Happiness was never meant to be the goal.
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Over the years, I’ve asked many people – prospects, clients, audiences, family members, anyone who would listen – THE important question:
What do you want from life?
The varied answers all come back to the same theme – happiness.
Essentially, we want a “good feeling”.
For years, I’ve accepted this response and then moved on to the daunting task of helping others achieve this elusive feeling.
Lately, I’ve found myself pushing back.
I no longer believe that happiness is the ideal end goal for 2 reasons:
- The feeling doesn’t last very long. We only get it in short bursts.
- Because of #1, chasing these short bursts becomes an obsession similar to craving the “high” we get from drugs. (It really all comes down to dopamine as we learned on this podcast: The Molecule of More with Daniel Lieberman from Success 2.0.)
Now, I’m challenging my clients (and myself) toward a different answer.
I’ve been convicted that instead of chasing happiness we should all be focused on the only thing that matters – observing the present moment.
This focus will deliver the ultimate goal that brings us lasting joy – equanimity.
Consider these words from Sharon Salzberg:
“Equanimity is a spacious stillness of the mind, a radiant calm that allows us to be present fully with all the different changing experiences that constitute our world and our lives.”
One of the side benefits of living in the now is that we learn to accept whatever exists.
Paradoxically, this presence of mind delivers a lot more… happiness.
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—CJ McClanahan
Speaker | Advisor | Recovering Overachiever
CJ McClanahan
