Don’t Put Your Happiness Off Trying To Achieve Your Next Milestone
James Clear’s advice on how to improve your life based on small daily habits.
People associate their happiness based on achieving their goals only. You promise yourself if you achieve a certain goal in your life you will relax and be happy.
Why would you restrict yourself and happiness to the product of your goal? Why not be happy during the process?
A goal-oriented mindset will not leave you happy, because once you achieve your goal you will look for a new one. Your commitment to the process or the system of your life is what will make you happy.
The habits that make you better will make you feel happy. Small habits or a tiny percent of improvement is still an improvement because these habits will accumulate and make a significant change.
But once you reach your goal and get a dopamine hit you suddenly feel empty afterward. Hitting one milestone after the other is a nice feeling but it will leave you empty once you’ve accomplished your desired goal.
Don’t put your happiness off! Keep going and keep accomplishing your goals, but at the same time, enjoy the ride! It’s not always about the end game or the result, it’s about the process!
People always dread going to school and they can’t wait to finish high school. Others, like myself, couldn't wait to graduate from university. I couldn’t wait to finish my degree and start my career, but I forgot to actually enjoy University life and what it had to offer.
Keep trying to accomplish goals and set milestones for yourself, do that by changing small habits in your life. Work on something you’ve always wanted little by little and take it easy!
Daily habits and healthy habits should be fed and watered more than bad habits. As long as you know how to balance your daily life and habits, you are doing okay.
Instead of setting goals and having a goal-oriented mindset, try to have a process-oriented mindset by changing something small every single day that will benefit your future greatly.
A goal-oriented mindest always desires a desperate change in life. What is it that you’re really trying to change? Your love life? Your social life? your financial status? People need to change their daily behaviors and not set goals to change their lives.
A process-oriented mindset focuses on changing one's behavior daily by little progress. It becomes your personality, your lifestyle, not only one goal.
Thank you for reading!
References:
Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits: an easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones. Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
