The Secret to Happiness
Today I’m going to teach you a concept that will forever change the way you look at your happiness.
This is one of the most valuable concepts I teach.
It is the #1 secret to happiness.
This concept I am teaching you today is The Happiness Gap. I learned this from Dan Sullivan.
Most people are familiar with the quote: we overestimate what we can do in a year, but we underestimate what we can do in 10 years. But what happens when we have an idea in our mind of what we want our life to be like in 5 years, but after 5 years, we still feel like we’re in the same spot?
The reason isn’t because you overestimated where you thought you would be. It’s just because you’re living in the gap and your happiness is on the horizon.
When we first get married, we think it’s okay to have an empty house. It’s okay to not have the perfect furniture. We might even use a box for a coffee table. It’s easy to justify these circumstances in the beginning, but a few years later, we decided these things are no longer okay.
We think we should be further along. We should’ve ‘made it’ by now. And even though we have MORE things, even though we’ve made progress, we don’t feel happy. We think our life isn’t good enough, we want more.
Living in the gap happens when you postpone your happiness to some future circumstance. There’s where you are right now and where you want to be. If you think your life will be better in the future, you are missing out on the happiness that is available to you right now because you’re attaching your happiness to a circumstance that may or may not happen.
When you get married and move into your house and you’re feeling excited, the reason you’re feeling excited, EVEN THOUGH you don’t have all the things, is because you’re in the present. You’re excited to have what you have. You’re not making what you CURRENTLY have mean anything about what your future will be like. Your current thoughts are serving you.
But later, when nothing seems to be good enough, you’re no longer present in your mind. You’re focused on the future you never received. You’re trying to have what you don’t have, and when you don’t have it, you feel terrible because you think you SHOULD have it.
This isn’t wrong. It’s just what our brain does. It’s what society teaches us. And, it doesn’t mean you’re not actually happy in the moment, because really, we can only feel what we feel in the present. Your capacity for happiness is 100% But the reason I want to point this out to you is because when this happens, your thoughts no longer serve you.
Your thoughts have become resentful over what didn’t happen and your expectations not being met leaves you feeling disappointed and angry.
You can blame your life for not making you happy, but it’s not your life’s job to make you happy. It’s your job.
This is why I love coaching so much. I know exactly what you’re going through and I can help you.
When your brain is constantly focusing on what you don’t have, when you finally get what you want, you’re not going to feel satisfied because your brain will continue to operate as it has been and it will shift to the next thing you don’t have—you’ll have a NEW want.
You’ll have a new idea in your mind that your brain will tell you that when you finally get there, THEN you’ll be happy.
This is what is called living in the gap. You’re stuck in the gap between your current life and you’re ideal life. It feels like what you currently have isn’t good enough. It feels like you can’t be happy until you have your ideal.
You’ve put yourself in a no-win situation.
But there is a way to change your brain, get out of the gap, and feel better.
One of the ways to get out of the gap is to look to your past.
Where did you used to be? What did you used to want that you now have? You have to train your brain to celebrate what you have created, how far you have come.
Another way to get out of the gap is to actually practice gratitude. To really appreciate your life. And the more you appreciate your life, the more it will appreciate in value. You can do this by looking back 2 years or 24 hours. Find something to appreciate.
You don’t even have to write it down. All you have to do is shift how you feel. You don’t have to do any extra work. Your brain is already thinking. Just tell it what to think about, and you’ll stop living in the gap. This is the best way to feel better, and when you feel better, you do better. 100% of the time.
You have to stop waiting for your life to make you happy and decide that you can be happy now.
It doesn’t have to take a lot of time to change your life. Change can happen in an instant. You don’t have to buy all the things or keep up with the Jones’. Life will always be 50/50, so regardless of what you think will make you happy, you’ll only ever be happy half of the time.
That’s how it’s supposed to be.
And when you know all the concepts and you practice the skills that I teach you, the time you spend in unpleasant emotion isn’t a problem because you stop being afraid of it. You stop reacting to it, avoiding it, or dulling it.
If you want to get out of the gap for good, schedule a free session so we can talk about what that would look like specifically for you.
P.S. The secret to happiness is exactly like Martha Washington said: “The greater part of our happiness or misery depends not upon our circumstances, but upon our dispositions.” It does not matter what your life is like. There is a way for you to do what you want when you have the support you need.
