We all want the best in life. No doubt. But what is the best strategy? Should you hold your happiness hostage while you work and toil to earn it?
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How do we increase the chances of achievement and success in life?
Many individuals in this modern world are so trained on the prize vs punishment system that they emotionally destroy their life by holding their own happiness hostage until some day when they have achieved their desired end.
One of the many problems with that strategy is that once they reach their desired goal and let themselves feel happy, they move the target in the name of progression. They spend only 5-10% of their life being happy.
Here is a graph from my book. As you can see, if you hold out happiness to the end, you only experience it in small chunks in life.
However, if you allow yourself to be happy along the way, you spend the great majority of your life in a positive state of supportive emotions like happiness.
“Wait,” you say? “If I allow myself to be happy now, what motivation do I have to keep myself going?”
I’m glad you asked. This is one of the biggest reasons why people are hesitant to allow themselves to be happy. As it turns out, you just need to expand your vocabulary. There is a difference between emotions and feelings. Happiness is a feeling it’s actually an echo or a memory of an emotion. Emotions are powerful, intense, biochemical experiences. There are actually hormones released in your body when you experience an intense emotion. And it’s brief. Feelings are memories of those intense, but short lived experiences.
So, how does that help you. Happiness is a feeling and joy is an emotion. Use joy, the intense, short-lived emotion, as your reward – it is naturally created as a response to significant achievement in life. You can work toward the huge intense emotion of joy as your reward. But allow yourself to feel happy all along the way as you work toward it. By separating out the two (emotions and feelings) you are able to experience a more happy and fulfilled life, and you still have the motivation to get you to the finish line.
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