The Power of Practice

You are reading the first of many blog posts that will appear on this site. This is an experiment to see what happens when one commits to a practice of regularly putting out written material (in this case, every Sunday). I certainly hope that these writings will be of value to other humans on their personal quests for happiness, health, and wellbeing.

A thought that has been kicking around in my mind a lot lately is this: Human happiness is not about what one wants to achieve, but what one is committed to putting into practice. Let’s break this down. 

When we are under the assumption that the fulfillment of our goals is the location of our happiness, life becomes an exercise in futility. We are always monitoring our immediate environment for signs that our goal has been reached. And we aren’t happy while we are partaking in this neurotic scanning process. We are always in a place of “my life is missing something that I need in order to be happy.” Someone who is entirely absorbed in the achievement of goals is someone who lives in an imagined future that never seems to arrive. This is not a space where happiness flourishes.

But when we are instead focused on what we are committed to putting into practice, we are not engaging with the future in such an obsessive, controlling way. When all notions of ever reaching the goal are put off the table and everything is boiled down to practice, we are able to release our grip on future outcomes and instead appreciate our current effort. We start to see the the fulfillment of our goals as a natural by-product of our practice, and we become content with ourselves long before the goal we wish to reach is achieved.

This is not to say that setting goals is unimportant. Indeed, having clear and specific goals for your life imbues you with solidity and direction that otherwise would not be there. Without conscious goals, our lives become directionless and amorphous, which usually does not inspire happiness.

But rather that viewing goals as places that we must reach in order to be happy, an alternative is to see goals as signposts reminding us of what we which to regularly usher into our lives through practice. 

Let me give an example: let’s say that you have a goal of one day being on your own TV show. Why do you want to be on a TV show? Because you value entertainment, you value bringing joy to the lives of other people. Your goal of being on a TV show is a symbolic representation of what you value most about being alive. So the next step is to ask yourself: what practice can I establish that directly addresses what I value most, and indirectly increases the likelihood of the associated goal attached to that value being achieved? Maybe, in this hypothetical scenario, you decide to practice increasing your acting ability by doing an improvised monologue in front of the mirror every morning, regardless of quality. Will this automatically make you a star of a TV show? No, of course not. But what is this guaranteed to do? Bring you in more intimate alignment with your deepest values. Which is where true, deep happiness is to be discovered.