Everyone wants a life that feels good,
but if you haven't noticed
creating a life that feels good
is a lot easier said than it is in practice.
Now, obviously, for all people there are some ingredients
that add up to a happy life for all people.
But, for the majority of people
the ingredients that make up a happy life
are completely unique to the person themselves.
That being said,
I can absolutely say that there are some things
which add up to an unhappy life.
And chief among them
is living according to strategy.
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If You Want To Be Happy, Don't Do This.
I want you to imagine a person in a company
who is trying to climb the corporate ladder.
Chances are this person is gonna do a lot of things
that they don't necessarily wanna do, just to get what they want.
When we approach getting what we want in this way
we're basically playing a game that is a means to an end.
Where the means justify the end.
When we're approaching getting what we want in this way
where the ends justify the means,
what we do is bulldoze the parts of ourselves
that don't want to and don't enjoy doing something.
We play a zero sum game with those parts within ourselves.
We do things we don't like to do and don't wanna do
in order to get what we want.
Most of us will find ourselves in scenarios like this on planet earth
at some point.
For example, let's say that you want a driver's license;
Chances are you'll go stand in line for hours at the DMV
because you want a driver's license.
And the reason that that type of experience
doesn't destroy your life is because we only do it once in a few years.
What if you have to do that every single day?
What if your whole life
was just doing something you didn't want to do,
so that you could get something you wanted?
Chances are your life would be unbearable.
But here's the bad news,
this is how the majority of people on planet earth
are actually living.
The vast majority of people on planet earth
spend their time, I mean the vast majority of their time,
doing something that they don't wanna do
in order to get something that they want.
This is the story of the majority of people's careers on the planet.
They do a job they don't wanna do
so that they can get what they want which is money.
This is a recipe for absolute disaster.
People choose to settle in this way
because they have a belief
that it is impossible to live in any other way.
Most of us were raised this way in our childhoods.
We were trained that in order to get something we want
we have to do some things that we don't want
We think this is the way to live life.
But it is absolutely impossible to live in a happy way
if this is the strategy that we are taking
towards getting the things that we want in life.
All this being said, I understand that some of us
are in much more difficult positions than others
relative to doing things we want in order to get what we want.
I'm not completely ignorant to that.
But it doesn't change the fact
that if we want a happy life
we can't live a life
where the means justify the ends.
I'm going to give you an analogy;
Let's say that you want to make it to the ocean
but you are convinced that the only way to get to the ocean
is to walk through an industrial waste dump.
In a land called: "I don't like industrial waste dumps".
You're gonna spend hours
walking through this industrial waste dump
to get to the ocean.
The first time you do this you're gonna feel like its worth it.
The second time its gonna feel less worth it,
third time its gonna feel even less worth it.
Eventually, its gonna not feel worth it at all.
What you're gonna realize is that you've actually spent
the majority of time unhappy
because you're spending more time
going through the industrial waste dump
in getting to the ocean,
than you are enjoying the actual ocean.
So then obviously,
the means are not gonna justify the ends.
Now this, is a human psychology principle.
Once you get what you want,
the means will feel less and less like they are justified by the ends.
If what we want is a happy life
we have got to find a way
that the means that we use to get to what we want,
we enjoy as much as getting to what we want.
This is super important,
so I'll give you an analogy;
Yet again with the ocean:
You wanna get to the ocean,
you don't like industrial waste dumps,
maybe you like the desert.
What you've got to do is to try to find a desert road
that takes you to the ocean.
So you enjoy getting to the ocean
not just being at the ocean.
Now I would dare to say
that the most successful people on this earth,
in terms of living life itself,
approach this with an even more aggressive strategy;
Instead of finding a means
that they enjoy to get to the ends that they enjoy,
they find a means that they enjoy
even more than getting to the ends.
For example,
they want money just like all people,
but they find a way of making money
that they love even more than getting the money,
This is why the best questions that you can ask yourself are:
What would I do if I never got paid a single dime to do it?
and If someone gave me 5 million dollars today
What would I do with my time now that I no longer have to do anything
so that I have money?
It's usually going to be the same answer for both questions.
Get creative about how to use that answer
as a means to making money.
It is simply your mind telling you that it is impossible
to make money doing these things.
I can personally tell you, that a long time ago
if somebody answered these questions with:
"Well, what I love to do with my time is eat and travel",
somebody who is in their "right mind" would say:
"There's no way in hell you'd make money by doing that",
but that was before food journalism was invented as a career.
People are so limited
by their ideas about what is and isn't possible
and people are even more limited
by the idea that they couldn't possibly be the one
to create some possibility that didn't exist yet.
If we meet our needs and try to achieve our wants
in roundabout ways as so to get to what we want,
it's inevitable that we're gonna end up unhappy
and end up damaging our relationships.
This failing strategy, is in fact, the heart of manipulation.
To understand more about this watch my video titled:
"Meet your needs"
We use this strategy relative to all kinds of things.
Not just when it comes to money.
I'll give you some examples:
We volunteer to do something we hate,
just because we want the praise that we create from someone.
We work a job we hate in order to get money.
We don't follow our dreams,
instead we stick close to home with one of our parents
and live our lives the way they want us to live it
so that we can get a senseof approval from them.
We spend years in college
studying something we don't even have passion for
so we can have the credibility and accolades.
We quit our job and become a stay-at-home mom
so that we can see ourselves as a good mom.
Or the opposite,
we want to be a stay-at-home mom,
but we get a job instead,
so that we can get societal esteem.
We stay in a relationship that's abusive
in order to get security.
The questions to ask yourself are:
What do I really want?
What am I currently doing in order to get what I want?
What are the ways that I am doing what I don't want to do,
in order to get what I want?
There is no way to maintain this style of living life
without major consequences
and without creating an unhappy life as a result.
What we must do is adopt the strategy
of finding ways to do what we love
in order to get what we want.
Have a good week :)
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com