What if the thing you keep chasing is the exact reason you cannot catch it? There is no happily ever after, and that is good news.
Picture the ox with a carrot on a stick fixed above its own head. Every step forward moves the carrot forward. That is happiness as most of us run it. And it is not a design fault, it is evolutionary genius, because if you settled the moment you got something you would never go further. The man who loses everything is miserable on day one and fine two years later. Happiness is an emotion. It arrives and it leaves, like all the others. It was never going to move in.
One thing to try: Catch yourself saying I will be happy when. Pause there and notice how much of life you just skipped.
In this episode
(4:10) The ox, the stick and the carrot above its own head
(5:19) Stop chasing and you see what you already have
(6:28) Why this is evolutionary genius, not a fault
(7:47) We would never run faster or try again
(9:07) Halfway up, turn around and look at the valley
(10:13) Everything becomes normal in the end
(11:16) The man on the park bench, day one and two years on
(12:54) Happiness arrives and leaves, like every other emotion
(16:27) I will be happy when, and what it costs you
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Thank you for listening.
Steven
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