Do you know the feeling of chasing a dream just to realize that, when you reach it, it doesn’t make you that much happier after all? Or that your happiness only lasts for a few moments and then your life gets back to square one?
That’s pretty common, and it happens for two reasons:
- The dream you went after was not an authentic desire of yours, but rather something you thought you should have in life
- You fell for the biggest misunderstanding about happiness, which is that you can only be happy once you have/be that
Authentic Dreams VS What Others Say You Should Want
Our capitalistic society is based on making you desire stuff so that you can buy more and make the economy flourish.
There’s a billion-dollar industry employing the brightest and better-educated talents to manipulate you into thinking you need their product or service.
The ads’ algorithm of your favorite social media is designed to predict what you might want next, and bombard you with seducing messages crafted to make you believe that you’re lacking something and that their product is what you need to make your life better.
Ads are literally designed to sell you a dream.
Our upbringing and cultural background also play a massive part in conditioning us into thinking that we need certain things in order to be happy.
You might have grown up thinking that you must get married and start a family and you won’t feel “complete” until you do.
Or you might think that your dream is to one day run your family’s business and bring it to the next level because your father always counted on the fact that you would one day do that and you don’t want to disappoint him.
Very often the things that we think we want and the dreams we have, are not our own. They are someone else’s dream or someone else’s expectation of how we should live our life.
If you mistake these dreams for your own desires, you set yourself up for a miserable life in which you risk never knowing what true happiness feels like.
What happens when you chase a dream that’s not really yours?
First off, when there is the wrong energy and motivation behind a desire you won’t enjoy the process of getting to its realization.
If you are not inspired and not excited about your outcome you can easily overwhelm yourself and burn out.
Or, you can lack the motivation to keep going and give up before you have the chance to see what it feels like to achieve it.
And if you do manage to achieve it, the outcome isn’t any better.
When the dream finally comes true, you realize you don’t feel any happier.
You feel like you’re still missing something despite “having it all”, and you might start second-guessing your ability to be happy and feel fulfilled in the first place.
You’ll question yourself — what is wrong with me? — and you’ll start chasing the next big thing, thinking that that is what must be what’s finally going to make you happy, getting trapped in an endless cycle of wanting.
That makes up for a never-ending quest to happiness, one that sees you tired, stressed, and miserable.
And the biggest misunderstanding of all is the foundation of this mechanism: you think that having things will make you happy.
How to tell if your dream is really your own
So how do you make sure your dream is really yours — as in, aligned with your authentic self, in resonance with who you truly are, and free from any form of conditioning?
You challenge it.
Ask yourself why you want that.
Why do you think it would create more happiness in your life?
How would it look like, once you have achieved that desire?
How would you know that your dream came true?
Ask yourself if you think that you are somehow being influenced by society, friends, or family members.
If you find that you are, then ask yourself what is your authentic desire.
If you could have, be and do whatever you wanted — no questions asked and no judgments — what would you choose for yourself?
There’s Happiness and Happiness
There’s the kind of happiness that people playing the “I gotta have it bigger than my neighbor” game are chasing, and then there’s true happiness.
True happiness is within you, buried by layers of social conditioning, limiting beliefs, past programming, coping mechanisms, and misunderstandings.
It’s something you can tap into whenever you want, at any given moment. It’s your default state of being, the core of who you really are.
Something no one, and nothing, can ever take away from you.
True happiness is not a “things” game, it’s an “energy” game.
True happiness is a choice.
A choice you can make every moment.
The choice to switch off the news, the choice to leave a conversation, the choice to say “no”, and the choice to say “yes”.
The choice to re-arrange your life and start making it exactly as you want it to be, one step at a time.
You always have that choice, always.
This is the kind of happiness that not only you can reach by achieving your true desires, but also (and more importantly) you can experience by going after them.
Having something to long for is the key that opens the door to instant happiness.
You don’t need to wait for the dream to come true: you can be happy as ever now, imagining that it one day will and doing whatever you can to make it happen.
Find a dream that gives you the chills, and get chills while going after it.
Master this mindset and you’ll become limitless.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Oscar Keys on Unsplash