High on Happiness

The Happiness of Achieving

September 4th, 2009 | Author: Susan K Minarik

achieve I belong to a small master mind group that’s been sharing monthly goals with each other for the past 20 months. Because a couple members of the group—well, okay, most of them–are free spirited, go-with-the-flow types who chafe at structure, we call our goals “objectives,” and our stated aim is “to make fabulous progress” toward them. It makes the whole process a winning situation for all. And it’s taught us all the happiness of achieving.

Having a primary objective to keep in mind as you go through your days gives you a sense of purpose and nudges you to make choices that align with it. The steps you make in its direction – even when they’re baby steps – create a momentum, a growing desire to keep moving, to see it through.

Somebody once told me that goals are all about remembering what you want. In a world that bombards us with distractions, remembering what we want isn’t easy. We’re blown this way and that by glitter and whims. Whole seasons can pass without our having accomplished anything more than getting through the time. But when you have an objective to follow, when you have named one thing as your primary focus for the month, what a difference it can make!

You stay on track. You get done what you wanted to do. You build a website or a deck, you write a book or a blog, you create a piece of art, you cut back on your smoking, you spend more time with your family, you find a better place to live. The members of our group have done all these things and more. We’ve explored writing thank you notes to people every day for a month, and noticing ways we give to the world. We’ve demolished our paper piles and set up filing systems. One member flew to Mexico and painted a mural honoring whales. One started a new business. One found a new job.

And yet, the happiness of achieving isn’t, we’ve discovered, as much about completing an objective as it is in the movement toward it. It’s in the sense of self-worth, and self-direction that comes from acting in harmony with a purpose you set out for yourself. It’s in the satisfaction of knowing that you’re following your chosen path.

You gain a clearer sense of who you are, of what you want, of how you want to be. You learn to draw good boundaries around yourself, to say no to the things that aren’t in alignment with what you have chosen for yourself. It’s a tremendously liberating and self-empowering feeling. And as you practice moving, day by day, toward your self-chosen objectives, you begin to get a sense that you can do just about anything you set your mind on doing. You learn to take bigger bites of life and discover that they nourish your joy. Your confidence in your abilities grows, and so does your trust in life itself, your belief that the universe supports you when you know what it is that you want.

And it all begins with naming a simple objective—something you want to do or create or practice being—and deciding to make progress toward it every day.