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Kamini Wood works with high achievers on letting go of stress, overwhelm and anxiety that comes with trying to do everything, and trying to do it all perfectly
Hi there, and welcome back to another episode of Rise Up Live Joy Your Way, whether it's morning or afternoon. I wanna thank you for taking some time to hang out here with me and today I wanna talk about something that many of us actually chase. But so few of us truly understand and that is happiness.
If we squirrel through social media, you'll see endless messages about choosing happiness or being happy or living a happy life. It's portrayed as this destination a permanent state that if we can just reach, [00:01:00] you know, and think positively enough, or finally fix everything around us, we're gonna. Somehow, you know, life will be grand because we've reached this place of being happy.
But here's the truth. Happiness is not actually a destination. Happiness is an emotional state. It comes and goes just like all the other emotions do. So if happiness is a permanent, what should we be chasing? So today I wanna talk about shifting the focus from happiness to something else. Something else, uh, that I wanna refer to chasing.
Contentment instead of happiness, uh, chasing meaning instead of happiness, really finding what truly matters to us. It's true that we live in a culture and a society that's obsessed with being happy. Advertisements promise that a new car or a vacation or a certain lifestyle is finally gonna bring us happiness and self-Help books tell us to choose happy.
And social media shows us these highlight reels of people smiling and traveling and achieving. And we assume that's what happiness [00:02:00] looks like. But the problem with this is that happiness, as I said, is an emotional state. It's fleeting. It's not designed to stay. If you think about it, when you finally have landed a promotion, for instance, you do feel ecstatic in the moment, and you might actually feel it for a little while, but soon that excitement fades and you're onto your next goal.
Or if you buy a new phone, you're really excited and thrilled for a week, but then it just becomes another object in your pocket or your purse. This is called the hedonic treadmill. We adapt quickly to new circumstances and happiness starts to. Fade away. So when we chase happiness, like it's the end goal, we set ourselves up for constant disappointment.
Again, I wanna say happiness is an emotion, just like sadness and anger, or joy and fear. They all rise and fall. Emotions are like the waves in the ocean. They arrive, they crest, and then they pass. You wouldn't expect a wave to freeze in place. So why do we suddenly think that happiness is gonna be frozen in place?
And we treat happiness like it is this permanent [00:03:00] state and we misunderstand its purpose. Happiness is a signal. It tells us that in the moment, something does align with our values, but it's not actually meant to be constant. So. If happiness isn't the goal, then what is I do? I offer up to you Contentment.
Contentment isn't about being thrilled with every moment. It's about being at peace with where you are. Even as life is ebbing and flowing. It's about being at peace with that. It's knowing that when happiness isn't present, you are still grounded. You are still fulfilled. You're connected with what truly matters to you.
Contentment says, I can sit with myself even if life feels hard. Contentment doesn't disappear when our circumstances shift. It's steadier. It's built on those values, on that meaning on your authentic being and research and positive psychology shows that people who chase happiness often end up. Less satisfied while people who focus on meaning feel more fulfilled.
And here's why. Because happiness is about how we feel in a [00:04:00] specific moment, whereas meaning is about how we interpret our lives over time. Happiness is asking the question, am I comfortable right now in this moment? And meaning is saying, am I living in alignment with who I actually wanna be? And the reality is life is going to bring us discomfort.
There's gonna be challenges and grief and uncertainty because those are the unavoidable parts of life. And if our goal is happiness, we feel like failures when life does feel hard. But if we have meaning, we have depth and it becomes part of our story, those challenges become part of our story. And in fact, it helps us build resilience.
So I wanna address another myth, and that really is that if you're not happy, you're doing something wrong or you are failing. And I wanna just call that narrative out as, as toxic, it leads people to suppress other emotions. It leads people to suppress emotions like grief and anger and sadness because they think that those emotions mean that they're doing something wrong or that they're failing.
But again, those emotions are data packets. Their information, [00:05:00] sadness tells us that maybe we've lost something that was really important to us, and anger tells us that maybe something is unjust or maybe our boundaries are being crossed and joy and happiness and excitement tell us something might actually be in alignment with our values.
