Happiness is not the goal for a meaningful life

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We are constantly chasing a destination of happiness or joy — thinking that we can summit the mountain and relocate permanently.

Unfortunately, happiness is not an ever-lasting mountain top we can rest upon. It is an emotion and emotions are transient.

Emotions — all emotions — are meant to be felt and experienced in waves.

They are not meant to be a part of our experience and life permanently. That means that when you feel happy, excited, or joyful that, yes, there is an endpoint. And, the good news is that emotions like sadness, anxiety, anger, and despair will also pass.

Rather than see that change and evolution as good or bad, focus on seeing the depth of the human experience that is felt by feeling these different emotions.

See them all as neutral and inevitable.

In fact, I had a professor describe emotions as a gift because each one is a connection to the human experience and brings us closer to the people, places, and experiences in our lives.

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Why Productivity is Not Enough to Create the Life you Deserve.

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It’s easy to fill our time with tasks, to do's, worries, thoughts, and mindless social media scrolling sessions. Like gas in an enclosed container, "stuff" will always take up as much space in our life as we allow. And then it becomes wishful thinking to assume that we will ever live a life that is not “busy.” All “busy” really means is that we are consumed by these thoughts, feelings and behaviors and do not know how to move past, or separate ourselves, or to work more effectively within them.


From here, the idea of productivity was born. Being able to manage our time and energy most effectively to progress towards our goals and complete the tasks at hand more efficiently and with greater ease. This first step was excellent in the process of treating the disease of busyness. It forced people to use systems of delegation, automation, deleting, and prioritization. But productivity often misses some key concepts that can only be mastered when we take it to the next level of elevation -- Intentional Productivity.

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