Why Happiness Is The Wrong Goal

Have you ever wondered, “Why can’t I just be happy?”

We ask ourselves this a lot, don’t we.

The bigger question, why is happiness the goal at all?

What do we believe about achieving happiness?

What is happiness anyway?

What creates it?

How do we measure it?

Here’s a better question:  What if being unhappy wasn’t a problem… but just a normal part of the human experience?

Life is 50/50… homeostasis drives our physiology. Our medical education taught us that.

If we take the time to look around, we’ll find the power and pull of homeostasis present in every aspect of the world.

Balance is king!

We actively seek it….  how often have you said you really want work-life balance?

Our emotions are no different!

We experience 50% positive and 50% negative emotions by design.

100% positive was never the goal!

In absence of tangible means of measuring the success of our lives, our minds will latch onto anything to determine if we are doing it right.

In school it was test results and degrees earned that reassured us. We were happy when we got good grades and graduated.

In practice it’s often patient outcomes and happy clients… and when either goes bad the only available conclusion is that we are doing it all wrong.

We aren’t cut out for this.

We are unhappy.

We are messing up our lives.

But happiness, just like patient outcomes, is not a true measures of our abilities, value and worth.

Happiness is not created by the events around us, and the absence of it is not a problem.

The negative emotions are not a problem.

Negative emotions are not evidence that something is going wrong.

They don’t need to be solved for.

They are intentionally part of the human experience.

50/50 positive/negative means everything is going right.

The key is learning to Allow and Process the negative, rather than resisting it, reacting to it, and avoiding it.

When we learn how to do this, everything becomes available.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

We miss out on so much of our lives simply because we are unwilling to feel negative emotions.

It comes down to basic neuroscience.

Curious? I explain it all in my free webinar.
Check it out: https://joyfuldvm.com/webinar