Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy, and easy life, without any worries, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect be popular, and well-respected.
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If someone asks you, What do you want out of life, it’s so universal that anyone may have a hard time answering the question. These aren’t just any questions. They can help us determine where we should invest our energy to lead the life we want. A more interesting start is a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for, what are you willing to sacrifice to reach that goal.
Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial independence — but not everyone wants to suffer through 70-hour work weeks, long commutes, obnoxious paperwork, to navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies, and the emotionless confines of an infinite cubicle workload. People want to get rich without the risk, without the sacrifice, without the delayed gratification.
We can say the same about an awesome relationship — not everyone is willing to go the extra mile, through the tough conversations, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings, and the emotional distraught to get there. And so couples wonder and wonder What if?” for years and years until the question morphs from What if? into Was that it, Was that the end?
All of this is because happiness requires struggles. The struggle always is about how we decide to handle the negative. You can try to avoid negative experiences, you cannot hide it, you have to try to overcome it and that is the long pursuit towards happiness.
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What determines your success isn’t What do you want to enjoy? The question is, What pain do you want to sustain? The quality of life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life, and the result would be a more meaningful life.
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Purpose of Life
For those who feel that their life is without purpose, they have yet to find the ember that fuels their goal. To say you feel purposeless because you’re not as accomplished in your profession as you dreamed of being. You could theoretically derive meaning from other endeavors, like relationships, volunteer work, travel, or creative activities, to name just a few. It may also be that the things you already do are meaningful. This is what the drive of life is all about.
Anyone who believes life can be meaningless also assumes the importance of value. In other words, if you think life can be meaningless, then you believe that there is such a thing as a goal. You’re not neutral on the topic. As such, we can also increase or decrease the value of our lives with practice, effort, action, and thought. “I can ruin or build friendships, upgrade or downgrade my health.
For a life to be valuable, or meaningful, it needn’t be unique. Believing that specialness is tied to meaning is another mistake many people make as this leads some people to unnecessarily see their lives as insufficiently meaningful and to miss ways of enhancing meaning in life.
Things change all the time: We move, meet new people, have fresh experiences, encounter new ideas, and age. As we change, our values transform, and so does our sense of purpose, which we must continually work on.
At the end of the day, what makes a human life have meaning or significance is not the mere living of a life, but reflecting on the living of a life. Pursuing ends and goals — fitness, family, financial success, academic accomplishment — is all fine and good, yet that’s not meaningful as by reflecting on why we pursue those goals is significant, as unexamined life is not worth living, how are we different than a machine?
Many of us strive for perfection to achieve the perfect life — we desire to push ourselves to be our best. But to be truly happy, you must embrace the imperfection that is part of life. Perfection is impossible, and holding ourselves and others to these standards is futile. We will always end up feeling let down. Accept that life is imperfect and recognize that there is beauty and grace in that imperfection, rather than a perfect life, why not the content and happy life.
Our thoughts and feelings often revolve around the past or the future. Reality is what you are experiencing in this very moment; what you are going through right now. Sometimes we want to escape that reality. But when we stay in the present, we are fully engaged in our lives. Endeavor to live in the moment, and you’ll begin to have a deeper appreciation for your life.
One of the best things you can do for yourself is to boost your happiness is to just be yourself. That means not being dependent on the approval of others, but accepting yourself for who you are. Spend some time getting to know yourself. What defines you? What do you believe in? Who are you, underneath it all? You have to search for ways to be comfortable in your skin.
Of course constantly worrying about everything creates toxic anxiety, where your mind is steeped in negative, spiraling thoughts. Worries plague your mind and make you afraid and apprehensive about things you often have no control over. Sometimes we believe that if we worry enough, we can keep bad things from happening. But the truth is, you cannot experience joy or even contentment when you’re consumed by worry.
Happiness is an intangible feeling of safety and satisfaction with one’s life. There are so many different ways to become a happy person and they all work for different people. Music, pets, purpose in life, and relationships all can help a person achieve their goals of happiness.
People need to realize that they can find purpose in their lives and become the best person they can be. Everyone should feel satisfied with their lives, feel needed and feel loved by others. Having friends, family, and meaningful relationships all can help people achieve their goals in happiness and the process discover their meaning of a meaningful life.
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You and is republished here with permission from the author.
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