The truth about happiness no one tells you

Let's start with the good news that no matter where you are today, true happiness is 100% possible for you. Having said that, if you have tried to become a happier person and have not succeeded so far, I have found that there are 5 reasons why you may have not made any headway on your happiness journey so far. These 5 might look like separate problems, but they all point to the same underlying truth that you’ll see more clearly once we unpack each one of them.

Let’s take them one at a time.

You are looking for happiness to come to you.

Many of us are looking for our happiness to be delivered to us by the external world. We believe that we need a husband or wife in order to be happy, that the once-a-year vacation is the one thing that will make us happy, or the promotion or raise you feel you deserve, or the acknowledgement on social media that you hope to get tons of ‘likes’ for.

I’m not saying that those things won’t add happiness to your life, but it is not where your every day JOY is going to come from. Happiness squarely sits in your court, and even without a life partner, children, a vacation, or an important job title, you can be the happiest person you can imagine. I promise you.

You don’t know what makes you happy.

Being a health coach and being surrounded by some of the most amazing, experienced coaches, I have learned the power of having a clear vision of what great looks like for each of us. Have you ever thought about what actually makes you happy? Have you spent as much time making a plan for your own happiness as you spend on setting business goals at work and plans to achieve those?

You fall for short-term rewards vs. long-term happiness.

Do you want to lose weight and eat healthier, but there is a cookie right in front of you? Do you want to spend more time with your children, but you have one more deadline to complete this big project? Do you want to quit your addiction to whatever drug you use, but just need one more hit to feel better after the stressful day you had? Why would intelligent human beings like us be so irrational, knowing that our short-term reward will never get us closer to our long-term goals?

A Princeton University study researching our brains, to better understand the decision-making process between short-term gain vs. long-term goals, is giving us the answer. The study showed that decisions involving the possibility of immediate reward activated parts of the brain influenced heavily by emotions. However, when choosing an option that brought greater gain in the long-term the calculating regions of their brains were more strongly activated than emotions.

“Our emotional brain has a hard time imagining the future, even though our logical brain clearly sees the future consequences of our current actions” (David Laibson, professor of economics at Harvard University).

This means that in order for you to get closer to your long-term goals you need to have a clear vision of what great looks like that strongly engages your emotions. A vision that gets you excited and gives you goosebumps.

You are looking for a quick fix.

In our modern, industrial world we have become used to getting everything we want at the snap of a finger. We revert to taking pills to feel better, use injections to lose weight, or drink a bottle of wine coming home from work to wash the stress away. We have become so used to there being a quick fix for almost everything.

But the problem is that there isn’t a quick fix for true happiness. Any quick fix is short-lived. JOY is something we need to nurture over time and get better at. We need to train our brains to look at the world differently and nourish our bodies and minds in ways that allow for every cell and every thought to flourish.

You are too lazy to do the work.

Some of us need a kick in the butt. Yes, it’s great to read about all the proven strategies to become happy, but unless you actually do the work you won’t get closer to your goal of being happy. Being in a world full of quick fixes, many of us have lost our desire to work for something, not realizing that JOY is on the other side of effort.

Now when you look back at all 5 reasons why you might not feel tremendous JOY today, this is the ultimate truth you need to accept regardless what your reasons are:

JOY is on the other side of effort.

But that's not a bad thing. In fact, once you have experienced the JOY that even the smallest effort brings into your life you will feel motivated to keep going. Every bit of time spent planning your life, restraining yourself in the short-term to accomplish your long-term goals, doing the things that you know your mind and body need to thrive, will reward you. How blah would life be if we could do it all without having to move a finger? Your sense of accomplishment and JOY is so much greater if you actually put some effort into achieving it.

Would it be helpful for us to support you when you moving towards your vision of your healthiest, most JOYful life? We’d love to guide you every step of the way in this process and along your journey to reaching that vision. Click the 'Contact' button in the top right corner or simply send us an email to info@joyvial.com to schedule your free discovery session.

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