Are We There Yet?

There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

“Getting There”

Through the ages, many philosophers, psychologists, and religious leaders have identified a very specific way in which our minds are hard-wired to stand in the way of our personal happiness. We make ourselves unhappy by our relentless pursuit of Getting There.

Basically, our minds are conditioned to build a vision of a place out in the future where happiness can be found. There is a place where all of our goals have been achieved and all of our problems have been solved. When we get There, we can finally relax and be the person we want to be, living the life we want to live. There will be nothing more to be done and no more problems to be solved — we can finally just sit back and enjoy life.

Because the mind has created such an elaborate and pleasing vision of what it will be like when we get There, we justify to ourselves that, for now, we have to endure the hardship of being Here. Here is a place where we are striving to get There and craving all of the happiness and well-being that will be available to us then, but we are living in a kind of “suspended animation” until then because There is the place where our lives can begin. While we are Here, all we can do is sit down and make a to-do list of everything we need to accomplish to get There, and then light our hair on fire to execute that list. In the meantime, we accept the fact that Here is a fundamentally unsatisfactory place to be because we are engrossed in a vision of a life that we want but do not have.

This whole set of circumstances might be acceptable if we could ever truly satisfy our quest to Get There. But we cannot because our minds won’t let us.

This is because the conditions required for Getting There are all made up in our minds. Those conditions consist of a set of goals that our mind makes up and demands that we achieve, and a list of problems that our mind thinks are bothering us and requires us to solve. However, just like all things in the Universe, our thoughts are fundamentally impermanent, and always changing. The goals we told ourselves last week would make us happy have been achieved by now, but they have now been replaced by new goals that have arisen, and demand achievement to allow for happiness. The problems that plagued us last month, which so urgently needed solving, are gone now, only to make room for new problems that now pester us.

“There” is not a fixed point in time or space — it is not a real location to which we can travel. It is a picture in our minds that is always moving and always changing, as new goals are formed, and new problems arise.  So, our efforts to pursue happiness and get There are futile. As hard as we try, and strive to achieve our goals and solve our problems, we are still left Here, in a place where we are grasping for some new goal that we want, but do not yet have. Happiness is always somewhere in the distant future, it is always “out there,” but never Here.

You cannot ever become happy; you can only be happy. As the old cliché says, you must learn to enjoy the journey, instead of reserving your happiness for that time when you reach the destination.

Reaching Your “Number”

In my 30-year career, I have noticed that this obsession with Getting There is incredibly prevalent in the way people think about their financial lives. For many people, the accumulation of money is considered the primary qualification for getting There.

The financial services industry, along with popular culture, have conditioned us all to believe that the key element to our well-being is our ability to arrive at a level of financial wealth that will enable us to finally be happy. One major financial product company created a very successful advertising campaign in which they constantly bombard us with the message that we need to achieve our “Number” – the amount of money that will enable us to retire. According to this logic, the day we can enter this made-up “Number” on our personal balance sheet and become financially free, will be the day we can finally have the life we always wanted, and become happy. Until then, we must struggle and suffer while we work to attain our “Number,” presumably by sending them a portion of our earnings every month to invest.

For many people, the attainment of their “Number” does not in fact bring the happiness they always expected. They just spent 30 years working and struggling to grow their retirement nest egg, but now they realize that their health is failing and they can’t enjoy the activities they thought they would be doing in retirement. Or they find that they are terribly bored without their career to occupy them. Or they miss the meaning and fulfillment that they got from working. Or now that they have accumulated all of this money, they are paralyzed by fear of losing it all in the stock market. New problems have arisen, and new goals have presented themselves, and the money didn’t solve all of their problems the way they always thought it would.

What is Important About Money to You?

This paradox of Getting There can never fully be solved, in life or financial planning. Setting goals is a critical part of achieving any worthwhile result, and as a financial planner, my entire career has been dedicated to helping clients to identify their long-term financial goals and develop a plan to achieve them. There is nothing wrong with setting goals, but true happiness lies in a place that exists right here and now, before your goals are achieved.

In my career, I have found that one way to solve this problem is to accompany your financial goals with a description of the personal values that those financial goals will enable you to fulfill. Our firm implements an approach we call “Values-Based Financial Planning”, in which we help clients first identify and document an inspiring and vibrant picture of the personal values they hope to fulfill in life, and which their specific financial goals will help them to achieve. This process focuses less on “What you will have” when you achieve all of your financial goals, and more on the vision of “What your life will be like” when you have achieved those goals and fulfilled your personal values.

This process helps clients to remember that money has no intrinsic value, it only has value to the extent that it can help you to live a more meaningful life. It begins with the following question:

What’s Important About Money To You? 

Have you answered that question for yourself yet?

A Valuable Message

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Freedom comes in four different varieties: Freedom of Money, Time, Relationships, and Purpose.