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Episode 238 - Finding Joy in Pursuing Something Hard

Do you find yourself spending money in hopes of finding happiness, only to end up disappointed? Are you hesitant to try something new or take on challenging tasks because of fear? In this blog post, we'll explore the concept of thinking big and tackling difficult endeavors as a path to discovering more happiness in both your life and financial journey. 

 

Importance of Setting Goals: 

Setting ambitious goals and pursuing them can lead to a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. By delving into self-help books and exploring topics like goal setting, Chris Hawkins discovered the power of pursuing something hard and finding happiness through the process. 

The Concept of Flow: 

The idea of "flow" as discussed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi emphasizes the joy that comes from engaging in challenging activities that push you to your limits. By immersing yourself in a task that requires effort and dedication, you can experience a state of flow that brings immense satisfaction. 

Finding Happiness Within: 

Contrary to popular belief, happiness cannot be bought or pursued externally. It is a state that must be cultivated from within by engaging in activities that bring a sense of fulfillment and purpose. By finding joy in the journey and taking on monumental tasks, you can discover a deeper sense of happiness and accomplishment. 

Embracing the Journey: 

While the path to financial freedom may not always be easy or glamorous, it is the journey itself that shapes and transforms us. By staying committed to your goal, celebrating small victories, and finding happiness in the pursuit of something challenging, you can experience true fulfillment and joy. 

The key to finding happiness lies in thinking big, setting ambitious goals, and embracing the challenges that come your way. By pursuing something hard and deriving joy from the journey itself, you can unlock a newfound sense of happiness and fulfillment in your life and financial endeavors. 

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Episode Transcript: 

Chris:  

Do you spend money hoping to find happiness? Are you disappointed when you don't find it? Are you afraid to try something new? Does the thought of doing something hard make you afraid to even try? Well, in this episode, I want to share with you how thinking big and doing something hard just might bring you a little more happiness in your life, and your financial journey might just be a great place to find some happiness in pursuing something hard. Let's talk about it in this episode.

Chris:  

This is the Debt-Free Dad Podcast, where we help normal, everyday people like you take control of your finances so you can live a happier, less stressful life. My name is Chris Hawkins and I will be your host for today's episode. From February of 2006 to September of 2008, my wife and I paid off just under $100,000 in debt, and we've been debt-free, except for our house, for over 15 years. Now, if you've listened to this podcast long enough, you've probably picked up on the fact that I love to read. My self-help reading journey began, oh good gracious, probably back in 2005. And for about five years, I think, I read every single book that I could get my hands on dealing with personal finance, and eventually I got into reading other books about other subjects, all dealing with self-help, things like goal setting. And the interesting thing is when I would read a book on goal setting, that would lead me to another book on goal setting, and another book on goal setting, and maybe a podcast, maybe a blog, all dealing with goal setting, and then eventually I would move on to a different topic, something like change. I'd read a book on change, find another book, another book, and that sort of led me down another rabbit hole. I generally read something on a topic and that leads me to another book and that leads me to another book. Every now and then there's a book that comes along that helps to tie all of those topics together, and the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Don't let that scare you, csikszentmihalyi. He was a psychologist who became fascinated by what made people H-A-P-P-Y happy. And I don't have to go any further than the introduction to the book to find the inspiration for today's topic.

Chris:  

There are two ideas that I hear people say all the time. You know money can buy you happiness. If you just had a bunch more money, you could buy happiness, buy your stuff and, of course, you buy something and you realize that doesn't bring happiness. And then it becomes well, as soon as I get more money I can buy something else and that's going to make me happy. The other thing I hear people say all the time is that you pursue happiness.

Chris:  

Well, csikszentmihalyi starts off his book by talking about how he became passionate about the subject of happiness and he discovered that these two ideas the idea that money we think that money can buy us happiness, or that happiness is something you can pursue is not really realistic, and so that he mentions that one day he had an epiphany, kind of an aha moment, and he writes, quote happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but rather on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy. So that's the first thing I want to point out there you can't pursue happiness. Now he kind of backs this up. He uses a quote from the book Man's Search for Meaning, which is a book written by another psychologist, victor Frankl. And Viktor writes in this book don't aim at success. The more you aim at it, the more you're going to miss it. Happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue. Ensue as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself. So let me kind of put this in context for you, csikszentmihalyi.

Chris:  

He talks about how most of our life is outside of our control. Most of our life is something about external forces, and let me give you a couple of examples. Did any of you out there pick the day you were going to be born? Did you pick who your parents were going to be? Did you pick your DNA, how tall you're going to be, what you're going to look like, where you went to school? There's lots of things that are outside of our control, and so it's real easy for us to assume that, because so much of our life is outside of our control, that happiness has to come from outside of ourselves. And he talks about how that, through his studies, that even in dark times, even in really, really bad times, people do have glimpses of happiness. He calls these moments or glimpses of happiness an optimal experience, and so I'm going to quote you a little bit more here, just so you can help get an idea of what he means.

Chris:  

Yet we have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions. We do feel that we're masters of our own fate, and on the rare occasions that this happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark for memories of what life should be like. This is what we mean by optimal experiences. The best moments in our lives are not the passive, they're not the receptive, relaxing times. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we, we make happen, and for each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves, and each of these experiences are not necessarily pleasant at the time that they occur, but they can become some of the best moments of our lives. And getting control of life is never easy, and sometimes it can definitely be painful but, in the long run, optimal experiences add up to a sense of mastery or perhaps better, a sense of participation that we are determining the content of our lives, and that comes as close to what is usually meant by happiness as anything else we can conceivably imagine.

