The Pursuit of Happiness

I was making dinner, listening to a podcast featuring Alex Hormozi and he stated a compelling idea. The idea that in life we shouldn’t pursue happiness. 

This was highly intriguing to me as it is contrary to how many people approach and view life. In his argument, he made an incredibly valid and accurate point. Happiness is not a destination to be achieved. It is a state of being. 

It’s impossible to be perpetually happy. If happiness is your destination, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. You will reach happiness but those moments will be fleeting. We aren’t always happy or always unhappy. 

Life is not binary in this way. Most of the day, we operate from a sense of neutrality and our emotions can be influenced by the actions we take or our reactions to external stimuli. 

Hormozi goes as far as arguing that all you should focus on is your progression. If you focus on your progress, your results don’t matter as you continually grow and see the best version of yourself. 

This triggered an interesting realization that has been sitting at the forefront of my mind. The realization that I am not solely interested in helping as many people as I can. 

I care most about realizing my potential and I believe that I will be able to impact people along the way. 

To be clear, I care about helping you! That just isn’t what I am ultimately pursuing. What I am pursuing is the ability to look back on my life and see what I have accomplished. To know that I consistently worked to realize my potential - regardless of outcomes. 

That is what keeps me going on a daily basis. I got so tired of feeling like I was squandering my potential that I decided to make a change. I would wake up in the morning, look at my body and think, “what are you doing with your life?” 

I have wanted to be ripped my whole life. I never understood why “adults” let themselves go and didn’t have the drive to act on their goals. But now I do - as a former college athlete turned “adult” that has allowed most of the muscle mass acquired during that phase to atrophy and be replaced by a comfortable layer of body fat.

Getting ripped is not all that complicated. Hypertrophy lifting, eating enough protein, and eating enough calories in general to gain when you want to and cut down to the ideal percentage of body fat that you want to achieve. 

The inherent problem is, that’s not actually easy. It’s incredibly hard. It takes a lot of discipline and you have to be fully committed to the outcome that you are seeking. Plus, food tastes really fucking good. And our food (in the United States) is full of shit that sets you up for failure. 

That is why you rarely see jacked people when you go outside. Life is hard. It is even harder when you actually pursue the things that you want. The irony in this is that through the challenge, you actually get the most fulfillment. 

I am finding fulfillment through the tracking of my progress. I recently hired a dietitian (it’s really humorous to see the reaction on people’s faces when I say that as I am a lean person by most peoples’ definitions), to assist me on the path to achieving that goal. 

Shockingly, not really, I knew most of the stuff that he has told me to do. Eating at a caloric deficit, hypertrophy lifting, and getting off my lazy ass after a highly sedentary day at work. But I knew I needed external accountability for help and a little bit more structure to what I was doing. While I have eaten the same meals every day for over a week at this point, I am finding joy in the simplicity of knowing exactly what and how much food I need to make. I am finding joy in figuring out the exercises that he has prescribed to me and building strength and form in these exercises. I enjoy checking myself out in the mirror, more than usual, to check out how my abs are looking and if I can see and muscle striations that I haven’t noticed before. 

I have been consistently back in the gym since late last year and have been having fun the whole time. Not because I want to go everyday but because I show up for myself. So that I can see what I am capable of. 

For those that are deep into lifting, I am totally aware that when I plateau, that is when things get really challenging, but I am enjoying the renewed beginner gains and the incremental progress I am making. 

This is what Hormozi is urging people to use as a measure of fulfillment in place of happiness. I can attest that it is a lot better and a much more powerful motivator. 

I’ve lingered on my gym experience a lot in this article but I want to emphasize that this is applicable to any goal. Any vision that you have for a future version of yourself you can find purpose in the process. This will look different for every person, even if you have the same goals. 

Before we think about what purpose in the process looks like for you it is important to recognize that many people, most people even, allow their dreams and goals to die. They take little, if any action to achieve their goals and are left facing the disappointment of not having pursued what, at one point meant everything to them. 

Instead, most people fall into daily habits and routines that allow their skills to atrophy, their mind to grow lazy, and their body to follow suit. They max out their career in their 30s or 40s and allow themselves to deteriorate perpetually after that. They fear trying and pursue happiness in the form of short term comfort allowing the dream to wilt and die.  

Don’t be like most people.

Here is another, more relatable example for finding purpose through process in your career or your job so you don’t end up like most people. A lot of us will find jobs that we stick with for numerous years. Whether we are doing the job for survival, we love it, or we loathe the job with the entirety of our existence, you can find ways to make it more fulfilling in the process. This job will not make you happy all of the time. I enjoy my job a lot but I get pissed off periodically throughout the day as fires come up that I have to solve that should be non-issues. You may have to deal with rude customers. 

If you work with a lot of rude customers, you could look at your job as objectively bad and that it makes you miserable. I guarantee that with this outlook, you will hate your life. I have been in this position. I can attest, this outlook does not benefit you. 

If you are instead, focused on having purpose through the process, you look at each interaction with a difficult customer as an opportunity to refine the skills of dealing with challenging people. You get better and better at doing this and it makes each interaction a bit easier, maybe even a bit less draining. You begin to notice that this skill spills into your life. You notice that you are better able to handle and navigate conflict in personal settings and realize that by focusing on the process of how you handled rude and difficult customers, you have gained a skill of being able to handle difficult interactions in general. 

Not only did you make your job more fulfilling for you by not focusing on the lack of happiness that it was bringing to you, but you were able to recognize and appreciate how each interaction was getting easier. 

This is a lot easier said than done, and again, it will come down to what you deem as fulfilling. You may not find what I have outlined as fulfilling. Maybe it is being able to help serve these difficult people, maybe it is refining the skill of problem-solving. Whatever it is, if you are able to recognize that each interaction that you have with these difficult people enables you to become better, you will start to feel purpose through the process. 

My challenge to you is to analyze your goals or the direction of your life and determine what outcome you are pursuing. What are you working towards right now? What are you trying to achieve with that goal? Is it happiness? Is it fulfillment? How is this goal going to impact your life? 

If the goal isn’t going to help you be the best version of yourself, is it really worth pursuing?