Many of us have been led to believe that happiness lies somewhere on a beach in Fiji with a cocktail in your hand with no worries in the world. I instantly think of the stupid Facebook posts along the lines of “UGH! Get me out of this fucking office! I need to be in Mexico, THEN I’ll be happy!”, or something like that.
The first problem with this is that this will “vacation paradise” rarely happen for normal folks. Let’s say you can get on vacation and get some well-deserved time to lay out and just soak it all in. Great. Do it the next day. Great. Do it the next day. “Ok”. Next day. “Ummm”. Next day. “I’m bored, take me somewhere else.” You can only take some much of sitting around doing nothing. Even if you are doing stuff like shopping, drinking, partying, etc. this all gets old. Even if you fell into $100 million dollars and this was your new lifestyle, I can almost guarantee that you would be bored and unhappy eventually.
This observation begs the question. If my deep-seated visions of happiness aren’t ACTUALLY going to make me happy for longer than a few weeks or so, then what the hell should I do to make me happy?!?!
The answer is to learn the difference between satisfaction and pleasure. The scenario above is a pleasure scenario where your instant demand to forget the world as it is are met. Booze, drugs, vacation, etc. all fall into this category. All are GREAT in small manageable doses and really help when we have been working our tails off. Pleasure does NOT lead to long term happiness.
Satisfaction on the other hand is the feeling you getting after completion of a goal or something that leads you towards a goal. How did you feel on the day you graduated from high school, college, basic training, police academy, or whatever school you may have attended? I can almost 100% say that you felt amazing. You worked, and earned your recognition and certificate at the end. You couldn’t help but smile and be ultimately proud of yourself. This feeling is satisfaction. This feeling happens when you are progressing toward your goals and doesn’t necessarily need to wait until something huge happens! Progress towards those goals can be enough.
Personally, I feel satisfaction after a good work out or after completing a good chunk of a project at work. I even derive satisfaction from yardwork. It’s something that I set out to do. I went out, put nose to grindstone and completed it (or at least a good portion of it). I smart person I know told me that hard work is its own reward. I never really understood what he meant, but I think the gist is that the feeling you get from accomplishing something and progressing from where you were before that usually comes from hard work and dedication is the reward.
Ask yourself this, and be honest. Would you feel better having worked for a few hours on a project or something that progresses you toward the person you want to be and then having a nice cold beer to relax and wind down the evening OR waking up first thing and enjoying that beer, which inevitably leads to many more, but by noon you are shit-faced hammered and feeling like an absolute train-wreck for 3 days after and having accomplish nothing?
The real fact here is that progress equals satisfaction and satisfaction equals happiness. Therefore progress equals happiness. Its the truth. Save pleasure for after you are satisfied. The universe will thank you by bestowing happiness upon you.
Yeah, That's Nice 