It’s obvious that enjoying life now and not later will bring immediate happiness yet how many of us are not living in the now?
Goal setting is a critical life skill that, unfortunately, too few learn how to do it properly. Goals are important for all areas of your life including financial, physical, relationships, health and of course personal development. But goals should not see you put your life on hold until some distant point in the future. You have to live life in the here and now.
One thing you learn from a period of bad health is that your life isn’t forever. You become more aware of your end, that our time is limited, and you become absolutely determined to make the most of every second.
It becomes a wakeup call. That yes goals are essential and that we owe it to ourselves to fulfil our potential. But not at the cost of today. Every single day that we have the fortune to awaken to should be a day we do something special.
Our happiness and fulfilment are essential for our lives and should be our priority. Alas rarely they are. You can be a success in your field, make lots of money, and receive accolades from peers and authorities in the external world. Yet money and success don’t necessarily bring happiness.
Setting meaningful, long-term goals is a giant step toward achieving your dreams. In turn, setting and achieving short-term goals can help you accomplish the tasks you’ll need to achieve the long-term ones.
In my book the single page plan your long term goals are ultimately what you want to achieve in 5 to 10 years while short terms goals are what you are trying to achieve in the next year.
But what about the next 24 hours? Your focus mustn’t always be about the future. Alas too many make this mistake. I did for a long time. My focus was on building my career and finances. I hardly gave myself a second for rest and certainly none for pleasure. I allowed life to pass me by and was living on the edge. Worst of all I believed that making all these sacrifices would pay off in later years where I could then make time for happiness.
I was wrong!
Goals, in and of themselves, do not provide any happiness.
I now know that although it’s essential that you take every day to work towards your goal it’s equally important to make time for your immediate happiness. After all where is the sanity of putting your happiness on hold? Life is not an endless journey. You owe it to yourself to enjoy yourself now not wait for some point in the future. I repeat it’s simply crazy to live ignoring your happiness now.
I went through a period of severe adversity about seven years ago I was on the verge of giving up. I’d lost everything. It was a very painful time for me but I came to realize something that has proven so enlightening for my life.
It was that my focus had been on what I’d lost, and it was on the meanings I put behind it.
I had allowed my life to be about the possessions I had. What I thought was happiness was simply a collection of things which at best could give me fleeting joy. Having gone through a period of bad health and a few scares I realised that life was to short and I owed it myself to live day by day with happiness, immediate happiness.
Let me explain what I mean when talking about immediate happiness don’t confuse this with gratification or things we do for immediate pleasure.
Pleasure is all about immediate gratification of the body and/or ego. It’s impulse-driven – superficial and fleeting. It’s fake happiness which lasts for no time. It’s forgotten tomorrow. True happiness is for the long-haul. I leave you to ask yourself, are you doing anything or enough to give yourself happiness? Perhaps you do allow yourself time for immediate pleasure but not so much for true and immediate happiness.
Please don’t make the mistake of putting off your happiness, instead spending all your energy and time building toward some distant day when you can sit back, relax, smile on life, and finally enjoy it.
You need to realise that the day you take your last breath you don’t want to regret the life you’ve lived. So be happy now make time to be happy.
If you are interested in receiving one-on-one or group coaching to work with a professional on setting your own goals, then check out my coaching options!
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