What is the fuel that drives me forward? Here is an important but incomplete clue:
Anything that creates a private challenge and tests you to control it before it controls you.
Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable, by Tim Grover, p. 85.
Elsewhere in the chapter he notes that big time achievers crash across the line for their specific thing, without fear. That’s why big time achievers so often experience scandals. (And, at least outwardly, they don’t seem to care about scandals. Cf Bill Clinton.)
Not that I want scandals. I care deeply about living the good life, as better described by Marcus Aurelius and others.
But Marcus Aurelius clearly was a big time achiever. He had something driving him, with positive output and results for the man himself. Clearly one can achieve massively without scandal, for whatever definition of “achieve” you choose.