Everyone wants to be happy, right?

We spend so much time thinking about what will make us happy. The right person, the job, the goal weight, the house, the money. We tell ourselves that once we get there, we’ll finally be happy.

We have a formula in our heads:

Work hard + get the outcome you want = happiness.

But what if we have it wrong?

What if the formula is actually:

Work hard + be happy along the way = a positive outcome.

I’m not saying being happy guarantees we’ll get everything we want. Life doesn’t work that way. But what if how we feel while working toward something matters just as much as whether we get it?

Think about how often we postpone happiness. We’ll enjoy life when the hard part is over. We’ll relax when the project is finished. We’ll feel good about ourselves when we reach a certain goal.

In the meantime, we’re living as if the good part hasn’t started yet.

What if it already has?

We can want a better job and still appreciate the work we do today. We can want a relationship and still enjoy the life we’re living right now. We can pursue a goal without making our happiness dependent on achieving it.

There’s a big difference between believing something will add to our happiness and believing we can’t be happy without it.

One lets us enjoy the journey. The other keeps moving the finish line.

So let’s keep dreaming, setting goals and working toward the things we want. But let’s stop sacrificing the present for the promise of a better future.

Maybe the secret isn’t getting what we want so we can finally be happy. Maybe it’s learning to be happy while we work toward what we want.

Who knows? We might discover that the life we’ve been working so hard to get to is one we’ve been living all along.

XX,

MG