Henry David Thoreau and the idea of success we forget
Notes on giants - Number 31
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🏷️ Categories: Life lessons, Minimalism, Happiness, Time.
No one told us that success might go unnoticed.
We live optimizing a biography we were told we should already be building at our age: professional achievements, income, reputation… All measurable, all comparable to other lives. And yet, the data reveal a paradox: in developed countries, once a certain threshold is reached, more income and more education stop translating into greater well-being (Easterlin et al., 2010).
Trained to keep moving forward, but not necessarily to live better.
This question—what it means to live better—is not new. In the mid-19th century, Henry David Thoreau decided to take it seriously. He withdrew for two years to a small cabin by a lake to observe the world with less noise and to see, firsthand, what remained of life once the superfluous was stripped away.
From that experience came his book Walden.
A book that is an invitation to live intentionally before life slips away.
If you also feel that existential fatigue, that sense of doing “the right thing” without feeling good about it, this text is for you. We will explore Thoreau’s view of success: an intimate and countercultural perspective, based on coherence with your values, a minimalist life, and a rhythm measured in depth rather than speed.
Perhaps, in the end, success is not something you achieve.
Perhaps it is simply something you feel, when life, on the inside, finally fits.
1. Success is living in harmony with yourself
“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet herbs, if it is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is success.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
True success is inner coherence.
For Thoreau, success has nothing to do with what you produce, accumulate, or display; success lies in how you inhabit your own days. This view aligns with modern findings: scientific studies that followed people over the course of their lives found that alignment between personal values and actual behavior is more strongly related to well-being than achieved accomplishments (Sheldon & Elliot, 1999).
If you have to pretend in order to get there, that place is not yours.
“If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius—which are certainly true—he will see that they do not lead to extremes or madness; and yet that is the very path along which he advances. No one ever followed his genius and was deceived.”
Here appears his idea of the inner “genius.”
A little voice impossible to silence, one that reminds us again and again of what we truly love—and which we often ignore due to the demands of what we “should be doing.” That is the voice that should guide us. Studies have shown that goals pursued due to social pressure create more anxiety and less satisfaction than those chosen freely, even when they are achieved (Ryan & Deci, 2000).
Success has more to do with not betraying yourself than with standing out.
It is an internal matter, not an external one, as Warren Buffett rightly said.
2. Simplify so the essential can emerge
“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Simplifying makes life breathable.
For Thoreau, complexity is interference—it prevents us from enjoying life. And today we know this well. When the environment becomes too dense (too many options, plans, expectations, goals…), the mind becomes overloaded.
At the level of choice, excess has a clear cost. The more options we have, the less satisfied we feel and the more we suffer from analysis paralysis, even when we choose well (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000). That is FOMO. But there is an even more revealing finding when it comes to pace of life. Kasser and Sheldon (2009) studied what was more strongly related to well-being: earning more money or feeling that one has enough time to live.
The result was clear: people who perceived themselves as “time-rich.”
Once basic material needs are met, additional income barely improves well-being, whereas the perception of being rich in time does—and dramatically so.
Feeling rich in time is the greatest fortune.
Spend a week reflecting on this idea. Each day, eliminate one source of noise or one area that steals time without giving anything back: an object, a commitment, an app, a habit… Then observe what changes you notice in your pace of life and mental clarity.
When there is space in your schedule, space begins to bloom within you.
3. Kindness as an investment that never fails
“All our life is astonishingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Kindness is solid ground; it supports everything else.
Thoreau intuited something that is now proven: engaging in altruistic acts of kindness and volunteering reduces negative emotions and provides a strong sense of meaning in life (Thoits & Hewitt, 2001). You do not only improve the outer world—you improve your own life.
Helping someone restores a feeling that is hard to obtain in any other way.
Each day, try to perform at least one act of kindness, no matter how small and even if no one sees it. Observe how that gesture returns a sense of coherence and inner calm—the sense that you are building the identity you want for yourself.
Nothing you achieve by betraying yourself feels good at the end of the day.
“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away it may be.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
This is the final reflection: the obsession with speed.
While writing this text, I could not stop thinking about Perfect Days. In another letter I explained how that film changed my life, precisely because it reminded me—with its calm—that a simple life, coherent with oneself and kind to others, can be a very elevated form of success.
Perhaps that was the point all along…
Learning to live without haste, without masks, and without unnecessary noise that distracts us.
Want to go deeper? Here are 3 related ideas:
✍️ Your turn: What has your inner voice been asking of you for a long time that you keep postponing out of inertia or fear?
💭 Quote of the day: “In proportion as you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
See you next time! 👋
References 📚
Easterlin, R. A., McVey, L. A., Switek, M., Sawangfa, O., & Zweig, J. S. (2010). The happiness–income paradox revisited. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, 107(52), 22463-22468. URL
Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 79(6), 995-1006. URL
Kasser, T., & Sheldon, K. M. (2008). Time Affluence as a Path toward Personal Happiness and Ethical Business Practice: Empirical Evidence from Four Studies. Journal Of Business Ethics, 84(S2), 243-255. URL
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78. URL
Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 76(3), 482-497. URL
Thoits, P. A., & Hewitt, L. N. (2001). Volunteer Work and Well-Being. Journal Of Health And Social Behavior, 42(2), 115. URL
Thoreau, H. D. Walden.
The conection between Thoreau's minimalism and Kasser & Sheldon's research on time affluence is brilliant. That shift from optimizing external metrics to cultivating internal coherence totally reframes what success even means. I tried this myself last spring by cutting three recurring commitments that were dragging me down, and honestly the mental spaciousness that followed was way more valuble than any promotion could've been.