TL; DR
- Society offers predefined goals for our lives, which might not make us happy.
- Happiness can be short-term and long-term.
- Short-term happiness won’t last long or fulfill us.
- Long-term happiness is harder to reach but may fulfill us.
- Consuming stuff will most likely be short-term.
- Long-term happiness should come from within.
- Emotion diaries and reflecting on our protocols are a great way to find out what makes you happy.
Thoughts on Life goals
Society has quite a lot of life goals we can choose from. But during my time as a coach, I realized that those goals maybe won’t make you happy or feel fulfilled in life. Oftentimes, successful people in their late 40th or 50th I coached were unhappy. Yet, they had it all: career, money, children, and so on. So, what went wrong? Most likely their happiness did not arise from within but was bound to external factors, like career, money, children, and so on. When people in their late 20th and early 30th ask me how to make a life-changing decision, I give the following advice: Imagine you arrived in your midlife crisis or old age. Which thing you can choose from right now will make you feel happy and fulfilled?
Happiness itself can be short-term or long-term. While the former is easy to accomplish, it will most likely last for a short amount of time. Long-term happiness on the other side is hard to accomplish but will help you in many circumstances. Oftentimes, short-term happiness is accomplished by consumption. In any case, you’ll always be forced to invest in achieving happiness. That you should carefully choose how you spend your resources is something most people will agree on. Yet, many people tend to invest their resources into short-term happiness.
Investing in short-term happiness can be a smart thing. Whenever we feel upset, a bar of chocolate might help. Still, investing more resources into long-term happiness is important. Therefore, getting to know yourself and what makes you happy is important. So how would one find out what makes them happy? A simple table is a great option for you to track your daily activities and how they make you feel.
Day and Time | What I was doing | How I felt
Monday, 8 am | Morning hike through the forest. | Relaxed and happy
Monday, 11 am | Reading on Nietzsche’s term Menschenbild. | Very happy
Monday, 14 pm | Writing a blog post on phenomenology. | Very happy
Using such a simple table we can reflect on the things that make us happy. When I realized that I don’t feel fulfilled reaching the goals society has in stock for us, I did not know how to find out what my personal life goals are. Using a simple table, I started to reflect on what makes me happy. While I loved hiking, I never thought about why I loved it. But I knew I didn’t like hiking with friends as much as I loved hiking alone. I reflected on what I did while I was hiking learning that I engage in philosophical thoughts. Combined with my other interests I tried to study philosophy more carefully. Reflecting on my daily routine, and why its activities made me feel good I found out what made me feel happy and connected with the world.
So now we have a tool that helps us keeping track of our routines. We can learn how we feel during those activities, and which ones make us happy or sad. In the next step we need to learn how we can reflect our activities so we know which one we should invest in.
