“Happily ever after only lasts if you have six minutes to live.”
That’s what Dr. Laurie Santos said on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast this week, among other important wisdom about happiness. As a child who revered her happily ever after and as an adult who rebuilt her worldview, I immediately scribbled down this quote.
The heart of it is that happiness is not a final destination . . . and that it doesn’t last. We know this. Feeling all the things turns out to be a healthier approach to dealing with all the things and living a life that is, yes, happier.
We also know that we adjust fairly quickly to new joys and achievements. The new house. The new promotion. The new love. The new phone. Pretty soon it’s not new and it’s simply part of life. We don’t get that same happiness hit. Dr. Santos, who teaches at Yale, compares soon-to-be Yale students opening their acceptance letters — and the incredible joy they experienced — to their everyday life at Yale a year later. They still got into Yale. Nothing has changed about that achievement. But it became part of their baseline. And now they are anxious, overwhelmed, and depressed. Uff da.
The anecdote is gratitude. Intentional gratitude practice creates those moments of joy and happiness for us in a more sustainable way.
A mini gratitude list for my day:
- For finishing Brené Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart
- For a lunch break where I didn’t look at my computer
- For my warm and comfortable home in the midst of a very cold day
- For meaningful connection with people on my team
- For YMCA360 online classes
With Love,
Natalie