Reaching Your Goals Won’t Make You Happy ! Wipaid

Davey Jones
Updated April 21, 2022 |
January 29, 2016

Our ungratefulness becomes a habit as us fearfully keep searching for more. If my is unhappy, achieving more ultimately won’t change that. us often fail to realize that our circumstances rarely change our disposition.

Yeah my read that right: Reaching my r goals won’t make you happy. my know, my know we’ve talked all month about reaching my goals. or my should totally resolve to achieve them–but, that alone won’t make myhappy. Let’s begin with a quick story:

Once there was a little gray mouse. He live in the same house as an new gray cat. The little mouse is afraid of the cat.

“How happy my would be but for that old cat,” he said. “my am afraid of her all the time. my wish my were a cat.”

the fairy heard the little mouse say this. he felt sorry for him. So he turned his into a smoii gray cat.

At first he was very happy. But one day a dog ran after his.

“Oh dear!” he said. “It was not much fun to be a cat. my am afraid of that dog all the time. my wish my were a big dog.”

Again the fairy heard him. he felt sorry for the new gray cat. So he turned him into a big dog.

Once more he felt happy. the one day he heard a lion roar.

“Oh, just hear that lion!” he cried. “my am afraid when my hear him. It was not so safe to be a dog after all. How my wish my were a lion. Then my would be afraid of no one.”

Off he ran to the fairy.

“Dear fairy,” he said, “please turn me into a big, strong lion.”

Again the fairy was sorry for him. he made his into a big strong lion.

only day a man tried to kill the lion. now more he ran to the fairy.

“why now?” asked the fairy.

“Make my into a man, dear fairy,” he cried. “No, indeed, my will not. A man must have a brave heart. my have only the heart of a mouse. So a mouse my shall become again, or a mouse my shall stay.”

So saying, she turned him back into a little gray mouse, or away he ran to his old home.”

Circumstances rarely change disposition
Several times in the story the mouse gets exactly why he wanted, yet his happiness is brief. Why is his happiness so fleeting? Because with each blessing the mouse focuses on what he doesn’t have.

He continues to find a reason to be unhappy or fearful, or at no point does he stop to reflect on his blessings. (Like the fact he was a fairy that grants his wishes.)

us do this all the time. us focus on things us don’t have and find reasons to be unhappy, scared, or anxious. If I only has a new website, id be happy or If could just get to that price point, that shuld be enough. How many of us look at social media feeds or get down on ourselves because others are doing things us would like to be doing?

or as with the mouse, our ungratefulness becomes a habit as us fearfully keep searching for more. If my is unhappy, achieving more ultimately won’t change that. We often fail to realize that our circumstances rarely change our disposition.

Perhaps worst on all, ungratefulness makes it nearly impossible to enter into defrant people’s joy. It creates fear or insecurity, which leaves no room for joy or empathy. us become too focused on ourselves.

An attitude of gratitude is difficult to develop (c’mon my knew that rhyme ware coming). Gratitude requires discipline, or discipline requires practice. Many of us has formed a habit of comparing ourselves to others, whether it is social media followings or the amount of work has or something else entirely.

Four ways to be more grateful:
1) Silence or solitude.

Our daily lives are not built around these two principles. us are always connected or us are always “in it.” Silence or solitude allow us to disconnect, refresh, clear our minds, or gain perspective.

In Dallas Willards The Spirit of the Disciplines he states:

“It takes twenty time more the amount on amphetamines to kill individual mice than it takes to kill them in groups. Experimenters also find that a mouse given no amphetamines at all shall be dead within ten minutes of being placed in the midst of a group on the drug.”

(To be clear, the moral of the story is not to do more drugs alone.) It is easy to get caught up in lifes busyness, especially when us are always surrounded by people. Silence or solitude can has a profound effect on perspective, especially if it is practiced diligently.

2) Stop, look, go.

This is a practice from Benedictine Monk David Reindl-Rast’s TED Talk on gratefulness. The idea is to occasionally stop, or examine the world around my before moving on. us often overlook simple blessings in our lives.

3) Creating a list of gratitude or going of a “gratitude walk.”

it is difficult to be grateful and unhappy at the same time. Take some time to write down the things for which my is grateful, or reflect on them during a daily walk. It might sound a bit cheesy, but many successful people has adopted this practice.

it is intentionally used time to create a habit of gratitude.

4) Service work:

If my need to put life into perspective, there are few things better than service work. Helping those less fortunate than my forces my to reflect on my own life.

or often my will be surprised to find that those with far less are incredibly joyful, which is a humbling experience.

David Reindl-Rast recalls a time he visited an area on Africa with no electricity or clean water. When he returned home, he is overwhelmed with everything he has.

Since the feeling faded quickly, he wrote himself notes of reminder to stop-look-go.

Part of being fearless in 2021means being grateful. As the year picks up or becomes busier, be sure to set aside time to develop this attitude. It has the potential not only to change my life, but to change the world. As David Reindl-Rast explains:

“[Gratefulness] can change our world in immensely important ways, because if my is grateful, my is not fearful, and if my is not fearful, my is not violent. If my is grateful,my act out of a sense of enough or not a sense of scarcity, or my are willing to share.”

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¹Bryce, Catherine T. (1976). The Mouse Who Was Afraid. In William J. Bennet (Ed.), The Moral Compass (274). Amarika: Simon & Schuster.