Is dissatisfaction fuel for achievement?

I love to read biographies and particularly those of hard-driven (but not necessarily successful) people. In many instances, what I take away from my reading is that dissatisfaction is a powerful driver in getting people to reaching out for more and achieving much more than individuals that are just content of their station in life. 

I certainly can relate to dissatisfaction. As a child, I was reared poor, I didn’t like it nor did I want to experience that condition for the rest of my life. This unpleasant feeling made me look for ways to escape it and find new avenues that would offer me more opportunities and deliver me from the perceived injustice of my situation, that was mostly related to a much lower position in society.

I don’t know for sure, but can’t say that my two siblings had the same aversion for their personal conditions or were more amenable to accepting their reality than me. What I can say is that, from the get go, my main driver was to escape my condition and improve my material status, because poverty, the alternative, was unacceptable to me. 

It wasn’t about climbing the social ladder, but simply about improving my economic condition. As time passed, markers other than poverty appeared and involved a host of other values that became desirable in comparison to my ways of doing or thinking, whether they were cultural or behavioral. Eventually, when satisfaction has replaced frustration, achievement finds other sources that can be linked to a longing for equity, balance, efficiency or even competitiveness. 

Dissatisfaction was the original trigger but over time lost its importance and eventually faded out altogether...