The Happiness Trade Off
Its common belief that to achieve something substantial in life you must give up a lot of your current happiness.
The logic seems to be that once you have achieved your goal then you will be showered with great happiness and it will all be worth it.
That’s a model that has worked out for a lot of people, but what’s been often found is that after achieving a major life goal, people feel deflated and lost.
They have to chase after the next big goal to feel a sense of meaning to their life.
This can get quite overwhelming and exhausting. That is why we always advocate systems vs goals.
James Clear is the author of best selling blockbuster book Atomic Habits. He is also a big proponent of the ‘systems are better than goals philosophy.’
In this article from his blog, he proposes a different formula to sustain prolonged happiness. He calls it “Happy and Driven”.
Its an interesting read and takes down this notion that we must be unhappy in the present to be successful in the future. He says we must love the practice of what we do irrespective of the goals that it helps us achieve.
The happiness that we derive from being driven towards the practice of an art is way more valuable and perennial than tying our happiness down to a huge monolithic infrequent goal.
Checkout the article —
Do You Have to be Unhappy Now if You Want to be Successful Later? | James Clear
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