Earlier this week, we discussed how the mind always puts your happiness off until you achieve, acquire, or change something ("I'll be happy when...").
Mindfulness and meditation teach us to strengthen awareness of this tendency to "postpone happiness." And, many people take that to mean the practices are incompatible with having goals - but, that's not the case.
The distinction is not tying your happiness to the achievement of those goals. If you make your happiness dependent on something, there will always be something else you need to achieve, acquire, or change to by happy. As a result, happiness will continuously elude you.
The motivational speaker Jim Rohn said
"Learn how to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want."
That quote captures the above sentiment, as does this from Alan Watts:
"If you make where you are going more important than where you are, there may be no point in going."
From a practical perspective, consider the time and energy we put into worrying about goals, and whether or not we will achieve them. Upon examination, you'll find it's a lot. And, doing so gives rise to stress, anxiety, and other unhealthy mental states.
More important, all of us have a finite amount of time and energy. If we use it worrying about goals, we can't use it elsewhere. If you focus that time and energy on what you can do right here and now, however, it will aid you in more skillful decisions and actions. This increases the odds you'll achieve the goals you were worrying about.
So, don't waste your time and efforts on mental ruminations. Instead, use it to do what you can in the only time you can actually do it: the present moment.
Stop dealing with the symptoms.
Stress, anxiety, self-confidence issues, the inability to stop bad habits, problems with sleep and focus, and on and on and on.
These and the other things we struggle with every day are only symptoms.
The good news is, they all share the same root cause. The bad news is, if you don't address that root cause, the symptoms will keep coming back no matter what you do.
That's why we wrote "An owner's guide to the mind." For almost 20 years, people have been using it to address the root cause of their daily struggles.
Click here to view the contents and learn more.