The Old Model of Happiness Is Dead, Design a Business That Fuels Your Joy
- Harrison, Stephanie. New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That’s Got It Wrong. 2024.
- Dr. Marc Brackett on Huberman Lab: How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence
- Dr. Alia Crum on Huberman Lab: Science of Mindsets for Health & Performance
- Yung Pueblo on Young and Profiting: How Self-Healing Unlocks Success in Business and Relationships
- Lori Gottlieb on On Purpose with Jay Shetty: Stop Mistaking Calm for Boring
- Daniel Pink on The Prof G Pod: How Regret Motivates Us
- Pink, Daniel. The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. 2022.
- Jay Shetty on On Purpose: Constantly Overthinking or Doubting Yourself? (discussing Kristin Neff’s self-compassion research)
- Rachel Hollis on Young and Profiting: Reinvent Yourself After Failure and Build a Business That Lasts
- Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. 2006.
- Neff, Kristin. Research on self-compassion, University of Texas at Austin
Image Prompt
A split composition showing the same person in two states: Left side shows them frantically reaching for multiple glowing objects floating just out of reach (money, trophies, houses, titles) in dark blue shadows, looking exhausted and stressed. Right side shows the same person standing grounded and peaceful in warm golden light, with one hand placed gratefully on their chest (contentment) while the other hand reaches upward toward a single bright star (growth), with a gentle smile. The transition between the two sides features a gradient from cold scarcity blue to warm abundance gold. Above the person’s head on the right, show roots growing down (acceptance) and branches growing up (aspiration) forming a balanced tree. Minimalist, modern digital art with emotional contrast between depletion and fulfillment. Typography: “Enough AND Growing” in elegant modern font.
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