One thing I struggled with for a long time while on the path to presence and mindfulness, was how to reconcile my ambition with practicing being in the present moment. I have always had strong ambitions to work hard on problems that caught my attention. I would stress out when I couldn’t solve the problem. After stressing out too much for many years, this sent me in the other direction, which was to be passive and try not to care about anything. I always wondered, is there a way to reconcile the 2 so that I can be ambitious and not become stressed out. I think for top performers, this is one of the key aspects that they my strive to reconcile into their lives. I have found an answer that seems to work for me and it sums down to: “do the best you can and no more”. It’s fine to work hard for the variables you can control, and then just ignore the variables you cannot control. You can put great effort into writing a book and then publish it, but you cannot control if it will be well received. The end result is usually something you cannot control, so do not worry about that .