An executive business leader I coach shared a wonderful story with me recently that perfectly exemplifies our tendency to indefinitely postpone our own happiness. You know what I’m talking about. It’s that habit we all have of promising ourselves that we’ll be “happy when”. You fill in the blank; “When I finish this project”, “When I become VP”, “When my daughter graduates from high school”, “When I make a million dollars”, “When I lose 10 pounds”. Sound familiar?
In my client’s case, he promised himself happiness on the day when he would finally be able to buy his dream car. It was a red Ferrari F430 – which for him – would signify having achieved an impressive level of professional success. In 2005, the moment finally arrived. “Andy” was indeed successful and had accumulated enough wealth to purchase the car. The Ferrari was his, and so was happiness as he drove off the lot in the sports car he’d always wanted.
Except that the feelings of happiness dissipated almost immediately. Frustrated by this, Andy realized he needed a special edition Ferrari, more than double the cost of the first one, in order to experience the happiness that so far eluded him. So, he set his sights on being able to buy a Ferrari F430 Scuderia.
In 2009, he successfully achieved this goal. And guess what? The same thing happened again. Happiness could only be found through the purchase the next car – a Ferrari 458 Spider in 2015 followed by a McLaren 650s Spider in 2016. Finally, his quest came to an abrupt end. Andy – in the midst of buying his next, even fancier, more specialized sports car – realized the destructive path he was on. This pattern of thinking and behaviour which was supposed to make him happy, had only brought him misery. With that realization, Andy stopped the chase and made a commitment to himself to stop looking for happiness in the next Ferrari or McLaren, but rather in the present moment he was occupying.
What I love about this story – in addition to the pride I feel for my client who had the self awareness see what was really happening and then the courage to do something about it – is that it’s universal to us humans. Whether it’s a Ferrari, a purse or a promotion, we can all get trapped into putting off feeling good “now”, falsely believing that we’ll find it “someday” in the future when everything is finally lined up perfectly, and all of our dreams have come true. You know as well as I do that this idyllic day will never come.
There will always be more money, more success, more power, more health – you name it – to chase. And that’s not a bad thing! Having goals is awesome and achieving them is even better. The problem is that we rarely pause long enough to notice when it happens. We almost instantaneously shift our perspective and set our sights on the next best thing, failing to savour, even for a minute, just how far we’ve come.
By the way, this tendency isn’t our fault. The pre-historic wiring of our brains always has us zoning in on the next threat or searching out the next problem we need to solve. This makes it all too easy for us to miss this moment and postpone happiness for our entire lives.
The good news is we can do something about it. It’s simple but tricky – because it takes us recognizing – like Andy did – that we need to take accountability for our own thoughts and behaviour, and then finding ways to create new thinking habits like this one:
Practice paying attention to what’s happening in the here and now; and then commit to finding something to savour – no matter how small – in this exact moment. Ask yourself at least once a day “What might I be missing now – in this imperfect moment – that is worth paying attention to?”
It could be that calming cup of tea sitting there on your messy desk, or a meaningfully conversation you are having with your employee about his children or noticing the way the sun is hitting the clouds through the window. Or it might even be that right now, you find yourself behind the wheel of the most bad-ass car on the road. Are you paying attention and savouring this moment for all that it is?
If this content is of interest you, please inquire about my Finding More Flow leadership training curriculum.