Happiness is not wanting to do something else

March 28, 2016 11:51 AM

Everybody’s trying to do something else.

Nobody is satisfied with where they are or what they’re doing right now. There’s always another horizon on standby. Another aspiration waiting in the wings. And as a result, they get so busy scrambling toward the future that the present is reduced to a means of getting there.

In fact, go ask ten people what their long term goals are. Half of them will say, well, what I really want to get into is…

And it breaks my heart. Because when we’re so busy trying to rearrange the circumstances of our lives, we miss out on the available joy that exists right now. That which is right in front of us is often the most invisible.

I once overheard a conversation between two standup comedians who said that you know you’ve made it in comedy when you’re not doing comedy anymore. Meaning, touring the country and telling jokes at clubs for the birds. The real dream is starring in your own sitcom or hosting a game show or writing movie scripts or acting in indie films or, insert better life situation here.

But where does it end? When do we decide that the project or the job or the career or the path we’re taking, right now, doesn’t need changing?

Eckhart writes that the present will never seem good enough, the future will always seem better. And the pain we create is always some form of now acceptance or unconsciousness resistance to what is. But the more we are able to honor and accept the now, the more we are free of pain, of suffering, or the egoic mind. Because is impossible to have a problem when your attention is fully in the now.

And so, perhaps happiness is nothing more than not wanting to do something else. To be able to ask the question, what, at this moment, is lacking, and not be able to answer it.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What would it look like to build a life you wouldn’t trade?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “9 Things Every Writer Needs to Do Every Day,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Filmmaker. Inventor. Singer. Songwriter.

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com