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The Sixth of my Personal Commandments is “Enjoy the process.” I learned this commandment from my father, who reminds us to “Enjoy the process” at every turn.
I’m finishing up the first-pass page proofs for my book. This is the first time I’ve seen my manuscript looking like a real book, and it’s very gratifying, as you can imagine.
Nevertheless, as I was editing, I was feeling overworked and plagued with self-doubt—when I remembered an afternoon a few years ago, after I’d just started actually writing the book, when I’d fantasized about the delights of the very stage I’m in right now.
And I realized, Enjoy the process! This is the fun part! I like editing much more than writing. It’s exciting to see the book taking shape. Instead of getting worked up and agitated, I should let myself take pleasure in hitting this milestone and in moving forward.
As corny as it is to say, it’s true: I’ll be happier if I find happiness along the way (technical term: pregoal attainment positive affect) instead of expecting to be happy when I reach a certain goal. Even if hitting that goal doesn't make me as happy as I expect, if I enjoy the process, I'm happy.
* For people who are thinking about careers and career changes (lots of folks like that, these days), a great resource is the Career Renegade blog and book, Career Renegade: How To Make a Great Living Doing What You Love
.
* Hey superfans! As expected, the prelaunch of the superfabulous soon-to-be-unveiled Web site has been pushed back—now, to April 20. Hang in there! I think that date will hold.
If you haven't signed up as a superfan but would like to volunteer to help with the prelaunch of the Web site, or other various things, I'd be thrilled to hear from you. You can click here or e-mail me at gretchenrubin1 [at] gmail [dot com]. Just write “superfan” in the subject line.
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As I’ve studied happiness over the past few years, I’ve learned many things that surprised me. Each day for two weeks, I’ve been debunking one “happiness myth” that I believed before I started my happiness project. Yesterday I wrote about Myth No. 7: Doing "Random Acts of Kindness" Brings Happiness.
Happiness Myth No. 8: You’ll be happy as soon as you …
We often imagine that we’ll be happy as soon as we get a job/make partner/get tenure/get married/get that promotion/have a baby/move. As a writer, I often find myself imagining some happy future: “Once I sell this proposal …” or “Once this book comes out …”
In his book Happier
, Tal Ben-Shahar calls this the “arrival fallacy,” the belief that when you arrive at a certain destination, you’ll be happy. (Other fallacies include the “floating world fallacy,” the belief that immediate pleasure, cut off from future purpose, can bring happiness, and the “nihilism fallacy,” the belief that it’s not possible to become happier.) The arrival fallacy is a fallacy because arriving rarely makes you as happy as you expect.
Why? Because usually by the time you’ve arrived at your destination, you’re expecting to reach it, so it has already been incorporated into your happiness. You quickly become adjusted to the new state of affairs. And, of course, arriving at one goal usually reveals a new goal. There’s another hill to climb.
In fact, working toward a goal can be a more powerful source of happiness than hitting it—which can sometimes be a letdown. It’s important, therefore, to look for happiness in the present, in the atmosphere of growth afforded by making gradual progress toward a goal (technical name: pre-goal attainment positive affect).
When I find myself focusing too much on the anticipated future happiness of arriving at a certain goal (as I often do), I remind myself to “Enjoy now.” If I can enjoy the present, I don’t need to count on the happiness that is—or isn’t—waiting for me in the future. The fun part doesn’t come later, now is the fun part.
So the arrival fallacy doesn’t mean that pursuing goals isn’t a route to happiness. To the contrary. The goal is necessary, just as is the process toward the goal. Nietzche explained it: “The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.”
* My former boss, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, has launched a wonderful site, Our Courts, a fantastic new resource about civics for students and teachers. There's a great video of Justice O'Connor explaining the site—I was laughing as I watched, because it so captures her personality. My favorite line: "The Founders of our Constitution and our government created three equal branches of government. Like superheroes, each branch of government has special powers, but each one also has certain weaknesses."
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“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?”
—Robert Browning
* New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed.
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