I set out to actively lead a life that truly feels good in the Spring of 2008 after a series of setbacks in my personal life. My aim is to spread whatever I learn about feeling good to others through this blog.
You Will NEVER Get Everything That You Want!
You will NEVER get everything that you want! Why? Because the moment you get something that you want, you’ll just find that you want something else and when you get that, you’ll want something else and… there’s a pattern here…
Over the last few years since I started reading books about personal development I have spent a lot of time thinking about my life, what I want to do with it, what I want to accomplish, the kind of person I want to be and so on. I brainstormed ideas, I set goals, I read more books, I set more goals…
I figured that if I could just come up with a plan for my entire life and then carry out the plan then I’d be happy. From that point on all I would have to do is maintain my state of perfect bliss which would be easy right?
There are so many things wrong with this picture!
Firstly, I found that the very idea created an internal conflict that I couldn’t work out how to resolve. The conflict was this - on the one hand it was clear that my life left much to be desired so there were things I wanted to change so I assumed that once I had fixed all the things that needed fixing, accumulated the possessions I wanted to own, became the person I wanted to be and so on that I would be happy and peaceful. On the other hand I had a nagging feeling that in fact doing / getting / being all those things wouldn’t really make me happy because I have always known that one of things that brings me the greatest pleasure in life is the feeling that I am working towards something.
If I got everything I wanted, what would I do then? What if I got bored? People often say that they want to win the lottery and then just stop work but I’ve always said that I’d never want to win money in that way because once I had bought all the houses / cars / clothes / gadgets I could think of, been on all the holidays that were available, and just done everything - what then? The novelty would wear off.
Do you see the conflict? It seems that changing some aspect of my life would make me happier which suggests that if some aspect of life is not how I want it then that must be making me unhappy. So it seems natural to work towards implementing the changes that would move my life so that it looked how I wanted it to look. If I did that in every area then I would have eliminated all sources on unhappiness but the very idea of there being nothing left to do, nothing left to go for, to accomplish, to be - that in itself just creates a new source of unhappiness!
I can’t win! I’m writing this post with the hope that I am not the only one who thinks like this!
Plus on top of that conflict, the idea that all we need to do is make our lives perfect is somewhat flawed anyway! I hear a little voice in my head saying “yeah right, good luck with that!” As I discussed recently, one thing that is constant in life is change! Everything changes and everything in this material world is temporary so trying to get to a place where everything is just perfect and then keeping it there is an impossible task.
This conflict nagged at me for years but over the last few months I have found some relief from these conflicts. First of all, it has become apparent to me that I actually enjoy the process of working towards something. I like building my business, I like seeing the readership on this blog grow (should hit 100 subscribers soon hehe!), I enjoyed working towards my University degree, I like building websites, developing software and so on. Even the kinds of computer games I enjoyed were the types where you work towards some long drawn out goal.
Knowing that I like to work towards something gives me a sense of satisfaction and it takes away the stress of knowing that I’ll get to a place where everything is perfect. As Esther Hicks says, “you’ll never get it all done”. The reason behind this is that as we experience our lives of contrast, we discover things that we like and things that we don’t like and this gives rise to our preferences. As we move towards the things that we want, our life experience changes but once again we experience contrast and a new set of desires is born. No matter what we achieve, what we get, what we become, there is always more to do, be or have.
On the surface this can sound like a bad thing but it depends on how you feel about this new desire. If the moment you express a desire for something new you begin to create a deep need for it and become attatched to it then you are in for a world of pain. However, that’s not usually how it works. As you start to realise some of your goals and give birth to new desires you can be happy with your life as it is right now (acceptance of what is) and be in a state of eager anticipation for the attainment of your new desires without being attatched to them.
Of course, this state of non attachment is where we should be anyway no matter where we are starting from and what the desire may be but this if more difficult to do if you are starting out from a particularly low point and are finding it hard not to feel attached to the idea of wanting things to be different.
This has been a fairly long, rambling post! The point I want to try and get across is that if you are the kind of person who is thinking “if only I can get X then I’ll be happy”, then know that you will never be happy because as soon as you get X you’ll just give birth to a desire for a new X and so on it goes. You’ll never get everything you want because no matter what you get, there will always be more that you want!
Stumble it!
Glen Allsopp
September 1, 2008
First of all, it has become apparent to me that I actually enjoy the process of working towards something.
Exactly, it’s often the journey we enjoy far more than the end result.
And remember, we won’t get everything we want, and for some reason we won’t enjoy everything we get - I’m not trying to be clever here, think about that one.
Glen Allsopps last blog post..The Power of an Abundance Mindset