What If We Gave Ourselves 5 Out of 5 Stars Just for Existing Today?

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Go, go, go, go!!

Keep it up!

Do better, dammit!

You got this!!

Sigh. Does it always have to be so frenetic? But, question: Is the only way we can imagine we “have this” through never-ending accomplishment? Is it possible that the simple, unfathomable fact of our existence is enough to celebrate every single day?

I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t want to accomplish things, to move forward, attain goals, “nail it”, as it were. But after all these years coaching both others and myself, I notice how easy it is to confuse accomplishment with a good life.

Trust me, I get it. The stakes are high. If we don’t achieve — not good. Life is fun when we do. It’s easier and more fortunate. It leads to opportunities and experiences that enrich us in various ways. I’m a devout whip-cracker myself, but also someone who tries to remember to enjoy the process of working toward goals as I reach to touch my dreams, even if it’s just with the tip of my finger.

Two things get slayed when the only thing that matters is reaching a far-off, big-time goal. We don’t celebrate the small wins along the way, which are far more extraordinary than we give them credit for. We also fail to enjoy the journey, the actual living, because it doesn’t qualify as “having arrived”.

Plus, get this, once we arrive, the idea that life is now everything we ever wanted it to be is, for better or worse, a mirage.

A while back — a year? two? — I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos, when she explored the concept of “arrival fallacy,” which is the common misconception that reaching a specific goal will lead us straight into everlasting happiness. Once I get promoted. Once I get my degree. Once I own a home. Once I get rich. But this is not the case for various reasons.

One, we adapt to pretty much everything. It’s what helped us to survive. It’s called hedonic adaptation, and basically means we grow accustomed to what’s novel, desirable, exciting, and worthy of our celebration. It also means we grow accustomed to what’s hard, sad, fearful, or hopeless, too.

You can imagine that if we never got over the fact that we found the edible berry bush on the savannah, we’d never try to find the next one. All we’d do is eat the berries and then stare with utter amazement at this exquisite bush — now devoid of berries, no longer able to feed us, and holding us in endless elation with no game plan for when we’d surely get hungry later.

Likewise, on another day, we’d be quite vulnerable if, after climbing a tree to escape the bounding rhinoceros, we had an extended anguish session with the others who’d escaped to the tree, none of us pivoting to plan for the next predator lurking below — the panther, an expert tree climber.

This is not to say finding berries isn’t worthy of a party, or escaping a rhinoceros isn’t cause for reliving the fear, but to survive in this world, we do need to get back to our regularly scheduled programming and resume life’s baseline flow of useful thinking and doing.

Yes, life might change a bit from a positive experience: we’re now appointed as chief berry hunter, a fine distinction among our hunter-gatherer clan. It might change from a near-miss with a rhinoceros, too, causing us extended hypervigilance. Regardless, we do tend to return to some sort of baseline.

It means for those of us living far into the future from our days as berry chiefs, experiencing things like college degrees and career promotions, or college mishaps and job losses, we do return to a day-to-day stasis that sits there ready to tell us that life is worthy simply because it’s life. Our daily invitation is to live each day the best we can.

What’s the best? For me, and for the social psychologists who gave us the heads-up on hedonic adaptation, it’s enjoying the process of working toward goals and embracing the life lessons learned from moving through hard times.

As both a metaphor and an example, imagine a long hike through beautiful surroundings. Reaching the end — the big goal — is almost disappointing. The hike itself is where all the joy sits — the beauty of the trail, the cadence of the pace, the cool animal-watching, the friends you meet along the way, or with whom you journey.

The process of some goals isn’t so obviously enjoyable. This might be because we assume anything not fun or award-winning isn’t worthy of notice. What if we paid closer attention to potential lessons embedded in the arduous, the uninteresting, or the processes that seem to have nothing to do with our lives?

Take school: What opportunity does this boring class offer that you could apply to either your current situation (your life, the world, your future), or to new ways to reflect upon some unrelated academic problem?

Take work: What opportunity could this hardship or challenge offer your future self, your future career trajectory, or your understanding of the world or others?

Then, life: What opportunity does your life offer you to learn, grow wiser, or become smarter? Then, life: What opportunity does your life offer you to learn, grow wiser, or become smarter? Sometimes, simply looking at what’s in front of us from a bird’s eye view is life’s great gift.

I was lucky because, back when I was an undergraduate, one of my professors brought to our attention the notion that goal attainment is about the process. The work done to achieve an end is where the true gem of the experience lies.

I can’t say I’ve always kept this front of mind, but I do tend to land here once I notice. Right now, I’m working hard on my first novel — a lifelong dream. I like to write, and writing short-form pieces makes the fun part of writing obvious. Writing this long-form craziness is more complicated than I would have imagined, and I’ve struggled with the undertaking. However, I keep bringing myself back to earth. What this process has already taught me about piecing together a complex narrative is mind-blowing. I’ve also made some wonderful friendships. I’m grateful for these.

We’ll keep pushing toward goals we care about, imagining an elevated life once we arrive, and we’ll suffer at the hands of the human experience from time to time, too. We’ll notice with each high and low how much we grow from the experience.

In the long run, I hope I discover that I was the goal and the process all along. For that, I would give far more than 5 stars.

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Hope you're doing well, friends.