Day 210: On Deferring Happiness
I have found that one of the commonest causes of unhappiness among my patients is that they are attempting to live their lives on the deferred payment plan. They do not live, nor enjoy life now, but wait for some future event or occurrence.
It’s important to be future-oriented and prioritize future rewards over instant gratification. However, this statement is only valid to a certain point. If you live exclusively in the future, thinking that achieving some goal in the future is the only way to bring you happiness, chances are you won’t be happy either now or when you reach your goals — by then, you’ll come up with yet another event that must happen in order for you to be happy.
For this reason, it’s important to ensure that while your focus is on the future, it isn’t a condition for you to be happy.
For one, if you’re unhappy today, it will affect your well-being and make you less likely to reach your goals. Positivity breeds more positivity, while negativity spawns more negativity. A lack of happiness today can ruin your chances of making your future vision turn into reality.
Second, happiness is a habit — and just like any other habit, it requires some self-control to practice it. Activities like expressing gratitude for what you have, reframing negative events into valuable experiences, and drawing pleasure from the little things are all essential practices you need to engage in regularly to stay in top mental shape
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Last but not least, if you’re always waiting for some future occurrence, thinking that it will change your life, you’re essentially delegating the responsibility for your own happiness to some event happening (or not) in the future. Does that sound like a behavior of a successful person?