Maxwell Maltz in Psycho-Cybernetics says:
"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get. "
As most of us know all too well, sometimes you get exactly what you want and you realize it's not what you wanted at all.
Sometimes you don't get what you want and you realize it was exactly what you needed.
Sometimes you don't get what you want and you realize you already have everything you could ever want.
But my question is how can we have both?
How can you achieve the success of getting what you want while also experiencing the happiness of wanting what you get?
I don't claim to have the one true answer to this question, but I can provide my experience.
In my experience, happiness comes first.
There are people with next to nothing that are filled with love and joy and there people who have everything they want and yet are miserable. So happiness isn't dependent upon "success" in the traditional sense of acquiring material things.
Happiness is your ability to be at peace with the is-ness of whatever life is presenting you.
If you don't have a want for anything, you already have everything you want.
Desire is the seed of misery because as soon as there's desire there's a declaration that there is something outside of yourself that you don't have; and therefore there's a possibility that you won't be able to get that thing and the desire will be unfulfilled.
But I don't want no-thing. I want everything.
So the harmony of the success and happiness comes when you can simultaneously have a great desire and will to fulfill that desire, while at the same time being in total acceptable of exactly where you're at.
In my life this looks like creating the structures that allows me to show up and do the work I feel called to do to move me towards my version of success, while continuously reminding myself that where I'm at is exactly where I'm supposed to be.
I want everything AND I want none of it.
In my experience, however, this only comes when you are in connection with your purpose -- your soul's yearning to co-create an experience of it-Self.
Take the call to adventure and go on the journey, but don't forget that you can only be exactly where you're at.
Always with you,
NB