I’ll begin with something that I think everybody can agree on, we strive for happiness and try to keep pain to a minimum. An easy concept when you’re sitting down and reading about it, but it’s a little harder to put it into practice.
I know that I’m at my happiest when I write, so why do I avoid doing it; consistently putting it off for days or sometimes even weeks on end, only to finally get so frustrated with my procrastination that I actually sit down and write. My writing becomes an act of my frustration rather than a vehicle to happiness.
As I sit down and relax into my writing, I begin to enjoy it again. The thought of doing becomes the doing and everything else attached to that thought disappears, only to be left by the doing.
If you apply logic to this line of thinking then it’s the frustration (insert any emotion here) that’s the catalyst to achieve happiness. It’s not like I do this for a living, deciding to write blogs is my choice not my job.
I’ve read many biographies on writers who feel this way. How can you explain the fact that it takes years to produce a standard length novel. But it should take 220 days (assuming to produce one page per day is not too much writing and that writers also erase, edit, shred more than one page to produce that one page).
It’s the process of art that yields the art, not the intention to create a specific piece of art.
I wonder if happiness is like a plotted course. We’re always going to get off course so we must make constant adjustments to remain there once our internal indicator flashes: OFF COURSE…OFF COURSE.
It’s not surprising that we get off course considering the mixed signals that we get from our
It’s also not surprising that we get off course to happiness because of the mixed signals that we get from advertisers, working for corporations that tell us that their product will make you happy. I’m not saying that material possessions won’t make you happy…hey, I love my iPod…but here’s the rub, I was under the delusion that acquiring things will make me happy; it turns out that once I turned on that happiness through acquisition switch it actually raised the bar on what made me happy with each purchase I made. And now that one purchase doesn’t make me happy anymore…so I go to the next and the next…I should be in ecstasy. Have you noticed how the next new thing just comes out as the novelty of the previous purchase wears off? Or is it because the novelty has worn off because it’s newer or better than what you just purchased.
If your work makes you happy or if money makes you happy, I envy you. With all of my hours of reading self-development books, making lists, putting into practice what writers and coaches have suggested, I’ve found that happiness is something that I must actively pursue.
Maybe happiness is just as fleeting as the happiness from the purchases that we make. Just like the experienced shopper, we need to constantly pursue it; not as an item but as a philosophy.
