Pursuing happiness
"Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor."
Albert Ellis, Michael Abrams, Lidia Dengelegi
The premise of this post is based on a quote from the movie The Pursuit of Happyness:
“It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?”
Personally, I don’t believe that happiness is something that we can never actually have but I do believe that, however happy we currently are, we can always be happier.
To me, I look at my life as a series of moments. I can consider myself “happy” one moment and 15 minutes later can be crushed, but what makes life great for me is that there is always that pursuit. If someone asked me if I was content with my life, I would say “no” without hesitation. To me, I know there are better things out there; I know there is more than what I have. There is always another perspective to view from, there is always something new I can learn and there is always a future experience that will shape me into a better person.
Everyday I learn things that I don’t enjoy and every day I learn things that I love. Even if it means that I didn’t like a movie or loved a new kind of food, I learned something that I will take forward with me. I wrote about the small things a while back and I will repeat what I said then: they get me through my day. When I learn new things that contribute to who I am and have a better understanding of what I want, it is exciting. They might seem small, but when they all work together, it is quite remarkable the impact they have on your life.
What I have found most challenging is working toward some of my long term goals.
I’m a sports guy, so I am going to use a sports example. In any sport, when a reporter asks an athlete where their mind is and how they feel about their chances at a championship the response is something along the lines of: “Our focus is on the next game, we aren’t looking at the championship right now, 100% of our efforts will be to come out and play our best for the next game.” Obviously, this is the coach speaking through their players, instilling a mindset that will put them in the best possible position to get to a championship one day. Until recently, I always just looked at this as a way for coaches and teams to make sure that they give every last piece of effort they can in each and every game. Essentially, to make sure that no other team can come in and steal a game from them because they were looking down the line. But recently, I think the rationale is a little different. Granted, it is to win that game, but mentally, it is deeper than that.
I have been working at my job for around 2 ½ years now. When I started, it was all about getting promoted. I knew what I wanted. I knew what I was working for. I knew what it took to get there and I had a time table in my head for when I was going to be promoted. And 2 years later, only 1 month after I had planned from the day that I started (hey, nobody’s perfect!), I received my promotion. In that moment, I was happy. I was extremely happy.
Momentum and confidence. Before my promotion, this is what I had and this is what coaches are instilling in their players. Every game they win they feel better about themselves, they feel better about the program and they gain a momentum of invincibility and confidence. At work, to me, every project was a game and every time I “won,” it boosted my confidence of what I was capable of, what I could do and what I could take on. It is amazing what the human body can accomplish with a certain mindset. I live with a chip on my shoulder; I dare you to tell me that I can’t do something. Doubt me and by God, I will prove you wrong. I live for those moments.
Those moments gave me a mental mindset that I could do anything, and with that mindset, I took on projects that I probably never should have touched, cranked out work that pushed me past what I had ever thought was possible and worked so hard that I could barely see the whites of my eyes. And I loved it, honestly. Every time I saw a happy client, every time I saw someone’s eyes light up with the final product, it made it all worth it. It made me want to take on another project; it made me want to raise the bar even further because I could see the pride in the people around me.
I soon realized something though, all of my drive at work, all of my motivation, was used to pursue that time date in an effort to feel the happiness that I felt the day they told me I was being promoted. But what I never realized was, without each one of those projects, without all those “wins,” I am honestly not sure if I would have been able to do all of what I was able to accomplish. If I took a step back, yes, I was happy with my promotion but it was every moment along the way that kept me moving towards it and the little wins that I have had over the past 2 years mean so much to me and shaped how I look at this world. After I was promoted, I was no different a person than the day before I was promoted. I admit that mentally, I am more confident and now I feel like I can accomplish and do even more, but that is just mental – I was always able to do it, all I received was assurance from another person. And while this outside assurance is great and it helped, I didn’t need it. Everything that I am striving for in life is at my own finger tips. I know I am destined for great things and please, I dare you to doubt me.
In the Declaration of Independence, I think Thomas Jefferson knew it is actually the pursuit of happiness that leads us to great things. We all have goals that we want to accomplish in life and we are all at different places along the spectrum of happiness. But know this – no matter how happy you are right now, you can be happier. As you pursue this happiness, make sure that you start to look at the journey that leads you closer because you only have one life and you only have so many moments within that life. Make the most of them, understand how they are what make your dreams possible and how ultimately, that all of these moments of happiness are what allow for you to become everything you want to be.