Did you notice the name of this lesson? It’s “get happy to get motivated.” And that idea runs contrary to what a lot of people believe.
You see, many people put off their happiness until some vague point in the future. Those who are seeking to achieve particular goals say things like, “I’ll be happy when I achieve my dream of [insert the favorite dream here].” And so these folks have decided they will not be happy until the future.
That’s a mistake for two reasons:
- First, because your overall happiness directly affects your motivation. When you feel good, you’ll feel motivated and be productive. When you’re unhappy, your energy levels drop like a lead ball in a swimming pool. Thus being happy today – right now – actually helps you achieve your goals much more quickly!
- Secondly, you don’t want to hook your happiness to any specific event. Why put off being happy into the future when you can be happy today? And why hook it to a single event? If the learning curve is steeper than you thought, you’re putting off your happiness for an even longer time. Or if a major catastrophic event would derail your plans, you may put off your happiness for an indefinite period of time. Either way, that’s not good.
So here’s the bottom line…
Your happiness doesn’t depend on you achieving a goal or acquiring some type of honor, a possession or anything else. Instead, your happiness is a choice. It’s a choice to be happy today (right now) on your life journey. It’s a choice to be happy even if you don’t achieve your goals (though achieving them will certainly be a high point in your life).
Which brings us to the question…
If you’re not exactly where you want to be in life, then how can you be happy? How you can just choose happiness? Isn’t happiness something you feel rather than something you choose?
It’s true that you might not be able to turn your happiness on and off like a light switch. However, you can learn to choose happiness over time. Indeed, that’s exactly what you’ll learn how to do in the upcoming lessons. If you apply all of the advice that you’re about to discover, you’ll feel happier almost immediately… and your happiness will grow with time.
Here’s your first step…
Forgive Yourself
Do you ever replay your mistakes, embarrassing moments and other stumbles over and over in your mind? Sometimes you wish you could go back in time and get a “re-do.” And the more you think about it, the unhappier you become.
Listen, no one is perfect. Beating yourself up over the past only wastes your energy – and that’s energy you could be using to achieve your goals.
So here’s what you need to do:
- Acknowledge the mistake. Don’t dwell on it, but do figure out what happened.
- Learn from it. Now find the message, the lesson in this mistake. What did you learn? What can you do better next time?
- Forgive yourself. If it was your best friend who made this mistake, you wouldn’t be that hard on him or her. So why be so hard on yourself? Forgive yourself, perhaps even by using affirmations: “I forgive myself.”
- Let it go. Once you’ve learned your lesson from a mistake, thinking further about the mistake doesn’t do you any good. You can’t go back in time and change it. You can only move forward and do better next time.
That’s it for now – next time you’ll learn even more steps you need to take to get happy so that you can get motivated!