Why Do We Defer Happiness?

“One day” may never come — stop waiting for it.

As someone who is a big believer in self-care and everyday joy, and who loves to preach their importance to anyone who cares to listen, I wasn’t aware that I had a huge blind spot in this area.

Well, at least not until recently.

By the way, I haven’t always been this self-loving, self-caring person that I am today. Far from it. As a recovering perfectionist, it took me a long time to learn to give myself what I need when I need it, not when the conditions are “perfect” in some imaginary future.

Now, these perfect conditions may look different to different people. For example, right now you might be waiting for the lockdown to be over, for things to get back to “normal”, or for your kids to get older so you can finally have more free time.

In my case, I used to consider the conditions to be perfect when I finally ticked off all the tasks on my long to-do list.

The sad truth, which I had to learn the hard way, was there is always more to do! The list is never done. And if I were to wait until all the “important” stuff’s done before I could do the things that bring me joy, I’d be waiting forever.

My Love Affair with Spanish

Despite knowing what I know, I have been ignoring one of the biggest sources of my joy — languages, and in particular Spanish, for the last six years.

I was an avid traveller and I backpacked through Latin America, Asia and Europe in my 20s and early 30s. I also lived in Guatemala with my ex-boyfriend for nearly two years. During that time I learned to speak Spanish rather fluently, and I loved the language.

However, after the relationship ended and I came back to Australia with a broken heart in 2014, I hardly spoke any Spanish. It was always on the back of my mind to go back to it “one day”.

But, guess what? That “one day” never came.

Now, I’m not going to beat myself up because the last six years were probably some of the best and happiest years of my life. I picked myself up from the floor after the breakup and healed myself (instead of just waiting for time to “heal it all”), got trained and certified as a life coach, met and fell in love with a wonderful man, and started my own coaching business.

In the same period, I also got married (yes, to the same wonderful man), gave birth to our beautiful daughter, and wrote a book. I was busy!

However, it still remains a fact that I’ve deferred an important source of my happiness, or perhaps even denied a part of myself for six long years.

The Hidden Danger of Productivity

Many of us have deprived ourselves of joy because we think we have no time for it. Or we think our interests or hobbies distract us from work or other “important” stuff, like raising a young family.

While I’m all for prioritising and focusing during our work hours, I am also for having fun and enjoying ourselves in our downtime. This is particularly true right now when we are collectively on a pause from a global pandemic. Some people have used this time to start something they’ve always wanted to do, like learning how to bake bread or write a book.

On the other hand, others have doubled down on work and tried to be even more productive than before. Either choice is fine, but since I used to be an overachieving perfectionist, I know all too well the hidden danger of focusing solely on productivity and hard work.

The problem isn’t about deferring or putting aside one or two things that used to bring us joy, it’s about dismissing anything that’s not work-related as unimportant or even trivial. These things end up at the bottom of our to-do list and eventually disappear altogether from our lives.

Over time, we have less and less joy in our lives and we wonder why we’re so miserable, despite all the tasks we’ve managed to tick off on our to-do list and the amazing accomplishments we’ve managed to achieve.

By rejecting joy, we’ve rejected an important part of our lives and even of ourselves — our fun-loving, lighthearted and playful inner child.

Prioritising Joy Over “Important” Stuff

We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary. — Brené Brown

It’s time to start prioritising our joy over our so-called important stuff. And it doesn’t have to be anything major; it could be taking a little time out, doing one or two things that we know bring us a lot of happiness.

Don’t wait until we finish our work or our daily to-dos, because let’s face it, that day will never come! Not only that, we miss out on having more joy in our lives right now.

Recently I learned a new term, and it’s called the Arrival Fallacy. It’s the belief that once we “make it”, once we attain our goal or arrive at our destination, we will reach lasting happiness. The problem is, of course, it’s a fallacy.

So, instead of lasting happiness, we discover to our dismay that we are still unhappy and plagued by problems after losing 20 pounds, or finding that dream job or dream lover.

Life is full of problems. In life you’re either recovering from a problem, in the midst of one now, or one is coming. — Brian Tracey

So, instead of white-knuckling our way through life, wouldn’t it be wonderful to enjoy our time on our way to our goal or dream? That way, it doesn’t really matter whether we reach our destination (Hello, New Year’s Resolutions!), or even how we’d feel once we get there.

Too often we only give ourselves permission to celebrate when we get “there”, but how we are being and feeling on the way there is just as important.

As they say, “the journey is the destination.”

What Now?

For those of you who are curious about what happened after I discovered my blind spot, there was a happy ending. I found a brilliant website for online language teachers with a simple Google search, and scheduled my first trial Spanish lessons with two different teachers.

After the trial lessons, I picked one of the two teachers, and I had weekly Zoom lessons with him for the next six months. I’ve had to stop the lessons for now because of a writing project, but I’m planning to re-start the lessons again once the project is finished.

We all have those one or two things we know bring us a lot of joy. Are you taking time out to do those — even for just five to ten minutes a day?

If you’re having trouble getting started, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• If not now, when?
• What “perfect” conditions are you waiting for before you get started?
• Are you waiting to celebrate only when you get to your destination, or can you start now?

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Annie is an ICF-certified life coach and the author of Brave Again.