When I get that personal record I’ll be happy. When I get that promotion and exceed expectations I’ll be happy. When I lose those 10 lbs I’ll be happy. You’re following me. You’ve been there with me right? The promise that once we hit our goal at the end of this month for, keeping our focus for 31 days, it will make us somehow the happiest person on the planet. Only to realize, it didn’t once we got there.
Instead our focus needs to be in the moment, while we’re in it. We can be so focused on the light at the end of the tunnel, we miss out on the leaps we’re making along the way. We don’t celebrate those new milestones, new skills, and new us as we go. We just keep going. Feeling good in the now is where we should be. We’ll have perspective on what it took to get there. Everything else we do, will always come from that feeling.
I didn’t understand this concept at first until I studied it more. I learned that happy moments in the now as we go along release/allow good chemicals dopamine and serotonin to flood into our brains. These chemicals not only make us feel incredible, they open us up to learn more. They literally boost parts of our brain responsible for learning. Incredibly valuable to learn what is helping us win in the moment, learn about it as we go, and warehouse for later use.
I found out in a few studies that I read on happiness that it’s happiness that leads to achieving in nearly every aspect of our lives from our very jobs to our relationships to our most sacred social circles. Tapping into it we can learn a lot from it. We just have to keep a focus in the moment to find it, not at the end. I can’t imagine how we’d feel if we expected our true happiness to be at the end and then we never make it. Does that mean we’ll never be happy? Insanity.
The vast majority of us think that success precedes happiness. Time to change it up. Be present. Look for it, feel it, and then learn from it.
✌🏻 Shawn
Welcome to In-Between the Pages 