3010: The Happiness Formula: Do More of What You Like by Jay Harrington with A Life in Progress on Self-Awareness

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[00:00:21] Just go to urlaubsguru.de slash podcast summer and book a vacation as you love it. For you, for you, for the whole family. This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 3010 The Happiness Formula. Do more of What You Like by Jay Harrington with AlifeInProgress.ca

[00:00:41] and I'm Justin Malik, your host and narrator. Back today with an article from Jay Harrington, so let's get right to it as we optimize your life. The Happiness Formula. Do more of What You Like by Jay Harrington with AlifeInProgress.ca At a recent dinner party with friends,

[00:01:04] much of the conversation focused on an adventurous trip around the world taken by one of the couples. Historic temples, exotic dining, beautiful beaches, different cultures. It sounded amazing, but it's definitely not for me. I get stressed out and start longing for home

[00:01:23] after more than a week on the road. At 43, I've reached out a point in my life where I've come to not only accept but embrace the fact that there are certain things, such as world travel, that likely will never be a part of my life.

[00:01:38] It's not that I don't appreciate the appeal, it just doesn't appeal to me. Lots of people who love to travel try to talk me out of my feelings on this issue. People who love Brussels sprouts and kombucha do the same when they learn that I steered clear

[00:01:54] of those things too. Jazz, golf, yoga, nope, nope, nope. It's not that I haven't tried all of these things, I have, but I've accepted that they're not for me. Don't get me wrong, I get a kick out of trying new things,

[00:02:11] but I get contentment from spending most of my time pursuing a small number of carefully curated passions rather than dabbling in ambivalence or worse, spending time trying to fulfill other people's expectations rather than my own desires. Call me stubborn, call me close-minded, call me boring,

[00:02:31] and yes, call me happy. The happiness formula. Over time I've come to learn that the happiness formula is pretty simple. Do more of what you like and less of what you don't. And no, I'm not happy all of the time

[00:02:47] because I'm not doing things I like all of the time. To believe that's possible is to be delusional. But I'm happier now than I used to be because I'm more conscious of who I am, who I want to be, and how I spend my finite time.

[00:03:01] Most importantly with age I've come to better direct my actions to better reflect my priorities. There's a fancy term for this concept in the field of behavioral psychology called self-concordance theory. Coined by Kennan Sheldon's self-concordance theory suggests that the most important thing you can do

[00:03:20] to become your true, authentic, happy self is to pursue goals and objectives that are right for you. If you spend your time in pursuit of someone else's priorities then even if you achieve your goals you're not gonna feel happy or fulfilled. On the other hand, if you identify

[00:03:38] and stay focused on things that are meaningful to you then you're more likely to be happy. For example, if deep down you really want to become a writer but after college you decide to enroll in law school the odds are that you won't be happy and vice versa.

[00:03:55] Again, simple right? But then what accounts for the masses of people myself included who spend significant portions if not all of their lives acting at odds with their goals, dreams and interests, and therefore their happiness? Lack of self-awareness equals lack of happiness.

[00:04:15] A lack of self-awareness is largely to blame for this consequence. You need to know yourself before you can know how to spend your time and resources to best effect. This requires experimentation and thoughtful introspection and necessitates asking and answering difficult questions such as what do I like?

[00:04:36] What feels good? What makes me happy? What has meaning? What can I do effortlessly? What feels like drudgery? Who lifts me up? And who drags me down? You need to hold a mirror up to yourself and see what's really there

[00:04:52] not what you think is there, wish was there, or hope someone else sees there. Doing this sort of introspective work however can get tricky because when we look closely we often don't like what we see. For many of us gaining self-awareness is a painful moment of realization

[00:05:10] that our true self is inconsistent with our idealized self. The person we truly are is not the person we are projecting to the world. I know this from experience after three years of law school and a decade of practicing law. I finally learned this lesson.

[00:05:26] I'd become my idealized self, a successful, well compensated, well regarded attorney running my own law firm. But the very thing that gave me status in other people's eyes was making me miserable. I was a fraud living not for myself but rather living out a shadow life

[00:05:45] built on a rickety foundation of what others expected of me. Recognizing this discordance between my intentions and my actions was the first step. Doing something about it was the more difficult second step. Have the courage to act in a manner consistent with your intentions.

[00:06:06] Anyone who has made a significant life change can attest to how hard it is. As Steven Pressfield writes in The War of Art, quote, Most of us have two lives, the life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands resistance end quote.

[00:06:24] All forms of resistance will rear up to try to stop you as you cast aside who you thought you should be and start to embrace your authentic self. You'll doubt and possibly even sabotage yourself. Those close to you who can't muster the courage to change themselves

[00:06:40] will place obstacles in your path. As you seek to claim your true identity, old habits and fears will stand in the way. One of the things that makes living authentically so difficult is that it often requires the rejection of social norms and expectations.

[00:06:57] My own journey involved moving with my family from a big house and a wealthy suburb to a small town 250 miles away. In the process of doing what was right for us, we endured blowback from those close to us who internalized our decisions as an indictment on their own.

[00:07:15] Yes, there are costs to embracing one's authentic self. But grapple with this question. Isn't the cost of the inauthentic status quo even greater? I began this piece with the trivial example of owning up to the fact that

[00:07:30] I am not, nor will I likely ever be, a world traveler. Even an admission as superfluous as this comes at a cost in our carefully curated social media obsessed world where everyone's feed is a personal highlight reel is cool to be a world traveler. It attracts followers.

[00:07:49] It creates status. My own interests which include reading books, writing in my journal, watching movies with my kids and taking quiet walks in the woods. In other words, the introvert's life are low status activities. There are no external benefits to time spent in this fashion.

[00:08:08] But to me, the internal rewards are great. My only regret is that it took me so long to come to this realization. There is of course nothing wrong with traveling the world. If that's your thing, have at it. Problems arise however when our actions misalign

[00:08:26] with our deepest intentions. When our desire to cultivate status outweighs our desire for contentment. When we live in our shadow and not from within our heart. The average person lives approximately 27,325 days. Time is the most finite of resources. How will you make each day count?

[00:08:49] A good starting point is thinking deeply about your true desires so that you can craft a life of purpose and intention around what really matters to you. You just listened to the post titled, The Happiness Formula,

[00:09:07] Do More of What You Like by Jay Harrington with a life in progress dot ca. Thank you to Jay. This was actually a guest post by Jay on Kristo O'Reilly Davidee Ghee's website. But I do regularly narrate Jay's work from his site, lifeandwim.com.

[00:09:23] You can visit his site for more from him or of course continue listening to this show. And I give him kudos for admitting online that he doesn't like traveling. That's his choice and he's being deliberate about what he does with his time and money. Nothing wrong with that.

[00:09:40] Not everyone is going to want the same things and while worldly travel is often paired with sophistication, that doesn't necessarily mean he's not sophisticated. It's just, as he said, a social norm or societal expectation. Now all that said, there is an extreme here.

[00:09:58] Always doing only what feels good can cause problems too, but that's obviously not what he's talking about here. Moderation is important as usual. But understanding who you are without those layers of societal pressures and norms is something worth investigating. So do that investigation today.

[00:10:18] Thank you for being here. Have a great rest of your day and I'll catch you tomorrow. Where your optimal life awaits.