Happiness is the wrong goal....
/Often when I ask my coaching clients what success means to them, I get a version of the following.
"I want to wake up feeling happy every day."
I can certainly understand the idea behind wanting to achieve that goal, especially if you have been in a place of depression or anxiety for a while. However, those patterns can leave you feeling dull and numb inside, and you want to feel the other side, NORMAL!
However, happiness is an emotion that will come and go throughout your life.
There are, of course, actions and habits that you can implement that will often elicit more happy moments, but it's impossible to feel happy all of the time.
Let’s repeat that: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FEEL HAPPY ALL OF THE TIME.
If constant happiness is your goal, you will often consciously or not demonize anything other than it, which ultimately puts you farther from it.
This creates unrealistic expectations of how you believe your life “should be” which can exacerbate if you view and compare your life to other people. This problem didn’t use to be as big only a decade ago when social media and the internet weren’t as prominent. We used to call it keeping up with the Jones’s, and it was limited to our neighbors or co-workers, but now that comparison extends to everyone with a social media presence.
It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of not being enough.
Imagine a scale of emotions with the saddest, most uncomfortable at one end and the ecstatic, elated at the other. Let's call it a 1-10.
This scale works in polarity, so when you avoid the "negative" lower numbers, you also avoid the higher "positive numbers"
This leaves you operating somewhere between a 4-6, which can feel safe and secure but also tremendously unmotivating.
If you want to feel the highs, you need to build the courage to feel the lows.
If feeling the lows is too scary or painful at the moment, consider finding some external help and support that can offer you a process for how to handle those difficult emotions.
With time and focused attention, they won't carry as much weight in your mind, and you will begin to expand your range in both directions, which will allow you to genuinely feel the highs as well.
It boils down to this question:
How honest can I be with myself about how I am truly feeling.
THAT is the goal.
It takes a lot of practice, especially in this society that makes a lot of money trying to tell you how to think and feel.
If you would like guidance turning back towards yourself, please reach out to me regarding coaching. I work with people on a 1:1 basis, and lead Men’s Groups all designed around helping people become the best versions of THEMSELVES, not what others tell them to be.