So we do. We need the full spectrum of all of the emotions, and if we try to numb out the negative ones, we end up numbing out. Happiness too. So the goal isn't this idea of constant positivity. The goal is emotional fluency, the ability to feel and name and navigate emotions without being controlled by them.
So if we're not chasing happiness and we're focused on engaging deeply with what truly matters, how do we do that? So I offer up some questions. I offer up questions that you can ask yourself. What actually gives you meaning? What values do you want to embody? Where do you feel most authentic and connected with yourself?
Even if you're not feeling comfortable, when you start to shift and create your life around, meaning, happiness naturally [00:06:00] occurs. You're not dependent on it. You can experience even the hard and challenging moments and still feel fulfilled at the same time. For example, parenting isn't always happy. It can be exhausting and frustrating and messy, but it's deeply meaningful.
Building a business isn't always happy. It can also be stressful and uncertain and demanding, but if it aligns with your purpose, it's fulfilling, meaning sustains us. Even when happiness is coming and going and contentment doesn't just happen. It's cultivated. It's cultivated over time and with practice.
So here are some things to think about. Uh. Gratitude. Not forced positivity, but intentional awareness of what's here and what you can be appreciative for and thankful for even the small ones. And gratitude also roots you in the present moment. Mindful presence instead of chasing the next thing. Notice this moment.
You know, your breath, your body, the people near you. Contentment lives in the now, not in the Sunday. And then as I've been talking about [00:07:00] values-based living, choosing actions that really, uh, align with what matters to you. When you live in alignment with your values, you start to create a sense of contentment, even when life is difficult.
And then self-compassion, letting go of the idea that you should feel happy all the time, and instead really imploring the idea of self-compassion that you can name when life is challenging and hard and, and getting to experience. Of just being human with all the ups and downs so often. What steals our contentment isn't the lack of happiness, it's the narrative that we're telling ourselves.
We think that, you know, if I'm not happy, then I must be broken, or I'm failing, or there's something wrong with me. Or if I'm not happy, my relationship is broken, or if I'm not happy, I need to change everything. But if we reframe it into, if I'm not happy, maybe this is an opportunity to pause and reflect and ask like, what is this telling me might be out of alignment.
You know, that reframe shifts everything. So instead of asking the question, [00:08:00] am I happy, really, truly asking yourself, am I living in alignment with myself authentically? Am I building a life that is actually meaningful to me? Because a meaningful life will include all of those twists and turns and ups and downs, all those so-called seasons of life that we go through.
And so. When you're thinking about how, you know, how do I cultivate this? Maybe even taking out your journal and journaling on some questions such as, you know, when was the last time, when was the last time that I chased happiness and then ended up feeling disappointed or, um, what experiences in my life I have felt deeply me?
Even if they may not have been happy moments, and what values do I wanna live by daily? Uh, I do think that doing that core value identification is so important. And then even asking yourself, how can I shift from the question? Am I happy to? Am I in alignment with [00:09:00] who I want to be and how I wanna show up in the world?
Happiness does come and go, but meaning will endure. Contentment can be cultivated, and you don't have to chase the fleeting highs of happiness. You can actually build the steady foundation rooted in what truly matters. And when you stop chasing happiness, you start pursuing authenticity. You stop living like joy is somewhere out there that you need to attain or catch, and you begin to discover that joy has been available all along, living connected to yourself.
I encourage you not to measure your life by how often you feel quote unquote happy, but maybe start measuring it by how authentically you feel that you're living, how connected you feel that you're living, how fully you feel like you're showing up and engaging in what matters most to you. Because happiness will always come and go, but that meaning and that contentment are the choices that you can keep coming back home to no matter what life is throwing at you.
I hope something in this episode resonated with [00:10:00] you and you felt helpful. Uh, if you'd like to talk with me anytime about how coaching might be able to. Be of support to you. Feel free to reach out to me anytime@coachwithKamini.com and until next time, stay well.