Do you ever wish you could press pause? You want to do nothing but wait for the perfect life set-up to present itself to you, but you don’t want to waste all the time in between by aging in the process? Then you’d be happy. I don’t think you’d be alone or crazy if you admitted to that.
But happiness is never a destination, and if you spend all your days waiting for the right conditions, you’ll miss all that’s out there, which is already beautiful. I want to prove that to you today, in the hope that thereafter, you’ll stop postponing what’s already there for the taking. With that in mind, here are 8 things you need to stop waiting on:
1. The job of your dreams.
“Someday, I am going to be that business owner.” “I’d love that promotion.”
Sounds idyllic. In fact, I’d bet that you’ve dreamed about your ideal job more than you’ve worked to get it. And there’s nothing wrong with wishing and working towards an achievable dream. That’s why goals were invented.
But to put off feeling happy until you get what you want means you stop enjoying the journey it takes to get there. That can sometimes even be the most rewarding part: learning, growing, networking, building. If you only focus on what it feels like after, then you miss out on all those small ways pride surfaced, and you ignored it.
There’s also the minor issue of reality. Sometimes, our dream job is just that. A dream. In real life, we sometimes have to settle for satisfactory, because bills have to be paid. That doesn’t mean you can’t find small moments of meaning and happiness in your job. It’s often a matter of changing your perspective and acting as though what you do has an impact, whatever it is. This is something psychologist and author Susan Jeffers talked about in her best-selling books.
Not to mention, even if you do get your dream job, it might not live up to the expectations you’ve placed upon it. The grass isn’t always greener, so work with what you have, and you might just end up building what you want.
2. Changing how you look.
You just want to strengthen your core. You want to grow or cut your hair. You want to lose 20lbs. You’d love to dress more confidently. Who you are right now, for whatever reason, never seems good enough, and so you battle with that version of you and long for the illusory you you’ve created. And as you battle, you forget to notice all the ways that beauty is already within you.
Your sparkly eyes, your zest for life, your radiant smile, your friendly gravitational pull. Whatever your traits, they’re there. Yet you live life thinking, “If only I could be…”, and you chase this person who doesn’t exist, driven by this cognitive distortion, where you think things about you that only serve to increase how unhappy you feel. And those thoughts end up feeding each other and becoming too big to handle.
Which is exactly why you will never actually end up achieving the look that makes you satisfied. “I should be doing more,” “I want to lose more weight,” “If I could just get my skin to glow a little more.” If you can’t be happy with yourself, flaws and all, then you’ll never be happy, no matter how supposedly flawless you try to make yourself.
3. Full healing from past pain.
Waiting to be healed will always keep you on the perimeter of happiness. You’ll see that elusive state, like the proverbial dangling carrot, and you might even spend years chasing it. But there’s a good chance it will never come, because healing can be messy, and humans are even messier.
To move on from a trauma or pain can take a long time, and for most of us, there’s no point where we can say, “I am fully healed!” We tend to just get to a point where our well-being is now bigger than the pain, but memories exist, and we can still get triggered. If you wait for the perfect condition of healing to be happy, you will probably never experience true happiness in your lifetime.
But it is possible to still hurt, yet find ways to inject happiness into each day. And if your trauma or past pain is significant, then working with a trained therapist is going to be crucial.
4. Waiting for other people to change.
Oof, this is a big one. Have we all been in a situation or dynamic where we think, “If this person just changed, then I’d feel a lot happier.” Romantic relationships can look like this if you’ve met somebody either completely toxic or incompatible for you. You give it time, and you spend that time waiting, because when you get that sweet moment where it all works out, you’ll feel so much happier. You might even do your best to force change upon them.
I hate to break it to you, but this is what psychologists call toxic hope. It’s a big problem for us all, because it causes us to cling to what we should really accept is never going to happen. “If I just wait a little longer, perhaps…”
Perhaps nothing. All that will happen is that more wasted time will flicker by, and you won’t be any happier. You don’t need anybody to make you happy, and what’s more, the happiness of others, particularly those who are toxic for you, shouldn’t be your own gauge for feeling it.
5. Moving to the ‘perfect’ place.
Have you ever heard of the hedonic treadmill? It’s a concept widely known in the psychological world, which describes people who make really big life changes, under the assumption that it will answer all their problems and make them happier. What happens, though, is that they experience an emotional high followed by a fast and unstoppable return to the same baseline emotion that was felt before the big change. As such, they keep needing more and more changes in order to keep feeling that high.
Moving to a dream house or location is a good example of this. You can hope a change of scenery will make you happy, but if you are looking for factors outside of you to alter your feelings, it’s rare that you’ll get what you want.
Eventually, you’ll feel that same boredom or unfulfillment you had before you moved. Sometimes, it isn’t about where you are, but what you’re inviting into your life. Happiness will always stay out of reach if you think it comes complete with a certain zipcode.
6. Approval from others.
Psychology teaches us that those who have low self-esteem or have a history of being neglected can often feel that the only way they can be happy is by waiting for somebody else to approve it, essentially by approving of them and their choices. But the issue is, no matter how hard you try, you can’t please everybody all of the time, and trying to do so only keeps your own happiness constantly out of reach.
With a strong sense of self-worth, happiness can visit you whenever you want, no matter the circumstance. You don’t have to wait for somebody to give you permission to feel it or tell you that you deserve it. You deserve it simply because you exist. It is your power. Don’t give it away to another person!
7. The One.
Life is not a movie, I repeat, life is not a movie. And we’ve all been there, convinced that Keanu Reeves or Jake Gyllenhaal is right around the corner (just me..?), but in truth, these are nothing but scripts designed to make us all feel warm and cozy, and as though we are missing out without our true love showing up and offering us a lifetime together.
What bothers me the most here is that the characters are just so unhappy until they finally meet the person who makes them – and their lives – “complete.” I want you to remember that there are a plethora of ways to invite happiness into your life. It doesn’t begin and end with The One. Sure, put yourself out there and get to know people who might end up being The One, but don’t expect the ultimate love story to drop at your feet.
8. Having more free time on your hands.
Someday, I’ll retire, and I will finally get a chance to do things that make me happy.
I’ll be happy once work stops and we’re on vacation.
Is there a particular reason why you are stalling? Yes, most of us are extremely busy, but if we’re honest, a lot of us also don’t use the time we have wisely. At least a little free time can be carved out for most people, but waiting for it to arrive in your hands so you can accomplish what you want is just asking for it to always be out of reach.
You never know what might happen in your life. Take retirement as an example. Many people work themselves to exhaustion for companies that ultimately don’t really care about them, setting aside their free time and hobbies for those golden years. But when retirement comes, and they’ve got all that free time, they find they’re too tired, too saddled with health issues or whatever else to do the things that make them happy. The retirement they thought was finally going to make them happy doesn’t.
Psychologists call this the arrival fallacy. You become stuck in the loop of believing that you’ll only be happy when, only to find you’ve completely overestimated what actually happens when.
You can chase that fallacy, or you can accept your time now and fill it with enriching experiences. It’s your choice.
Final thoughts…
What’s next for you? This really all boils down to what stance you take on happiness at this moment. A few minutes ago, you might have been stuck assuming that only certain criteria create happiness, but what about now?
The beauty is that you get to decide what you invite inward. You can believe that the perfect job or soulmate will make you happy, or you can find small ways to be happy without those things right now. You can prevent regrets by being the person you want to be, regardless of the external factors, and with practice, you’ll see that happiness isn’t a concept that needs postponing.
