How to Feel Happy with Where You Are Right Now

okay here's my confession I'm kind of a chronic goal achiever I've started a business grown into multiple six figures started and grown my YouTube channel written a book and just achieved so many other goals and this is kind of how I get things done in life now there's no doubt about it achieving goals has improved my life in so many ways but I honestly can't say that achieving these goals has made me any happier than I was before before I pursued them and I don't think I'm the only one who's struggled to find satisfaction with life a recent study by the NSF found that only 14% of American adults say that they're quote very happy this has been something I've thought about a lot over my career but recently it was brought to the Forefront of my mind when I read this book right here called the Gap in the gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr Benjamin Hardy this book is about how often we feel dissatisfied with life because of comparison but not from comparing ourselves to other people by comparing ourselves to our future self now whether we set goals or not most of us have some kind of idea about how we would like our life to be better in the future and so we have this ideal future state that we are imagining maybe we're thinking about how we might live in a bigger house in the future or we might get married or we might have a baby or we might get to travel to a country even we've never been to before or we might be able to retire eventually or something like that and what we do is subconsciously we compare ourselves right now to that future self and then we feel dissatisfied because we don't measure up and that difference between where we are today and where we would like to be someday is what this book calls the Gap now the alternative is that we could live in the gain the gain is where we look at all the progress we've made so far and we really appreciate how far we've come and this could be looking at you today compared to where you were at the very start of your journey so for example where I'm at with my business today versus where I was when I first started and if I just could put myself into the shoes of Gillian six years ago who was just wanting to start a business then of course I could look at where I am today with so much appreciation and amazement for the progress I've made and also just be like humbly thankful for how much I've been able to accomplish with God's help and that's amazing right and so this book urges us to live in the gain rather than living in the Gap here's a quote from the book from page 14 it says when your happiness is tied to something in the future then your present is diminished you don't feel happy confident or successful but maybe in the future you will be or so the logic goes but here's where I kind of got stuck so honestly this book is so good and I would highly recommend that you give it a read or a listen but I still even after reading it and understanding the concept I actually became even a little bit more frustrated with myself because I kept finding myself stuck in the Gap no matter how hard I tried to like shift my mindset and focus on those gains I still over and over again just found me coming back to the Gap I especially struggled with this when it came to goal setting because here's the thing I like setting goals and I find that they are really effective for helping me to get things done in life but as soon as I set a goal I just automatically fall into the Gap because when I set a goal basically I'm saying I would like to be over there not over here and so then I'm just comparing myself well I'm here not where I want to be and that made me feel really discouraged I've already achieved some of my very biggest goals in life but honestly doing so hasn't really made me any happier in fact the process itself of working towards those goals has brought me far more satisfaction than the payoff at the end of any one of them so I just want to be clear here I'm not saying that I'm not happier than I used to be I am but it's not really because I've achieved the goals it's more because I've gone through the process of working on the goals okay I know this sounds so stupidly cliche I mean basically what I'm saying here is like just enjoy the process and life is about the journey not the destination and I am cringing so hard right now but at the same time I just got to say that I think that most of the time cliches are cliches because they've been repeated so many times because they're true and I think that we've kind of collectively realized this as a culture we've shifted away from the pursuit of happiness to at least acknowledging that the happiness of pursuit is a thing still though this idea is Fluffy and vague at best and you're probably wondering yeah but how do you quote enjoy the journey I don't know about you but forcing myself to try to feel something never seemed to work for me so what I did was I thought about what aspect of quote the journey I really found enjoyable what was it about pursuing a goal that is so satisfying I thought if I could just identify that what about it is so enjoyable so fulfilling so satisfying then maybe I could lean into that aspect of it and really embrace the journey in that way well after a lot of thought here is what I've landed on I find satisfaction in a job well done you know like when you try to do something you work really hard at it you see the work you've put into it and then you're satisfied with your effort really there are so many different aspects of this that can be enjoyable solving problems can be fun exerting yourself can make you feel energized and then when you step back at the end and you see what you've created then you get the satisfaction of a job well done now that last little bit there might sound an awful lot like getting satisfaction out of the end results which is exactly what I was earlier saying I didn't really experience so let me just take a moment to explain the difference that I experienced I get a lot more satisfaction out of completing each individual step of a process and seeing the results that I got with that little step than I do from the big end result I think this is because I'm really getting satisfaction out of my effort not the result at all and I'm able to much more closely connect my effort to each individual step that I complete then I am able to connect it to the final result let me give you an example when it comes to creating YouTube videos my end goals include one make good videos that people will enjoy watching two get thousands of views and three attract potential customers to my business but in the process of creating a YouTube video I get the most s satisfaction out of a single beautiful shot or a particularly smooth edit I also find it pretty satisfying to see how the video turns out in the end but the part that I find the least satisfying is without a doubt The View count or even the number of customers that It ultimately attracts even though those were my end goals I think this is because those ultimate end results just feel so disconnected from the effort that I put in that even if I'm super successful I almost don't feel like I can take credit for the success or if I fail to reach my goal then I struggle to really take any practical lessons away from the failure because there were just so many variables that I don't know which one really caused the problem that led to the failure so now that I figured this out I'm really trying to lean into the process of whatever I'm working on and not get so caught up in worrying about the ultimate end results and whether or not I will actually be successful at the end and I'm finding a lot of joy joy in just doing my best as cliche as that sounds at everything that I need to get done now sure you might get bigger results faster from doing quote bgrade work and not trying to make everything perfect and I think that there are definitely situations that call for that approach but I just know that I sure get a lot more enjoyment out of doing A+ work and personally I'd rather enjoy my life more than be more successful and just maybe that unscalable A+ work might even ultimately lead you to the greatest success of all as Seth Goden said the rule is simple the person who fails the most will win if I fail more than you do I will win because in order to keep failing you've got to be good enough to keep playing now as much as I've been loving this approach it actually leads me into a whole another problem and that is work life balance because the more I enjoy my work the more I tend to struggle with work life balance because the more I enjoy my work the more I want to work and then I don't necessarily prioritize correctly so if that's something you struggle with too then watch this video right here about one thing that could make all the difference when it comes to finding and truly achieving that work life balance

Channel: Gillian Perkins

Views: 47,357

Keywords: Gillian Perkins, gillianperkins.com, How to Feel Happy with Where You Are Right Now, The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan, The Gap and the Gain, How to be content with where you are, Steps to be happy with where you are, How to be happy with where your business is today, How to be content with your business, Overachievers guide to being happy with their business, How to enjoy the process

Id: MX2_Hs7lrm4

Length: 9min 24sec (564 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 02 2024