Be okay with right now

One of the most depressing scenes in Seuss's Oh, the Places You Will Go is the dark and cluttered "Waiting Place" where everyone is just...waiting. Waiting for a phone call, a bus, wind to fly a kite, you name it, they're waiting for it. What's more depressing than Seuss's rendition of the Waiting Place is how much time we all spend there.

We wait for the next big thing in our jobs, our next salary increase, our next bit of recognition, all with the thought that once we get there "things will be great." When we arrive "there," we set our goal farther, always with the hope that the next thing will be the one that makes us happy. We shouldn't be too hard on ourselves, though. It's not our fault. Always wanting more is part of the human condition. David Cain, author of This Will Never Happen Again explains:

If one of our ancestors ever actually became happy with his possessions, with his social standing, or with what he had accomplished in his life, he would suddenly be in a particular kind of danger....Having enough could never feel like enough, or else we'd become complacent, leaving us vulnerable to predators, competitors, and bad luck. Lasting happiness was too risky.

Fighting against this deeply engrained mental model takes thought and effort. Dave Evans and Bill Burnett in Designing Your New Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness -- and a New Freedom--at Work have a great reframing slogan that can help: "Wherever you are in your work life, whatever job you're doing, it's good enough. For now."

We would encourage you to check out the Designing Your New Work Life book, but a high level take away and the focus of this point in our presentation is just this: Set goals, work toward them every day, but also be okay with right now - this day, this moment. Because life is just too short to be waiting for things to be better at some point in the future, at some point after you reach that goal you've set for yourself.

To be okay with right now means "loving the process." There will always be another goal, another achievement, another accomplishment. The thing about achievements though is the happiness they provide is fleeting. It feels great for maybe a few days, a couple months if we're lucky, and then we start working on that next goal. Enjoy those starbursts of greatness and feelings of accomplishment, but love the individual moments that make up those larger accomplishments too.