Don’t wait for results to give yourself permission to be satisfied.
Once you’ve achieved your goals you’ll still be the same person. Love the work. Love the process.
Goals set up a pattern of differed happiness, meanwhile a focus on a system can lead to continual happiness. You aren’t thinking “I’ll lose 10 pounds, then I’ll be happy”, but instead you can be happy knowing you didn’t eat out today.
⚠️ Don’t defer happiness.
Or, as it’s presented in The Happiness Equation : “Be Happy First”. Don’t put it at the end of a sequence that goes “work real hard → achieve greatness → have all the things → be happy”.
James Stuber suggests the existence of Type 2 Fun to describe feeling happy while doing the work that leads to the thing you want.
Once you achieve your goals, you’ll probably have new goals. You have to spend much of your days Living For Now.
Source
- Atomic Habits
- Stillness is the Key
- The Happiness Equation
- James Stuber’s Boring Fundamentals Article