Consistency and discipline is the name of the game. Or put differently, there are very few rich people who didn’t work hard. And there aren’t any successful ones. To be satisfied you have to put in the work, make it through the struggle. I once heard Brendon Burchard say at a conference, “you have to embrace the struggle.” It’s also known as ‘embrace the suck’ by former military personnel. Right now I’m reading “Flow” by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and the message seems similar. When we devote our whole selves to something difficult, we dissociate our ego, at least transiently. We are the universe contributing. We are the universe organizing itself.

We all die. Our purpose may simply be to serve as a vessel for our genes, to pass them on to the next generation before our fragile bodies become dust. But in that moment of spark, in our lifetime of light, we can move. We can dance with the other molecules in this particle soup, and influence and change them, and disappear amongst all the other atoms and cells.

I feel at peace when I’m writing, or observing my surroundings and taking photos in silence, or when deeply absorbed in an interesting conversation with an interesting person. It’s not a euphoric feeling, but a calming, a quieting of all the noise, a simple experience of being.

And it’s so hard to get there most days. My brain tricks itself into reading the news or checking email or tidying up the living room. After all, I should be a good husband and father, and do those dishes and fold that laundry—right? Anything to maintain the monkey maze mind. That’s where the struggle and suck come in. We have to tolerate it in order to start. We have to resist the more, the distraction, the pleasure. Because the experiencing peace vastly outweighs any guilty pleasures.

We all fight this battle, whether we are Jeff Bezos or the poorest child in Pakistan. Despite the rife inequality in the world, there are some things all humans share. The same basic wants and needs. The same existential fear and dread of death and the beyond. The same wonder about our place in the universe. The same questions about meaning. And the silent battle of accepting less in the moment in order to achieve that ever elusive peace.

We all share these afflictions and desires. We all share the same purpose. How incredible, and how beautiful that can be.