Are you choosing to live a happy, fulfilled life?
That’s right, studies have proven that ninety percent of the factors that make the difference between a happy life and an unhappy life are factors within your control. One life hack proven to help unlock your best life is setting, pursuing, and achieving goals.
But you don’t have to take my word for it; many other people are proving this point every single day. They are setting goals, doing the work and building the life of their dreams.
Don’t Take My Word For It, a new Operation Melt blog series, shares how other people – people just like you – are choosing to achieve happiness through their goals.
Yes, you can choose a happy life, but don’t take my word for it!
Amuse-Bouche Before we jump into today's post, I offer you this "dad joke" as a light "amuse-bouche" to entertain your mind before we get serious. Like any other amuse-bouche, you may hate it, but it is worth every penny you paid for it, right? Today I learned the fame of Albert Einstein pales in comparison to his brother whose work in cellular regeneration has been the subject of many books and several movies. His name was Frank.
Lessons from the Run Club: How to Destroy Happiness
Surprise Life Coach explores the goal success strategies, tips and mindsets found in the most unlikely places. From television shows to movies to music to books and more, life coaches are all around us, hidden in the most unexpected places. We simply need to pay attention, and we can reap the rewards from this free coaching.
In this week’s edition of Surprise Life Coach, I will share a happiness lesson I learned from the German Village Running Club, a group I recently joined. This group meets twice weekly, an evening and an early morning, and completes a three-mile run together, maintaining a comfortable pace for all participants.
After this week’s morning run, the group assembled at the coffee shop where the runs begin and end. Most participants ordered coffee and huddled around a few tables for social time. We got to know each other and caught up on each others’ lives, upcoming races and other interests.
The small group whose table I joined was busy discussing running and keeping in touch with other club members. The conversation turned to a popular app the club uses to track and share the runs and cheer for each other. During this conversation, multiple people shared their struggles with the app.
“I need to get back on there for the social aspect. I stopped using it because I was disappointed when I didn’t have the best time in the group.” One girl shared.
One of the founding members replied with his experience. “Oh yeah, I stopped using the leaderboard feature because I got frustrated when somebody else ran more miles than me.”
I was surprised that four or five people club members, all experienced runners, shared similar perspectives about their struggles with this popular app. Reflecting on this conversation, I realized it was a poignant lesson about success and happiness.
As I have shared before, one of my six steps to using project management to build the life of your dreams is to measure progress every day. This strategy worked well for me during my weight loss (see ) and many other personal goals. Similarly, this strategy has worked well for hundreds of people I have interacted with as a coach, mentor, leader and friend.
Measuring progress is good. It tells us where we are in our journey, helps us celebrate milestones and keeps us motivated.
Unfortunately, progress measurement has an evil twin that can destroy happiness and prevent us from achieving our goals. That evil twin’s name: comparison.
When the measurement of progress shifts to comparing your progress to someone else’s performance, your focus starts to change. You stop evaluating your progress and celebrating how much you have accomplished. When you fall victim to this comparison trap, your focus shifts to how far behind others you are. This instantly tosses cold water onto your celebration fire.
“Comparison is the thief of joy”
President Theodore Roosevelt
Falling into the comparison trap is not inevitable; you have a choice. The secret to avoiding this trap is two-fold: a mindset and behavior.
- Change Your Mindset: continually remind yourself there will always be somebody faster, who does more, who makes more, is prettier or otherwise performs better than you. Other people are not your competition; your competition is the person you were yesterday. If it helps, write this on a PostIT, hang it on your bathroom mirror and read it every morning.
- Change Your Behavior: when someone else’s performance information is visible to you, change how you use that data. Use it to cheer and show support for that person to help motivate them. Your goal with this data is to encourage and celebrate others, not compare you to them. If everyone helps other people get better, people will help you get better too!
Your goals and performance data are very personal to you. Comparing your data to someone else’s is like comparing apples and oranges. Neither is better or worse; they are just different. You are not in competition with anybody other than the person you were yesterday. If you want to compare your data with someone else, it should be “yesterday you!”
Comparing yourself only to “yesterday you” is a recipe for increased happiness and success in your life.
Do you need a little help figuring out how to measure your progress while avoiding the comparison trap? That is an excellent role that a coach can plan in your life!
Click here to learn more about my coaching services.
Meet Coach Tony
My name is Coach Tony, and I am a coach, author and project manager on a mission. I am working to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.
I almost allowed one of my biggest life goals to die without ever being attempted for forty years. My goal almost died, not of failure but of loneliness. But, I took a risk and leveraged a simple, logical process that helped me wildly exceed my goal.
I transformed my life, and you can do the same with the help of Operation Melt.
Operation Melt provides engaging, practical content and hands-on coaching to inspire, motivate and equip project managers and other left-brained high-achievers to pursue and accomplish their biggest goals.
Breathe new life into your goals
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