Until about 2 years ago, I was a relatively unhappy dude. You wouldn't necessarily be able to see it, but underneath the surface I had a mild and constant feeling of dissatisfaction.
It was strange. I was pretty much living my dream the moment I arrived in Los Angeles on the first day of my adventure 4 years ago. At the time, just being in North America alone was the most exciting thing I could think of. That actually hasn't changed much, and even though I am from Australia the thought of being over here makes me very happy - I think it was from all of those tv shows I watched when I was younger.
I could never quite put my finger on why it was that I had this feeling that followed me everywhere I went. I went out to bars and hung out with friends occasionally, but I really valued my alone time and dedicated a lot of it to just thinking and writing my thoughts down in books. If I had to guess, this unhappiness largely came from a desire to do something great, and I put a lot of pressure on myself in achieving that.... even though I was at a stage of my life where I was just not ready.
One day, I decided to walk to the local Starbucks on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and La Brea Avenue and I did something that became one of the turning points in my journey. I gave myself permission to just "ride the wave". To me, that meant that I no longer had to try and force something to happen, and I was allowing myself to just live in this moment and experience whatever was happening now. The most important part of this deal that I had made with myself, was the time limit of 3 weeks I allocated to it. If there was no timeline, I probably wouldn't have let myself do it. Having the timeline made it okay and safe.
Well, it has been 4 years and I am happy to say that I am still riding that wave
Okay I won't lie, I definitely slipped back into that state of pressure and dissatisfaction a few times since then, but this time I was more aware of it than before. One night, I was Iying on my girlfriend's bed when I closed my eyes and imagined myself in the future having everything that I wanted. What happened next was strange. Even though I could very clearly see myself in the future with everything that I dreamed about, I still couldn't shake the same feeling of dissatisfaction and unhappiness.
I realised that if I am unable to be happy now, then I won't be able to be happy in the future.
This is something I had thought about many times before and had read on multiple occasions, yet I felt like the idea had really only just sunk in at that moment. This was another turning point. I now had the motivation to be happy in the present moment because otherwise I wouldn't be happy in the future.
There is a lot more to the above story than I have written, but one of the things that I have learned and implemented is having a low criteria for happiness. I guess you could say that I used to be afraid of being happy because I thought that it also meant being okay with what I have, and no longer pursuing what I want. It has taken a lot of growth for me to overcome this mental hurdle and to realise that I can still be happy and still go hard at achieving my goals.
I am now a firm believer in having a low criteria for happiness and look for that quality (among others) in the people I want to surround myself with. Being able to be genuinely happy and retaining the ability to work toward achieving your goals is a higher level of being.
If you were to take anything away from reading, let it be this: We must be happy NOW, in order to be happy in the future. Don't succumb to the "If only I had this..." mindset and work on being happy TODAY while you continue to pursue your goals.
Thank you for reading!
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