Chris:  

So what is he saying here? When we try to do something difficult and when we try to take on monumental tasks or big goals, have you ever had one of those moments where you start doing something and you get wrapped up in the moment and you look up four or five hours later and it seems like it's been five minutes, but you've enjoyed that four or five hours, you've gotten so much accomplished or you've learned so much, You've done so much and it just seems like time stood still and you feel like man, I get such a rush out of what I just did. That's what he's talking about with flow, and of course, the whole book is about how can we have more flow in our lives so we can accomplish more, so we can accomplish bigger and greater things, so that over time, the more, bigger and greater things that we accomplish, the more happiness that we bring into our lives. Now, this is sort of the backdrop, that Part of how we can find happiness, or how we find happiness is from within ourselves and that by doing and accomplishing monumental things and finding joy in those small moments when you finally figure one thing out on your journey that then leads you down a road to more discovery, to learning how to do something or learning how to do it better, then eventually you come to a crossroads, something that's difficult again, and then eventually you figure it out and the joy that comes from that. There's nothing that can make you more happy inside than those what I used to call as a teacher, the light bulb moments, or as the coach, when I would coach the light bulb moment when a player would finally figure something out and you could just all of a sudden see the confidence and their play just seemed to increase tenfold, all because the light bulb, which I call confidence, finally turned on. So I want to come back now to the book the Happiness of Pursuit. Now remember I had read this book several, several years before. It was sort of one of the books about mindset, about how to think differently, and it was a great read. But I didn't appreciate it as much until I read Chick Sent Me High. And so in the book and I love this title the Happiness of Pursuit. Think about the order of those words. It's basically saying find happiness in pursuing something.

Chris:  

And Chris Guillebeau, the author of that book. He talks about how his goal was to visit every country in the world. I personally wouldn't have that as a goal. There's a few countries in the world I wouldn't want to go to, but somehow he made it his goal and some of them were very difficult to visit and some of them again, why would you want to go there? Probably the most unsafe thing you could ever do in the world. Would you want to go there? But he arranged it somehow through contacts and through letting it be known that this was his journey.

Chris:  

But while he was on his own journey, while he was embracing every country that he went to and solving problems on how do I get to that country, how do I get this visa, he learned that there were other people who, likewise, were trying to accomplish big things and had big goals, and they were stretching themselves. I think there was a story of one guy who made it his goal to take every class that MIT offers. There's a series of courses that MIT offers, and he wanted to go through every one of those courses in a year. That was his goal, and so he gives a series of stories about people who think about doing something monumental, something big, and how they found joy in that and how they found happiness because they had a meaning or they had a calling or they had a goal. They had something calling or they had a goal. They had something they were working towards, something they wanted to accomplish, and it wasn't something small, although small goals are extremely important. These were things that they may not necessarily know how they were going to accomplish, and they had to stretch themselves, and it was through stretching themselves and overcoming the obstacles that they found the true joy.

Chris:  

So what does all this have to do for you? I've been asked more than a few times. You know, chris, how hard was it to get out of debt? Well, I personally remember at the beginning thinking, oh man, getting out of debt is going to be impossible, and I bet there's a lot of you out there listening to this podcast who are thinking the same thing. Even though it took us almost three years to completely pay off everything but the house. I remember thinking throughout the entire journey how much I couldn't wait to be done. Yeah, the goal was to be completely debt-free, except for the house. Yeah, that was what I wanted to be.

Chris:  

But my point about saying that is the journey wasn't fun, it was not easy, we had to sacrifice. We didn't like saying no, but we had to. I would use every adjective except for fun to describe our journey. A better adjective is probably painful and absolutely painful. But you know, every time I saw the debt go down, every time we marked off another debt on our snowball, I got excited. And the more that we stayed on the journey, the more excited we became.

Chris:  

Now, remember what Csikszentmihalyi said is, even in our darkest moments, we still find little glimpses of happiness. And if we could just find ways to have more inner peace and to realize that happiness doesn't come from outside, it doesn't come from what we buy, it doesn't come from pursuing something but being in the moment and finding joy in that moment. Well, that's what happened in my life and it's sort of really. His book really helps to explain now my journey.

Chris:  

So we, you know we were on a journey to accomplish something. Hard and with a little bit of traction, a little bit of success, we found our flow, we got in the zone, and it was through pursuing something difficult that we found happiness along the way, knowing that we were getting closer and closer and closer every day to being debt-free. You know, looking back, though, I wouldn't change a thing about the journey. I wouldn't go through it again, but I wouldn't change it. You know it was hard work and it was a lot of sacrifice through the journey, but it's that hard work and that sacrifice that changed who we were, and the more victories we got, the more we felt like we were mastering something, and it made life more exciting and for me, it made me even more happy.

Chris:  

So if you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking, man, I can't get out of debt, well, I'm living proof that you can. And if you start today and you stick with it, even when things don't go according to the plan, look for the moments of joy throughout the journey. If you'll do that, you're going to find happiness in pursuing your goal of being debt-free. So give it a try. Stop spending money hoping to buy happiness. Stop pursuing happiness and begin finding happiness in pursuing something hard.

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