Happiness Is the Path: Stop Chasing, Start Living

Welcome. I'm Ray Catania, your host. Here we dive deep into the profound connection between the mind, body, and universal consciousness. Together, we seek to explore and find ways to reshape reality through mastering thoughts, emotions, and energy. Thank you for being a part of this transformative journey toward personal empowerment and conscious living. Enjoy the show. I'll see you on the other side. Welcome back, everybody. Today I wanted to talk about something that, uh, recently resurfaced, and I think it's very important. And what it's about is achieving goals for the purpose of finding happiness, because we often equate the two as being one and the same. Think about it for a moment. What was the last thing that you really wanted and you achieved it? Was it a new car, a promotion, a certain amount of money in your bank account? An addition on your house. I'll bet you worked for it very hard for a long time, and you finally got it. And I don't doubt that it brought you happiness. But here's the thing. When you think about it, how long did it last? A few weeks, maybe? Until the car just became a car. Until the promotion just became more work and a new title, something happens very quickly. The happiness goes away and something else moves in, and it's the next thing you want, and it's greater than the last thing because you set a new baseline. So the next goal has to be bigger, and you spend months or years chasing something that may make you happy for a couple of weeks. You achieve it, you leave it, the next thing moves in. So if you live to be about 80 years old, and let's say you're highly productive for 50 of those years, and you achieve life-changing goals. And I think it's safe to say you won't achieve a life-saving goal every year. So let's say you achieve 35 life-changing goals, and I think I'm being generous with 35. That's a lot. I mean, how many life-changing things do we really have? They take multiple years to work towards. And then we achieve them and we get a month of happiness before we want the next thing. So if you do the math, out of your 27,000 days that you're going to be alive, 1,050 of them will be happy. If your happiness is derived from goals, wanting, chasing, you didn't achieve happiness. You became a chaser of happiness. And I don't mean this as an insult. Happiness that is derived from creating goals is not a bad thing. But if you're looking to that for internal peace, it will never happen. Because there is nothing in the external world, no person, place, or thing that can give you internal peace and happiness. And if that's your definition of happiness, you're gonna have 1,050 happy days, and that's no way to live. There is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path. This is a Buddhist teaching. What it means is very similar to the saying, "If you love your work, you never worked a day in your life." It simply means that enjoying every day equally, including the achievement day, will make you less likely to chase and require. It's almost an addiction, a high. You have to get to the next best thing. The better outfit, the better car, the better house, the better everything. And you become a chaser. It's okay to want these things and achieve these things, but don't try to make more out of it than what it really is. It's temporary. People think that they'll be happy when they get the job, get the money, get the relationship, achieve the goal. It's— you're expecting too much of the world. The external reality, the external world, the material world cannot give you happiness. Happiness can be found in contentment. That's where happiness lies. Doesn't sound sexy, but it's the truth. You were put here to evolve and grow, and when you evolve and you grow, you become content. That doesn't mean you don't pursue goals. That means in the here and now, you're just as happy as you're going to be when you achieve the goal. It doesn't mean sit around on your pillow and meditate for the rest of your life and don't make any money. It simply means you're going to feel the same way regardless, because remember, it's temporary. What you're getting is temporary. And so long as you accept it as for what it is and don't try to make it into something it cannot be, you will be happy. That's why contentment is Happiness. Contentment can be found in expressing gratitude. When you remind yourself of the things that you're grateful for, you're reminding yourself of the things that you have. You can still have goals, you can still manifest, you can still build something incredible, and you should. I hope this doesn't deter you. It's not supposed to. It's not meant to. A lot of it is already here. It's internal. It's on the ordinary day, in the ordinary moment, in the part of your life that you keep rushing through because you're trying to get somewhere else. So keep your goals and keep your ambition. Keep creating. But remember, the outcome is limited. There is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path. Enjoy the road as much as you plan to enjoy the destination, and suddenly a lot more of your life becomes a really good day. Thanks for listening. I'm Ray Catania, and I'll see you on the other side.