Day 17 "The Myth That is Happiness"

Today Steven talked about the emotion of happiness and how it is not a very long lasting emotion. We get a new car, computer or bigger house and the feeling of happiness doesn't last and we are on something else to make us happy.

He suggested that we should shift our focus from trying to be happy to trying to be content. Contentment is a much more controlled and mellow emotion that can be sustained for long periods of time. Whereas the things that might make us happy (car, computer, house) the emotion is short lived, the things that make us content might be knowing the family is safe, having a job I'm passionate about, spending time with family, etc. the emotion will last much longer.

Our exercise today asked us to list outcomes that would make us content and then score the outcome from 1 to 10.

• Spend time with Lori and Cody doing something we like
• Have a job that I can be passionate about and look forward to going to
  
• Working on speeches for TM and jokes for Stand-up
• Completing pens
• Get the Z car finished