Happiness Not Being Contingent On Monetary Goals

This week I want to talk about something that I have been studying recently and it has to do with overall happiness. I just finished a great book called "Solve For Happy" and it was one of the best books I've read so far this year.

In the book, something that stood out to me was the fact that success is not a prerequisite to happiness. This is something that is not talked about very often and I feel that it needs to be addressed.

I actually have a very relatable story regarding this situation that had to do with setting and achieving monetary goals last year. I had this feeling that once I hit a certain number all of my issues would go away (not true lol) and I'd be able to be "proud of my self". This all had to do with ego and that is always a terrible situation because the ego is never the answer. I got so focused on achieving the goals I decided that happiness was not very important so once I achieve them I felt completely empty and did not know what to do because I thought once I hit the goals I would then be happy.

After doing a bunch of reading, reflecting and studying I realized that if you don't always have something you're working towards, it's a recipe to be unhappy because humans are actually goal-seeking creatures. The reason we become unhappy sometimes is that every day you get up and you don't really have something you or chasing down so you feel like nothing is that important. Looking back, I was actually probably more happy in the process of chasing down my desires as opposed to actually achieving them and being "on top of the mountain" for a few days.

For me, happiness is found in the process and it's certainly NOT contingent on hitting monetary goals.

I hope the readers of this can learn the lesson just by reading and understanding this post so you don't have to learn the hard way!