Happiness and Motivation
I firmly believe in the “be happy first” philosophy which states that:
- Seeking happiness outside of yourself will only ever lead to temporary joy
- The notion that “I’ll be happy when” is the biggest lie people tell themselves.
- If you find your inner well of happiness and build that up through specific happiness building activities, you will have a foundation of consistent lasting joy throughout your life. AND once you have done this all other areas of your life will be positively affected (better relationships, more success, better health, etc).
BUT for the longest time I was troubled by the thought that if you you were happy first, what would motivate you?
People are motivated to do things for lots of reasons and most of them stem back to “I want to do X so I will get Y and be happy”. If that person was already happy though, they would not need to do any of that.
Is happiness the antithesis of motivation?
Luckily the answer is “No”.
The problem is that you have to shift your perception in order to see how motivation will work once you are permanently happy, and most people have trouble doing this because they can’t even really fathom BEING permanently happy.
But now that I have had some experience with this I can say that a person’s motivation definitely changes when you are “happy first”.
It is true that most of the things that would have motivated me before don’t now. I found that very frustrating. I would sit there thinking “I really should be doing this. I thought I wanted to do this, but what does it matter, I’m already happy.”
In order to find motivation once you have lasting happiness you need to find what your deeper meaning in life is. You need to uncover your life purpose.
I had already done this. I’ve known what my purpose is for a couple of years now. It is the entire premise of this website: “To make the world a happier place”.
BUT it was only really recently that I made the connection between motivation and purpose. It seems obvious I know, but when you get stuck in that old mind set of “I need things outside of myself to make me happy and the achievement of these things is what motivates me” sometimes the obvious can be hard to see.
So lasting happiness goes hand in hand with life purpose.
Ever wonder what your purpose is? What it is that you are called to do?
It’s not always easy to uncover, but there are ways to find it.
And since helping people discover their purpose is something that makes me very happy, feel free to drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do to help.
Keep laughing.