 So I posted this question recently on Instagram, and I got some really fascinating responses. Now I want you to quickly check out this video. What is something you thought would make you happy, but did not when you got it? Reply to this. I've been really pondering this in my life about what is, I guess what's really the most important, but reply, okay? So I just posted this in a bit of a philosophical mood, where I was thinking about life and what was really most important. But the surprises really actually surprised me quite a lot. And I wanna share those with you today in this video. Hey guys, Alex Hine, author of the Self-Help Habits Book, Master of the Day. Now related to this video is if you've been trying to figure out how to live a better, more deliberate and happy life, the first link below is for a free journaling worksheet. So if you get that, you're also gonna sign up for an email every couple of days that'll show you how I use journaling to really get my life together and build a really incredible special life. So you can check it out down there below. So here are the results of that question I posed to many of you. People said things like, I thought that losing 20 pounds would make me a lot happier. I thought that getting my dream girl would make me happy. I thought that climbing the corporate ladder and really having esteem and respect of my colleagues and having a higher income would make me happier. I thought that reaching my goals, my financial goals, my travel goals, my excitement goals, my fitness goals would complete me and they didn't. But really the biggest bucket for all of these was more than 80% of the people said that I thought that becoming more successful and earning more money, even though I needed it would help me feel happier, but it didn't. So I think there are a couple of life lessons here that may really help you. The first one is that career success rarely makes us feel better unless we either love the work we're doing or it's really meaningful. You know, when I was building Modern Health Monk, my intention from the beginning was I wanted to quit my day job. That was it. Like I just wanted to be able to replace 40 hours that I did not like with something that was at least more likeable than that, that I controlled. Now the crazy thing was for so many, so many years, I was like, if I could just pay myself 3,000 US dollars a month, I could quit my job and then I could work in this every single day. And that would be incredible. Now the crazy thing is fast forward a bunch of years and my business one year did over $100,000. The crazy thing was that was like my ultimate dream to be able to make that much money. You know, I had never even made $40,000 at a full-time job before. I was never getting paid a lot. And so the crazy thing is I realized that I felt way happier in my business on the day where I made only a 2 to 3,000 US a month where I could then quit my day job and replace nine hours a day with a new nine hours a day of something that was meaningful to me. I was more happy when that happened than when I reached this revenue goal that was like the ultimate dream. Now what's really interesting to me was that if I reflected back on what was actually the most fulfilling during that time, you know the thing that really filled me up was purely reading the comments that you leave under the videos or the DMs you send me on Instagram or the comments on the posts I post there. The thing that really made me feel good was just creating content that helped other people regardless of any financial number. And that really was enlightening because for most of us that is what will fulfill us. Work that contributes to others' lives or work that we find intrinsically meaningful and beyond really just for most of us survival added money is useful and will make us happier but it's not gonna complete us and fill the void like we think it will. Now the second thing is that achievement by itself is not a goal that is designed to make us feel good. So one of the most common trends in the posts and the responses to this video was the achievement of a goal. They were all responses to the disappointment of having reached an important goal but not feeling happy from it. Now I think this is really enlightening because achievement by itself is not there to make us happy, right? But think about all the things we do to achieve a goal, like let's say your goal is to get into medical school. Your mom or your dad, they really want you to go. So what do you do to get into medical school? You sacrifice your evenings where instead of hanging with friends and family, exercising, walking the dog, spending time reading books or playing video games or having fun, you're studying an extra three, four, five hours. Now what do you do on the weekend? Instead of vacations, traveling, just relaxing and having a glass of wine, you're studying, you're working. And then when you're in medical school, what are you doing? You're probably not really dating, you're probably not going on vacations, you're probably not having much fun on the weekend or too much fun maybe. The point though is that achievement is not aligned with life because achievement is about an outcome or an end point you're trying to get to which is really contrary to how one should live if they want to feel well because wellness is about making each day make you feel good rather than trying to make your life at the end feel good but sacrificing all of this to get there. Now the last thing that I think can really help you is that extrinsic goals or other people's goals and vision for us rarely make us feel happy. Now I know that sounds obvious but think about how many of the external sources of pressure you may be caving to. Is your career, your job not of your own choosing but because your partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, your parents want you to do that? Is the way you dress not what you want? Is the way you speak and act not how you want to? Does it not accurately reflect you? Does the way you spend your time reflect your boss and your career not how you really want to spend it? The biggest thing I think I talk about here is the power of deliberate living which is you choosing how you want to live and then reverse engineering how to build that life because almost always I can guarantee if you don't want to feel well, build a life that other people want for you because at the end of the day you get this praise, the pat on the back, good job Jamie, we're proud of you but you feel sick inside because your spirit, your soul feels dead because you sold your soul to impress other people and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that's not gonna make you feel good. So the value of completely following your gut no matter what is that at the end of the day you need to figure out what you want, your own vision and then steadily plot towards that every day and not cave to the external pressure of people around you. Anyway, I wanted to share this, I thought that was really fascinating there was such a skew towards career goals not making us happy which was absolutely fascinating and I think at the end of the day if you can enjoy the happiness of pursuit as much as the pursuit of happiness or just enjoying the pursuit of whatever it is you're trying to go to as much as possible. If you can do that I think you can build not only a really successful life but a really enjoyable and fulfilling one. I hope that helps that as you're philosophizing for the day before you go check out the link below it's the free journaling worksheet to help you plot out exactly what you want from life and again before you go I've got another video right on this topic coming up here.