Happiness Is the Path: Stop Chasing, Start Living

Welcome back, everybody.

Today, I wanted to talk about something that recently resurfaced, and I think it's very important.

And what it's about is achieving goals for the purpose of finding happiness.

Because we often equate the two as being one in the same.

Think about it for a moment.

What was the last thing that you really wanted and you achieved it? Was it a new car? A promotion? A certain amount of money in your bank account? An addition on your house? I'll bet you worked for it very hard for a long time and you finally got it.

And I don't doubt that it brought you happiness.

But here's the thing.

When you think about it, How long did it last? A few weeks maybe? Until the car just became a car? Until the promotion just became more work and a new title? Something happens very quickly.

The happiness goes away and something else moves in and it's the next thing you want.

And it's greater than the last thing because you set a new baseline.

So the next goal has to be bigger and you spend months or years chasing something that may make you happy for a couple of weeks.

You achieve it.

You leave it.

The next thing moves in.

So if you live to be about 80 years old and let's say you're highly productive for 50 of those years and you achieve life changing goals.

And I think it's safe to say you won't achieve a life saving goal every year.

So let's say you achieve 35 life changing goals.

And I think I'm being generous with 35.

That's a lot.

I mean how many life changing things do we really have they take multiple years to work towards and then we achieve them and we get a month of happiness before we want the next thing so if you do the math out of your 27,000 days that you're going to be alive 1,050 of them will be happy If your happiness is derived from goals, wanting, chasing, you didn't achieve happiness.