Casey Goldstein reminded me I will never perfectly achieve mental health. Thank the lord.
I’m very much not an organized, color-coded, indexed binder kind of person. I routinely depart the expected path to follow my own drum; however, my life has been quietly defined by setting goals and accomplishing them. I am usually the only one keeping score. Casey’s TEDx talk about his disastrous 10-day meditation retreat in the Dubai desert completely dismantled that thinking, and I’m grateful for it.
Casey discovered what I’ve been slowly learning: “The goal cycle, the thing that I had long viewed as the key to success in every aspect of my life, doesn’t work for happiness.” Watching him describe his methodical approach to curing his depression – researching vipassana meditation like it was the ultimate mental health boot camp, grinding through heat stroke and food poisoning because that’s what “pushing yourself” looks like – felt uncomfortably familiar. How many times had I just set a goal and gutted my way through to achieving it?
A lot. I had done it a lot.
The moment that stopped me cold was when Casey stood in that courtyard on day 10, surrounded by people crying tears of joy and calling their families, feeling absolutely nothing. He’d done everything “right” – completed the impossible challenge, pushed through every obstacle – and still felt miserable. That’s when he realized something profound: “The more we pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied we become, as pursuing something reinforces the fact that we lack it in the first place.”
It brought back so many memories of feeling utterly hollow in accomplishment.
Casey’s insight about the backwards law, borrowed from Alan Watts, explains why our achievement-oriented culture fails so spectacularly at happiness. Every motivational video that screams “never be satisfied” is actually programming us for perpetual dissatisfaction. We’re chasing something that runs away the harder we pursue it.
What Casey offers instead is both radical and practical: “You give up your attachment to the result… we’re shifting that satisfaction or fulfillment to the process of achieving our goals.” This isn’t about lowering standards or giving up ambition. It’s about finding satisfaction in the daily practice rather than banking everything on some future payoff. His transition from that clinical depression-tracking spreadsheet to a “cute little notebook” perfectly captures this shift from optimization to gentleness.
“I will never fix my mental health. I will never be eternally happy, but instead of that freaking me out, it’s a relief.” That line hit me like a revelation. Casey gave himself permission to stop performing his way to wellness and just show up each day, doing the small work of feeling slightly better without needing it to lead to some ultimate transformation.
Casey’s idea worth spreading is that satisfaction isn’t something we achieve – it’s something we practice. His final principle – “Be open to anything but be attached to nothing” – feels like the perfect framework for someone who still wants to grow and achieve but refuses to make happiness conditional on specific outcomes.
Casey’s willingness to share such a vulnerable journey, complete with that embarrassing spreadsheet and the deflating anticlimax of his “breakthrough” moment, reminded me that some of our most important insights come not from succeeding at what we set out to do, but from having the courage to admit when our entire approach was wrong from the start.
Thank you, Casey, for showing me that satisfaction isn’t something we achieve – it’s something we practice. Now I just must avoid the trap of optimizing my satisfaction practice loop.
a candle, unlit 